[dpower]

Key point is this: If more Linux people embraced proprietary software it would help spread Linux. Simple as that really.

As a proprietary app, we have encountered quite a bit of resistance from Linux users, usually berating us for not being open source. I think that's short sighted. We need more pragmatists.

[ekianjo]

Linux users who understand where Linux come from (don't bag Linux users under a single umbrella, there's a wide variety of them) have suffered from proprietary software companies not supporting their OS/distros (Adobe, Microsoft, just to pick a few) or seen the effect of "bad proprietary apps" (Chrome systematically trying to spy on you, software with backdoors, etc... that it's going to be a difficult case to come and say "this time, it's different" with a new proprietary app offering.

[dpower]

>have suffered from proprietary software companies not supporting their OS/distros (Adobe, Microsoft, just to pick a few)

And here lies the main point - they believe that many users will simply reject their proprietary software on principle. If the community was seen to embrace proprietary, which is what I'm calling for in the article, they might just support Linux.

Also worth noting that the largest contributor to the Linux kernel is... Microsoft.

[ppseafield]

> many users will simply reject their proprietary software on principle.

Yes, because we've grown tired of companies abusing their relationships with customers: abandoning products and leaving them useless, charging more and more for the same or less levels of support, removing features, suing users for repairing their own property... The list goes on. Sure, similar issues can happen with FOSS, but at least you have some recourse if the creators disappear.

> Also worth noting that the largest contributor to the Linux kernel is... Microsoft.

Yes, but only now. And only because they did what they could to kill Linux, and they still lost. That former behavior is the kind of thing we like to never be an issue in the first place.

[pjmlp]

Linux would never had taken off without the contributions of companies like IBM, Intel, Oracle, SGI, Cray,....

Which aren't properly any FOSS angels, when we examine their product portfolio.

Actually IBM is the king of patent submissions.

[ppseafield]

Sure, but it probably also wouldn't have taken off without its license either.

[pjmlp]

In that I agree, only because it is a copyleft license.

[ekianjo]

A Linux distro is far from being limited to the kernel so your reference to Microsoft is kind of meaningless here.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

They have only themselves to blame (as a whole, not individuals) because their platform is a pain to develop for compared to others unless your code is open source so distros can compile it themselves.

One does wonder whether this situation is intentionally exacerbated by the fundamentalists. Case in point, there are people against Flatpak because it makes it easier for developers to bypass repos and their package maintainers.

[AsyncAwait]

> there are people against Flatpak

Hello there. An not so much against it, as not "for it".

> it easier for developers to bypass repos and their package maintainers.

No, that's not the problem at all. The biggest problem is duplication of libraries, most of which will not see security updates nowhere near as promptly as the system version would, integration with the DE and the problems there, fundamentally replicating the Windows/macOS model, while many see native package management as superior for the reasons I mentioned.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Then I guess this is the trade-off you've agreed to. However, there are a whole lot of Linux and potential Linux users who complain about the lack of proprietary software ports, and package managers and their implications are one of the reasons for that.

Flatpak isn't even good enough, in my opinion, since it adds complexity to an otherwise simple scheme in an effort to accomplish some of the deduplication you and other fans of package managers want. Ditto its repo model.

[AsyncAwait]

I can personally be unenthusiastic about it, but that does not hinder your ability to adopt it, if you wish to do so. I just wanted to clear the perception that we're somehow trying to hinder devs or whatever.

[enriquto]

Some people do not care about "spreading" anything. For many people proprietary software is just unacceptable on principle, just like selling food without giving the list of ingredients.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

So you don't eat at restaurants then?

[enriquto]

> So you don't eat at restaurants then?

Yes I do. I was talking about selling packaged food, but still, restaurants make a good example also. They will always tell you if one of their recipe contains a particular ingredient (of which you might be allergic), and whether there are vegan options. Many restaurants even write the complete list of ingredients on each item in the menu!

Even then, except for very complex sauces, it is quite easy to see all the ingredients once you have the dish in front of you. This is impossible with proprietary software. Just grepping at a binary, you won't get too far.

[TimJYoung]

That's not quite true. You can easily decompile any binary and glean all sorts of valuable information from it. On Windows you can find out which API calls it makes and can even use detours/trampolines to redirect such calls:

https://github.com/Microsoft/Detours/wiki/Using-Detours

At one point I wrote a little piece of software as a proof of concept that used detours to redirect any file I/O in IE that was deemed "unsafe" to a special in-memory file system.

The bottom line is that you don't need the source code in order tell if an application is "phoning home" or if it makes suspicious API calls. In fact, it is often easier to just simply monitor how the software interacts with the host system to determine if it is performing (possibly) malicious actions. IOW, if you're concerned about a certain piece of software, then auditing the source code isn't going to be as good of a solution as just sandboxing the application so that it's impossible for the application to do something bad.

[dpower]

> They will always tell you if one of their recipe contains a particular ingredient (of which you might be allergic), and whether there are vegan options.

I authored the article. People ask us about our software all the time. We answer their questions. We have a post on our views on privacy, how we collect and use data etc. We give people the option to opt-out of data collection. Our email list is strictly opt-in. It seems that you are fine trusting the people that provide your food, but not your software.

