How to convert your family to FOSS?

Just wondering, have any of you had experience with converting your families (or others) to Free and Open-Source Software? I got in an argument with Mum today about how my Sister's computer doesn't have Microsoft Word on it.

Well, she actually said it didn't have Windows on it but I eventually figured out what she meant. It had XP on it still but didn't have Word.

We had a pirated version of Office XP (please don't burn me) and I switched over to OOo a long time ago. When I formatted my brothers computer I stuck OOo on it and he's happy. But my Mum blatently REFUSES to have anything other then Word on my sister's machine. Any tips for me? I'd rather be running a household free of piracy, because I one day hope to be a program designer, and I know I wouldn't want my work ripped off.

 

LOL I am struggling with the apparent contradiction in your post! You want to convert your family to FOSS, but at a future date you want to sell closed-source software?

 

Tell her to buy it and install it, or use OpenOffice, because you refuse to use illegal software (and shame on her for suggesting that you get an illegal copy... she's encouraging you to break the law! ). It worked for my parents, they didn't want to drop $350 to get Office. Once she sees the dollar signs, it'll make sense.

 

I see no contradiction. There's plenty of closed source software that runs on Linux. It's more open standards. Office is a horrible, closed, buggy standard for documents that barely works with itself. I've had cases where Word saved a document, then was unable to open the same document. Excel crashes randomly on spreadsheets it made corrupt somehow. I could go on.

OpenOffice isn't perfect, but it's free, and it's more or less commodity software, which really is positioned to be free. And either way, there's a LOT of programming that goes on (probably 85% of the jobs) that needs done, but not for a commercial software product. It's for behind-the-scenes business software, for things that people get paid to do, but aren't directly for a product. Service is what holds the value, actual work. Not an ethereal, infinitely duplicable digital product.

Think about it: handheld video game systems, microwaves, business data processing, internal web applications, all kinds of things that aren't really a product that you sell as "Install this on Windows!".

Get a clue.

 

I never said anything about SELLING. I'm currently studying Internet Science and would ideally like to become employed as a Sys Admin.

And, I imagine a lot of the stuff I might produce (like a tiny project I'm trying to figure out now) will be open sourced. But if I ever make something really great and popular, I'd like to be recognised for it.

BTW - I'm just trying to make a program that automatically switches my proxy settings based on what network I'm connected to. I hate having to change settings every time I connect at uni.

 

Yeah that's hardly a contradiction. Releasing open source software is the choice of the developer. I don't see it hypocritical to use as much OSS as possible, and then create software that might not be open source as a day job.

As for converting your family, start small. I got everyone onto Firefox a while ago because I got sick of cleaning off all the crap that inevitably got installed with IE. I also attempted to put Open Office on my brother's computer. The problem was I forgot to change the default save format to .doc, so when he took his assignment to uni, he couldn't open it to edit/print/submit. My bad :S

You're little program that switches proxy settings... If it were flexible enough, would save countless thousands of uni students time.

 

My father is completly opposed to using any Linux or anything free in general. Its supposedly "poor quality" and "filled with viri".

My mother doesnt care however and thinks dad is over reacting. lol, she knows nothing about computers beyond how to get into the internet, and even she knows theres nothing wrong with Open source

Of course my desktop and laptop both have linux and crap loads of open source/freeware stuff on them, and my dad wonders how my computers run so great and his is so slow.

 

Open office runs on windows ?

I sometimes have the opposite problem. When my parents bough a computer, they chose something that only had linux on it, ignoring my recommendation to at least have a dual boot system

 

Wow. Is he confusing random 'freeware' downloads from the net with OSS? He must be a little confused. Sure you need to be wary of some freeware which can do more harm than good, but the whole idea of open source is anybody can view the code and see what is actually going on under the hood.

 

Yeah, my dad has a problem with that stuff too. I try to tell him what I do with my computer as little as possible. If he knew I was currently triple-booting XP with Linux and a Beta Windows, he wouldn't be happy. He's not happy that I don't have Office right now. I was like, "Well, I could use OpenOffice, or you could drop $75 for Microsoft Office (university pricing)." That being said, I do plan on buying Office 2007 when my university gets it, because I have run into so many formatting problems trying to open stuff in OpenOffice that was formatted in Word. But as long as I use Linux, I'll use OpenOffice. I've been trying to get my parents to let me install Linux on their computer for over a year now. It has a trojan on it, but instead of my dad letting me fix it or put Linux on it, he'd rather surf the Internet on a virus-infested computer with the AV turned off... in IE6. That's just a nightmare waiting to happen. But whatever... nothing I can do will change him.

 

I was clumping them together since my Dad does that. Dammit hes getting to me I know the difference though.

 

Well, I told my sister that if she can give me one good reason why I should put Word on instead of Writer, I'll do it...

"BECAUSE I WANT WORD!!!!!!!"

