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by nullc
4191 days ago
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> but he's still stuck in a 1980s mentality where everyone on a computer had to have some level of expertise with actually running software I don't think he is: The challenge for excellent free software today is to build software which can be used maintenance free (and, of course, be compatible with maintenance if the user wants to provide some). Of course, it's _easer_ to build software that runs remotely and can be fixed silently for the user at any time, than software which has to be complete and correct when it goes out the door... Freedom that costs to much can't deliver on its promise. The response shouldn't be to abandon improved freedom as a goal, but to apply our intellect to lowering the cost. |
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Of course you are right that we should rise to the challenge of shipping excellent free software, but experience tells me that it doesn't matter how good we get at this, we will still be undone by the transient nature of software stacks. Patches will be necessary unless people never upgrade, which of course they will because sooner or later they will desire new features or it's necessitated by security. At best we can asymptotically approach the amortized cost of having someone else manage your software for you, and even that is dreamland until free OSes finds a way to approach the UX provided by Apple/Microsoft/Google.
You're welcome to devote your life to proving me wrong, but I'm not holding my breath.