Re: The problem with not owning the software

Andrzej Matuch <andrzej@matu.ch> wrote:

On 2025-01-03 06:26, Frank Slootweg wrote:

Andrzej Matuch <andrzej@matu.ch> wrote:

On 2025-01-02 16:59, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Thu, 2 Jan 2025 12:09:27 -0000 (UTC), Chris wrote:
>

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>

On Wed, 1 Jan 2025 16:47:42 -0000 (UTC), Chris wrote:
>

You still don't own it, but now it's purely semantics.

>
?Semantics? means "meaning?. So ?now it?s purely meaning??

>
Correct. With FLOSS you don't own the software, as it's still just a
license, but you can do with it more or less whatever you want. Meaning
in practice it is indistinguishable from ownership.

>
So the distinction from actual ownership ... is that meaningful or not?

>
I'm just going to say this again because it bears repeating:
>
1) I don't need to make an account to download software to Linux.
2) I don't need to make an account to use the software I downloaded.
3) I can install Linux without needing to log into an account I have or
create one.
>
If privacy is a concern, those are interesting advantages. Even if you
don't care about privacy, you might be sick of logging in everywhere.

 
   FYI, you don't need to do any of those things for/on Windows either.

 
Installing Windows 11? The installer won't allow you to continue without
logging in to your account. Sure, there are workarounds if you pray five
times a day and stand on your head doing so, but it doesn't allow it be
default.

  The worarounds are not that difficult and some are even trivial. And
there is (well, at least was, didn't check recently) one, which doesn't
involve any hacks, just some 'clever'/'creative' answering of the
questions. In the latter case it does it allow to be the default.

   But most people don't know or can't be bothered that they have that
option.
 
   For Windows, it's quite easy and practical. No so much for, for
example, Android.

 
And what does Android have to do with this conversation?

  Nothing, other than that other (than Windows) commercial OSs have
these kinds of restrictions, i.e. comparing apples to apples. Oops! :-)