Astroturfing is a form of advocacy often in support of a political or corporate agenda designed to give the appearance of a "grassroots" movement.

I use both Windows (7) and linux (arch), both run on different pcs that hide under my desk. Both operating systems have strength and weaknesses. I use my linux box for wireless access point, file server, SVN repso, internet sharing. I use my windows box for games, that is the reason its my desktop machine.

Linux isn't perfect or simple, but unless you they are a linux zealot, most users will admit its so. Windows Users who are not windows zealots, either seem to be unaware there is alternatives other than owning a Mac, or they want to run a particular software, or class of software that is just not available on anything but windows.

They invented the kinect...

Linux sucks, Arthur. I never saw such a bad design around video card drivers until I tried to upgrade them.

It's simple as pie on a microsoft system and it's pain and hell on any linux distro I know.

dkms and module assistant are two supplementary bitch.

I praise MS W 7 64 !!

Even though linux is my main operating system, i'm using it as my main OS with grief as it isnt as straight-forward quick to click and solve as windows, i have a lot of experience with linux and I know my way around it really well in the server world. I'm only switching to it for security reasons, not usability reason.

Everything is wrong with GPL. Its viral nature, despite the honorable goal of trying to force projects to become open-source, is often counter-productive - in the corporate world, GPL usually means no-go, because the risk of having to GPL your own proprietary code is just too high. The result is that a GPL'd piece of code doesn't get the exposure it deserves, and often fails to become mainstream even though it is technically superior to everything else out there.
In other words, you can't force freedom upon people.

Video drivers are a sore spot, but you can only blame the developers for a small part of the problem. Thing is, you can't easily provide reliable drivers without proper specs, and since hardware manufacturers aren't exactly keen on leaking those (in fear of telling the competition too much about the internals of their products), the choice is between open source drivers that are based on guesswork and sample hardware, and closed-source drivers from the vendor. In most cases, neither is pretty (Intel being a notable exception, but then their cards aren't exactly high-performance).

No one is forcing you to use that code. Just don't use GPL code, and you have no problems.

I used to think the same thing "OOhhh GPL is viral, OMGGggnonoeoneoneone~!!!!" well no, it isn't.

Most libs are LGPL so you can actually use them even in non GPL/LGPL projects.

It's worked rather well for the linux kernel. But its probably the only major project its worked so well for. And its by far the largest.

And none of that hurts the GPL'd software authors in any way. They don't actually benefit from you freely using their software so if you choose not to then they've essentially lost nothing. However, if you do decide to use it and are therefore forced to contribute your own efforts then the open source world might benefit.

All that aside, GPL is NOT against charging for software. The main restriction is that you must offer the source code, but AFAIK there's nothing stopping you from charging for it. Of course, once the source code is acquired the acquirer is free to redistribute it at no cost. In any case, you still can make some money off of GPL'd code. Most of the software that proprietary vendors write sucks anyway (i.e., they're more interested in making a sale then writing good software) so it really isn't worth much anyway.

Even with all of that pointed out, as already mentioned, there's nothing stopping a commercial entity from offering to license GPL'd software under different terms at a cost.

This is the people's fault, not the one of the GPL. See, just because everyone thinks like that does not mean it's the "right" way to think. Using the GPL would surely mean less profit, but there's no natural law that says that we have to pay x developers. We have a whole industry build up on misconcepts, like "intellectual property" (whatever that means in detail) for example. So now we have to bring in misconcepts again to fix the old ones, isn't that funny? Just to enforce concepts that were dead before they were born.

Because most people thought the world is flat doesn't automatically mean that's true.

I hear that often. What freedom do you lose? I am really interested in what people mean by that.

edit:

If you mean that: It's not a loss of freedom, it's a loss of power over what you can do to other people. So you're basically losing the power to restrict other's freedom, much the same other's gave up the power to decide what you can do with it. Freedom is based on co-existence, it's not a personal thing.

edit2:
The GPL is a license that ensures freedom between people, so you have to give up power on each other. If you want to put it in an evil context, you might call that "invasive", but it certainly doesn't fit well the idea.

No, it's the GPL's fault. It's way too restrictive. It is viral, because everything it touches should be GPLd too.

Our whole civilization, over 40 centuries, is built on being able to freely negotiate the prices for the items we have created. That's how the Western civilization managed to grow economically. It's almost a natural law, don't you think?

The only reason intellectual property is considered a misconcept nowadays is because it's an obstacle to software and media piracy. Computer users throughout the whole internet scream about how intellectual property is a bad thing, because they cannot download for free the latest games, music and movies.

If it wasn't for intellectual property, then most people would not create anything, since they wouldn't be able to get some value out of their creations, in order to be able to afford the creation of that property.

And please, don't get me started how piracy is not theft, because it is. A product doesn't need to have a physical form to have value. Enjoying something you didn't pay for that you should have paid for is clearly theft.

It is. It is something that value was spent on it in order to be produced.

That might be your definition of freedom, but it's a useless one for any rational discussion. Obviously my freedom to live supersedes your freedom to kill me. That does not mean I infringe on your freedom.

If I write a program, I should be able to decide what I do with it. It's not global property just because it exists. And I can do this, by sharing it to whom I want, how I want. Just as I decide not to use GPL, users can decide not to use my software.

This does not limit their freedom - it's an expression of mine.

EDIT:

What's wrong with making money of (presumably) good software that you've risked money and time to make?

Note that I'm not against open-source in any way, I just prefer not to be forced into it.

Dude we know you like AmigaOS and you love the world of yesterday, but