Joe Steeve wrote:
Free software is not developed by careless developers. It is developed by volunteers. Volunteers who love to program. Who love computing. These volunteers cannot be compared with regular programmers employed in software production houses. Here, the programmers are usually forced to do something that they probably dont like. One of my friends working in Infosys hates computers (He is a EEE engineer).
Ok, that clarifies my point.
He is programming today for a living. Please note., there is a difference in programming for a living and programming for passion. A passionate programmer puts his best effort to make beautiful programs. He knows the trade very well.
Exactly. A person who loves programming and passionate about it always strives for improving it and (I know) really does not mind sharing his/her software unrestricted in any form with his/her like-minded friends.
Have you ever used gcc + binutils + gdb. Do you think the people who programmed that are "careless developers??". Please look into the autotools (Autoconf + Automake + Libtool). That is not some mediocre joke. It is so professional that even propreitary production houses shamelessly use it. Can someone think of having a network of GUIs?? Did a "careless developer" think of making the X so powerful that I can actually open two GUI applications on a remote machine whose display comes on my terminal? Did a "careless developer" develop Guile.. I dont see even one single "heavily funded" proprietary software development house bring out something so smart and neat as Guile.
Looks like I am facing fury, I did not intend to offend anyone. All I said was there is a fairly good chance of computer-illiterate people getting cheated by malicious people.
Coming to the concept of Digital Signatures, I have not seen for myself nor seen my administrators bother anything about digital certificates/signatures. "Find a link, download, install and use...." is a very common concept among the vast majority of non-software companies who are interested in using a popular software, if it is free. Now, dont you think that cheating such a company is easy? Honestly, one can mutate a program (atleast the C source code is in plain ASCII?) and then take the CD to that company saying he/she has downloaded that software and install it (and the company feels happy that their time and money is saved from getting used for downloading it, esp. if its large). The above is just one possibility (and I say so after having witnessed disasters caused by similar methods). My point here was that apart from promoting free software, it is also our responsibility (the free software community) to see that the public (i again mean the non computer literate) are not cheated by such people, therby creating a false notion about free software (which in-turn reduces the support for the struggle)
I wrote all the above based on my personal observations and mindset of many people in business (non-computer-related) that I came across. I am very much in support of Free Software. I have just started working with gcc toolchain (after an initial port of it to one of our companies custom processor architecture) and it truely represents the Spirit of Programming. Honestly, I accept, I've never seen such beautiful software ever released from the software mafia (proprietory companies).
I do hope to be of some help to the community that I love (even if my comments, out of ignorance sometimes, seem to raise brows of the guru's).
Cheers and Wishes, Harsha.