Frank Cox wrote:
I'm sorry, I assumed you were being deliberately provocative. I
couldn't think of any other rationale for your remarks.
You have either not read, or have failed to understand my previous remarks.
Or just considered them wrong...
Were you
seriously suggesting that because I happen to have hardware that needs
drivers that are only available in proprietary form, or that I happen to
need Maple or Matlab or other commercial software with no OSS
equivalent, or that my employer uses Exchange, that I have no business
using Linux?
I suggest that when you are doing things like interfacing with Microsoft
Exchange and other things like that, your life will be much easier if you stick
with a Microsoft software stack. If you wish to move to a Free Software stack,
your life will be much simpler if you move to Free Software for those things
rather than trying to ram the "old way of doing things" into a completely new
system.
Sendmail is the "old way of doing things" and it's completely agnostic
as to whether it runs on what you consider Free software or any
commercial version of unix.
Of course, it's up to you if you want to do things the hard way or the easy
way; you are welcome to use proprietary software on any platform you wish.
Standards compliance is what makes things interoperate. There is next
to no relationship to whether or not the components are proprietary or not.
It becomes difficult to sympathize with people who are not prepared to help
themselves, though. "I want to to X." In order to do X, you require Y and Z.
"But I don't want to get Y. Just make it work with Z and make it look exactly
the same as it did before. I don't want to have to learn anything new, ever".
That makes no sense at all. We want X _and_ Y to work together.
If that's the situation, then you don't want Free Software. You want another
box containing exactly what you have on your desk right now. "But it doesn't
work very well."
See the contradiction?
No. The contradiction is the part that calls itself free yet tries to
dictate what other components can do.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
