I do
In response to Coding Horror’s “Why doesn’t anyone give a crap about freedom zero?”, and to Mark Pilgrim’s “Outside of Planet Debian and my own personal echo chamber, nobody gives a shit about Freedom 0.”
I do. So do many, many people embracing open-source for this very reason.
There may not be enough numbers in the real world at the moment, but isn’t this too early to see hordes of people jumping ship? Yes, numbers are important, but to get them, I think you’ll need time.
Freedom and Linux were left trailing for most of the last decade, and a good part of this, while proprietary systems like the Mac and Windows raced ahead. In addition, Freedom has had psychological setbacks in corporate minds of the likes of SCO lawsuits derailing adoption progress. Yet, it is remarkable to see operating systems like Ubuntu spring back and rejoin the progress curve.
We’ve only had a couple-of-years old operating system, which truly appreciates users’ freedom, and which is perfectly suitable for users with any skill level. LTS (long term service support) licenses that Ubuntu currently offers only reinforces the right kind of confidence in the corporate IT environment. For the home user, we need more visibility, and demonstration of ease of use—too many previous Linux versions have disappointed the optimist adopter, when compared with what has been commercially available. That Ubuntu stands a chance, needs a voice, which needs to be heard.
A lot of us, who have embraced freedom, are doing what we can—family, friends, community, our weblogs, and in our companies explaining the benefits of a system that is free as in freedom.
But more than being a fanatic about a specific operating system, I’m rather an active advocate of freedom of data. How can this happen in other commercial operating systems? If Macs and Windows of the world can truly allow the users to have their content transported (imported or exported) without loss of fidelity, and without being locked into applications, and/or other proprietary formats, then that would mark the arrival of a true levelling field in terms of freedom. Then, to me at least, it wouldn’t matter if I’d use a Mac, or a Windows or Linux, or any other.