[plug] GIMP/Pshop

[Chris Caston]

On Fri, 2004-04-02 at 22:56, Denis Brown wrote:
>   I find "Open Source" a much better
> phrase than "free" since (my people at least) have the mindset that if
> it's free, it cannot be worth anything.
> 

Yes I had a customer that somehow managed to botch his Office XP install
so that it would ask him for his product key (and reject it) every time
he tried to start word.

At the time I couldn't resolve nor find details on resolving the issue
myself so I gave him OO.o writer and told him that it was from a free
word processing suite that is completely compatible with Microsoft word.
He got really narky and went through all his word documents trying to
pick any slight difference in the way his documents came up.

I used the word 'free' instead of open source because I feel the need to
hide my zealotry while working with users of proprietary software lest
there be any conflict of interest.

The way he saw it I couldn't fix the problem with his Office suite and
gave him a "dodgy solution". The way I saw it he had a dodgy office
suite and I was there to give him a decent one.

As the computer technician that loves Linux but fixes Windows problems,
simply because that's what people call up about at all hours of the
week, I see it difficult to see why I should be blamed when propriety
software stuffs up.  

I do kind of have a "fantasy" about turning around and saying "Well I'm
actually an OpenOffice.org developer." Of course I'm not but I wonder
how some of the OO.o developers would react if they found themselves in
a similar situation.  

> My 2c and thanks for the prod on The GIMP.   Now that I have some serious
> iron running Linux, time to roll out the odd app or two :-)
> 
> Cheers,
> Denis
> 
> 
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