http://www.osnews.com/story/22064/FSF_Launches_Windows_7_Sins_Campaign
Society as a whole uses free software whether they know it or not. Even if you are using MS Windows that you bought and paid for there is still a very high chance you are using free software. Even Mac users use open source since Mac OS X is itself partially open source. You see approximately 50% of the web is hosted by the open source Apache web server software and many of those servers are also running open source operating systems. So why doesn't your home computer run open source software? That is where the Free Software Foundation's windows 7 sins campaign comes in and lays the blame on Microsoft. While one of their points seems a bit over paranoid claiming that the Windows Genuine Advantage tool used to validate a windows installation violates your privacy most of them make interesting food for though. For instance, how many people do you know that have ever got a refund for the preinstalled copy of Windows that came with their computer if they didn't want it? I don't think I have ever even met anyone who has even done this. And there are the ever increasing operating system requirements imposed by Microsoft on its customers which are totally bogus. I myself even have an ancient 300mhz dual processor computer with a measly 512mb ram that by Microsoft standards should have been thrown away years ago and yet it gives me good services daily and runs the very latest versions of nearly all the programs in the Archlinux distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system quickly and with ram to spare. I find it slightly amazing that society has reached the point where it is generally believed that Viruses and Worms and Trojans are normal everyday things whereas they hardly even exist on open source operating systems. People no longer think to ask you which word processor application you use it is just assumed that everyone has MS word which has nearly monopolized the market with their proprietary formats and have deflected attempts to standardize on open formats like ODF . Sure windows is pretty easy to use but in recent years Linux has grown a lot in the usability and now my grandparents use it at home mostly for email, web browsing and genealogy. Linux is the big alternative right now but there are others too such as Haiku OS and BSD which are catching up to Linux and in some ways have already passed it. Imagine how different it would be if instead of being plopped down in front of a Windows PC or an Apple Macintosh as I was in grade school, kids were allowed to bring their own OS from home on their USB key. Such a shift is entirely possible. Especially, with USB drives costing less than 10 bucks. So who is going to put their foot down and put a bit of fun and choice back into computing?
http://windows7sins.org/
