Hi,<br><br>My experience with the people I know is that they don't care where they get their software from: "Oh good, you've got a disc I can use ..."<br><br>They are also used to "you-know-who" software, because they use it at work, or had a computer with "it" installed before, and have no desire to <i><b>learn</b></i> an entirely new kind of software.<br>
<br>I've spent the last year or two explaining to them:<br><br>1. The "Software Police" are looking for pirated software, and yours reports in every time you connect to the internet.<br>(This was stuffed up a bit when a certain "chair-throwing CEO" was reported as saying "we don't mind, we'll catch up with the licence fee later")<br>
<br>2. If you use a cracked copy of their software, you won't get updates (except you can ... depends how it was "cracked")<br><br>3. Free and Open Source Software is worked on constantly, to improve it, improve security, add features ... and it's all free to use.<br>
<br>I've probably succesfully converted 3 or 4 people to Ubuntu ... amongst 30 or 40 that occasionally-to-frequently ask me for advice on PCs.<br>Half a dozen simply went out and bought a new PC when it came time to upgrade (they're so cheap right now), the rest are making do one way or another.<br>
<br>Sorry, I'm out of time, I have to go fix another Windows PC that is broken/trojaned/problematic. I've had a week and a half of it.<br><br>Oh ... on another note, I think some of the "argy-bargy" that has flowed in the mailing list is because of the difference between "Free" as in $nil compared to Free as in Libre.<br>
Perhaps it should be policy for LA ... or at least this mailing list ... to refer always to FLOSS : Free / Libre & Open Source Software. Just a thought.<br><br>-- <br>Don Knowles<br>