Needless to say, I ignored her. And when Mum got home this arvo I dragged her in and asked her to tell me the difference between OOo Writer and MS Word.

 

Seriously. Tell them to buy it or live with OpenOffice.org, and refuse to install any illegal software. Let your parents put their money where their desires are, or live with it.

 

Yeah, I told them that I no longer run any illegal software. And said Mum could spend the $350 to buy Microsoft Office.

And, using a PS emulator to play my FF7 in my room is not illegal is it?

 

Heh heh, that'll show 'em

Possessing and using a PS emulator isnt illegal. It only becomes illegal if you play a game you dont own a copy of. If you own a copy of FFVII its perfectly legal (You're allowed to keep a backup on any medium). But if you dont own a copy its illegal.

 

That's cool, it's like the only PS1 game I actually own. And my sister is stuck with OOo, atleast for the night LOL

 

I wouldn't be so sure, specially in the US. Also, Australia seems to have a DMCA-esque law, so... anyways that's somewhat OT.
I'd say your mum wants MS-Word because that is what she is comfortable with it. She may not know exactly what is it, but she knows how to use it and she doesn't want the overhead of learning how to use another program.
Question is, some people, specially older people, don't really want to learn about computers. They just want them to work. They'd like computers to be like a refrigerator, you just use it and there is no learning about it. Of course, most of we know a computer is a completely different kind of appliance, but even then, sometimes we all yearn for something that "just works" don't we? So I think it all boils down to education. People who don't know how a computer works are not able to use them effectively. The only solution I see is to force them to learn. In your case, just do as people already told you. "You want MS-Word? Nice. You can buy it, install and mantain it yourself. I will be here to help if you'd like to learn how to use OO, which is quite as good as word and OpenSource". If most people had to install a not pirated version of Windows from scratch, paying full price for it and Office, they would think twice about disregarding FOSS.

 

What's funny is people are perfectly willing to learn the latest version of Word, but if you want to use a different program, it's too much.

 

And that gets on my friggin nerves! Louzy majority population....

 

They like it because it's popular. Bottom line. People know it, so they think they should too.

 

What do you mean by recognised?

 

Ah, I thought this was about Free software (as in Freedom) and not open source. I think it is hypocritical because you taking from the community but then not giving back.

 

Tell your wife that her computer won't keep slowing down, but instead, will just keep working and doing what she tells it to.

Show your kids (ages 6, 4, and 2) the following: Tuxpaint, childsplay, pingus, defendguin, chromium, and supertux.

Worked for me. YMMV

 

Isnt it the other way around --- if u are expecting people who use "free" software to "contribute" to the community, then is it really free ?

 

Please, nothing hypocritical about it.

People should use whatever product is best for them. Likewise, companies should make whatever product they feel is best for the users, employees, and owners.

If a company decides that existing FOSS business models won't allow their company or drastically hurt their revenue, then why should they bankrupt themselves trying to make it work?

As far as I'm concerned, the only thing people should be morally do for using FOSS is the occasinal bug report if they find something. Which they should do anyway, regardless of the license.

Attitudes like that is one of the things that keep Linux an eliteist OS. How exactly do you expect mom and pop to contribute to the community?

 

It was about software development and not its use, atlhough as a user there isn't anything stopping you if you would like ( no coersion, no expectation) to support free software in some form e.g. documentation, help guides.

But as you brought it up, if you use free software, you might want to consider what advantages it offers, and whether you think it is worth it? Linux supports a wide range of older hardware (some of it quite rare), if those device drivers hadn't been free software drivers, how long would the manufacture have maintained a properiatary driver. The answer is you can't know, it is up to the manufacture how long they want to support it. With a properiatary application, it is again up to the company how long they decide to support it. How many times have you upgraded properiatary software in the hope that they have fixed a bug, but instead they have created a whole raft of "features" that you didn't want and will never use? How many times has software technical support been conditional on using that companies latest version? How times have you upgraded properiatary software to discover that it is nothing more than a cosmetic change? Some software houses have even thought of schemes where they rent you their software, and you would be forced to upgrade on their timetable at your expense.

 

isn't converting more users a service to the general community? "spreading the word", so-to-speak.

and free (as in freedom) has EVERYTHING to do with open source. it is having the source available that gives you the FREEDOM to evaluate it or make changes as you see fit. RHEL is free software in the sense that you can download the kernel source and modify it if you want, however, it is most definitely not free software as in free beer.

 

Spreading the word is certainly a great contribution although what message is being spread if you don't point out the difference between the free and properiatary software and what that means (practically and socially) when you use the latter.

AIUI, and I don't pretend to understand it fully, is that are two main groups FSF and OSI that believe in free software and open-source respectively (it mostly seems to be about the license the software is released under and what you are saying people can do with the software).

 

The word from the yak's mouth about selling free software.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

 

The gnu's mouth, you mean, right? Gnus and yaks are in the same family, but different genus.