Dear Vlad,
Very nice site. Keep up the good work.

‘Tis true that Vista has justly developed a very poor reputation. Where
I work, many users have asked me to install Windows XP on computers
which came with Vista pre-installed. They are so frustrated with Vista’s
mind-numbing slowness and general buggy-ness. The relative prices of
Vista and XP Pro are a testament to this.

However, I need to correct one small detail: XP Pro’s equivalent is
Vista Business, XP Home’s equivalent is Vista Home. The major difference
revolves around XP Pro and Vista business’ ability to join a security
domain, which is pretty essential in an environment with more than a
handful of users & computers.

As for your switch to Mac, well, I have mixed feelings: one the one
hand, Mac is a much safer operating system, and every user that flees
Windows for Mac helps to break up a suffocating M$ monopoly on the
desktop. But on the other, it’s just as corporate, just as stuffy, just
as restrictive and just as or even more expensive an operating system as
Vista/XP. Sure Mac portrays itself as youthful, trendy, laid-back,
casual, but that is just to much brand marketing, and if you buy that
then you must by the almost monthly revolutions in eye mascara. It’s all
alot of marketing crap, which is insulting to any thinking consumer.

Most importantly, Mac is not open source, free software. It is based on
an open source Unix called Darwin, but Apple Inc. futzed up a
collaboration with the open source Darwin community only a year or two
after it began because of their traditional, propriety, non-sharing,
corporate ways. Yes, behind the glossy white plastic, and behind the
clever marketing, Apple Incorporated is just as much about stuffy suits,
coporate greed, market share and stock holders as Microsoft. Now, with
the exception of Apple’s purchase of CUPS, which it promises to leave
under the GPL, there’s not much about Mac OSX that’s open source.

So, if you — I’m speaking generally to anyone reading this — want a
much safer, prettier, and “cooler” operating system, and a false
revolution, then sure buy a Mac. But if your most important objective is
freedom — freedom to share the software with your friends and
neighbours here and in the third world; freedom to study the software,
understand it and modify it to suit your needs (or pay someone of YOUR
choice to do so); freedom to use the software in your language wherever,
on whatever piece of equipment, in whatever fashion you like — then
buy a PC, a PDA, or even a computerized toaster and throw some flavour
of GNU/Linux or open source Unix on it. It requires a sacrifice of time
and effort and thought to learn about GNU/Linux or open source Unix and
your computer; it’s not nearly as easy as being spoon-fed by Microsoft
or Apple Inc., but the price of personal freedom is taking some
responsibility for your own destiny, taking control of your technology
experience, earning the knowledge that will allow you to use your
computer and the software in precisely the ways you want, to help and
share with others as a good neighbour, not the highly restricted ways
spelled out in a multi-page license agreement which flatly denies every
freedom I’ve just described.

Perhaps it is possible to use the masters tools to dismantle his house.
I don’t know. But I tend to be sceptical of this saying, especially when
you are paying a corporate master dearly both in dollars and in a loss
of freedom for the use of his tools, and you’re using them in ways
clearly laid out in his multi-page legal agreements. It appears to me,
rather, that your revolution is being co-opted and redirected and
dilluted by clever corporate marketing. That you have simply traded one
restrictive license agreement for another, one glossy trademarked logo
for another, one bloated operating system for another, and above all,
one corporate master for another.

Freedom in the 21st century will not be won or lost in the streets, or
the fields, or the alleyways or the mountains, but in the 1s and 0s of
computers, in the software that runs them, in the hardware that the
software runs on and the corporations that CONTROL and OWN these dual
technologies. Technology is the new means of production, the new battle
ground for freedom, the new political, personal space. Over the next 25,
50, 75 years, technology, already ubiquitious in our everydays lives,
will thoroughly colonize our personal space, our waking and sleeping
hours, to such a point that the lines between the flesh and metal and
silicon will be hopelessly blurred, to the point that we are dependent
upon it (or so we will perceive) for the most basic activities of daily
living. This expanding domain of operation, this exponentially growing
importance is why technology (as software and hardware) is so darned
important.

What’s so scary is that these fights are already underway, in legal
battles over digital rights management and software patents in Europe
and the United States, and so many of the self-proclaimed
activists–those marching in the streets or attending rallys–don’t have
any idea what digital rights management or software patent are or what
they threaten… What’s so scary is that so many people want to be
spoon-fed their computer experiences, willfully and foolishly signing
away any control over such fundamental rights. What’s so scary is that
so many people fall for the glitz and ever-renewed promise of
technology, as if ownership of this or that new fangled techological
bobble could really make them happy, compensate for their insecurities,
improve their daily life in any significant way.

Open source, free software is about collaboration, sharing, increasing
knowledge, closing digital divides, helping humanity and sharing
prosperity. Closed source software is about profits and ownership,
shareholders and above all restricting rights and freedoms and
especially knowledge in the name of private profit with little or no
regard to digital divides or the public good, and every regard to the
almighty dollar. Microsoft Inc. and Apple Inc. are traditional,
died-in-the wool closed source companies. Enough said.

Scott