[starbeast]

>If more Linux people embraced proprietary software it would help spread Linux.

Microsoft uses Linux on something like 60% of their own cloud servers, presumably because they find it more profitable to do so than to use the software they wrote themselves.

One thing you have possibly missed is that the people you think are fundamentalists rather than pragmatists, are for the most part being fundamentalist about pragmatism.

They are not telling you to open source based on some abstract philosophy, but because they think that the practical effects of doing so are better.

And given that open source as an economic system of production is currently out-competing liberal capitalism at its own game, on its own terms, on its home turf, I suspect that they may have a point.

Do what you want, but it may be a mistake to dismiss the open source community as not being pragmatic when they critique you.

[dpower]

To be absolutely clear, and I've made this point several times in the article - I am not dismissing the open source community.

I am dismissing those that reject proprietary software on principle.

I also made it clear that we would open source our software if we could find a business model that would work for us.

[starbeast]

>I am dismissing those that reject proprietary software on principle.

That dismissal presumably includes both Stallman and the Debian project. I would not dismiss them all that lightly.

>I also made it clear that we would open source our software if we could find a business model that would work for us.

You are making a nice email client. The service of rock solid business email management would presumably be the obvious model to start with. There are more people willing to spend money on that than there are people willing to buy a better email client.

[type0]

> I am dismissing those that reject proprietary software on principle

If they dismiss it then they don't need it. You can't force anyone to buy things they don't need, at least in free society that is.

[seba_dos1]

...but why should I care about spreading Linux? Linux is just a means to an end, not an end itself.

[throwaway4799]

Linux is quite spread already. It is present on billions of Android devices, holds a quasi-monopoly on supercomputers, a large majority of servers and a quite fair chunks of embedded systems.

"But it doesn't run games or Excel on my desktop!" Ah yes you're right. Guess Linux is niche and needs spreading after all.

[imtringued]

Games not running on Linux is slowly becoming a thing of the past. The largest hurdles are studios that develop their own engines from scratch and do not support anything other than directX.

[sloum]

You keep talking about helping Linux spread, as if you are trying to do some overlooked thing a favor. Linux is BY FAR the most deployed group of software environments/OS' on the planet. I'm not sure who you think you are trying to do a favor?

[4ad]

> If more Linux people embraced proprietary software it would help spread Linux.

Linux runs the world. I highly doubt it needs more "spreading".

[beaconstudios]

I think they mean on the user-facing side. Linux runs the world in the sense that it is the backbone of the infrastructure layer, but it's running on very few end-user computers.

[4ad]

That's my point, Linux "won" without needing any presence on the desktop side. Any suggestion about what should happen with Linux and/or Linux users that ignores this fundamental fact is utterly hopeless.

[TimJYoung]

Linux "won" in the sense that every single one of those devices is special-purpose, and not for general-purpose computing. Linux is helping those that want to lock down computing so that it is consumption-only, which is completely antithetical to the goals of FOSS. Creation happens on the desktop, and right now the desktop is primarily Windows and Mac.

[Multicomp]

You are very correct. I've often wondered why some of the kind of people who are ambivalent about having Linux on the desktop don't see the huge benefits to their cause.

Example: I have an older laptop with a 5400RPM hdd that I've since bought a SSD to image and put a new OS on. Currently it runs Windows 7. Hate Windows 10 after being a lifelong Microsoftie (DreamSpark worked as it turns out), been learning Linux at work, so let's try it at home. I work on computers for a living, I can handle the learning curve, right? I will be reinstalling Windows 7 so I can AskWoody Group B it until it is out of support, then move it to Windows 7 POS Ready to get security updates until the last possible second. From there? I guess a mac because I refuse to use Windows 10 on personal devices aside from maybe a LTSB version. Different rant though, back to Linux on desktop:

I _want_ to run NeonOS or Debian KDE on that laptop, but cannot as the tools I use are not available on those platforms. The "fundamentalists" as portrayed in this article would say that I shouldn't have chosen to use the tools I chose. That doesn't help my problem though and won't do anything to get the 'unwashed masses' using the better software en mass. Here better software = FOSS since we are being a hypothetical fundamentalist a la Stallman.

If these Stallmen could "hold their nose" long enough to build Linux such that it could run most rando Windows programs without huge fuss and individual WINE config tweaks, the long term benefit would be that they would be positioning themselves to overtake Windows in usage on the desktop as well as the server side.

Knock-on effects are strong:

1. More users, more developers to create software

2. More developers, more improvements made to system codebases, package maintenance, dev tooling

3. More Linux, more Linux compatibility out of the box

4. More Linux on desktops, more people who've never been tainted by MS DreamSpark (like me) and due to baby duck syndrome prop up MS Windows, Office, VS and the Microsoft way

5. MS might even open source Windows itself (a core product) if it is no longer profitable. Making the job of dealing with Windows compatibility A) easier and B) nearly redundant

So the FOSS people win the war, at least on the desktop Linux vs Windows front.

[starbeast]

Other than all the android phones, tablets, set top boxes and TVs.

If you include BSD as well as Linux, you get the Apple computers and phones.