Thread: OwnCloud's Collapse
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juiceme is offline juiceme
2016-06-13 , 04:47
Community Council | Posts: 4,920 | Thanked: 12,867 times | Joined on May 2012 @ Southerrn Finland
#19
Originally Posted by pichlo View Post
Sorry about coming back to this contentious topic. I just wanted to add one more thing that's kept bothering me about this "it's free, so put up and shut up" argument for a long time, but I could not find simple enough words to express what exactly it was that bothered me.

It is as simple as this. If you use that argument, you are essentially saying, "it's worth the money you paid for it".

If even the advocates of FOSS use that argument, they unwittingly hand ammunition to their opponents. And reinforce the notion among the common populace, already concerned about the lack of support, that FOSS is worthless.
I do understand your mindset, at least partly.

However that is the nature of software, and it's not just FOSS that behaves the same way; also commercial-and-paid-a-long-penny SW behaves like this too!

Consider MS Office, or even Windows itself; There are new versions coming out that you just have to update to, no matter if you'd just be happy with the current feature set and functionality. The vendor adds new features and removes the ones you'd want and need, and never asks you if you'd like that...

With commercial SW you have even less options than with FOSS; if you do not update sooner or later your system no longer receives updates at all; you are left with half-working system that is no longer compatible with anything else and is vulnerable to various attacks.

With FOSS you at least have the possibility to do something about it or to pay someone else to do it; If you want to run a really old piece of SW on your newer environment it still is possible to get it running there, the older toolchain still exists.