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Windows 7 Sins: The case against Microsoft and Proprietary Software

The new version of Microsoft's Windows operating system, Windows 7, has the same problem that Vista, XP, and all previous versions have had -- it's proprietary software. Users are not permitted to share or modify the Windows software, or examine how it works inside.

The fact that Windows 7 is proprietary means that Microsoft asserts legal control over its users through a combination of copyrights, contracts, and patents. Microsoft uses this power to abuse computer users. At windows7sins.org, the Free Software Foundation lists seven examples of abuse committed by Microsoft.

Windows 7 Sins
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Free software operating systems like GNU/Linux can do the same jobs as Windows, but they encourage users to share, modify, and study the software as much as they want. This makes using a free software operating system the best way for users to escape Microsoft and avoid becoming victims of these seven sins. Software and computers will always have problems, but by using free software, users and their communities are empowered to fix problems for themselves and each other.

You can get more information about each of the sins and how to escape them at windows7sins.org. Please sign up there for campaign news and action alerts to help raise awareness about Microsoft's abuses, the problems with Windows 7, and the importance of free software!



6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Blah, blah, blah... same old fear-mongering that the open source community so sadly reverts to every once in awhile. I administer 60-70 servers at work (a mixture of Windows and Linux/Solaris servers), and each one has its strengths and weaknesses. I can tell you about absolutely HORRID coding and awful/inefficient queries in open source Moodle software; and I can tell you about awful/obscure incompatibilities on Windows platforms.
Are either one of these supposed to be easy for the average user to fix, or to even have to worry about? No! Is the average user supposed to know that Moodle has some god-awful query structures that make things worse as you add courses/roles to your structure? I think not.
Should the average user need to know "./configure, make, make install, ldconfig" to install a program in Linux? I know many users that wouldn't have a clue, they have a hard enough time running SETUP.EXE on a Windows platform.
So, in other words, neither platform is perfect, neither one is the panacea for all the woes out there. Market your product on its strengths instead of slamming other products - otherwise it sounds like a banal and repetitive political election.

Anonymous said...

I have an office full of Windows 2000 and XP machines (under 20 of them), and I've never had a virus or worm, etc. do any damage in 15 years. Windows works just fine if you aren't an idiot about how to set it up and configure it, etc. I know Linux is great and all, but I get by just fine without having to figure out all new ways of clunkily doing things and training everyone on alternate OS and Apps. I have no reason to, as it all works fine, and obviously what 7sins website says about being forced to upgrade is bulldonkey, as it just isn't true. Windows should have a default setup similar to how I have mine, where it works, is lean and fast and secure. Linux will always be an also-ran as long as doing anything with the computer requires you to be a geek and learn everything all over again.

Why would the overwhelmingly VAST majority of users ever want to ..."modify or study software"? That is not something people are interested in. They just want to use it to do something, not get all geeky on it.

shopping cart said...

Nice, but the windows user always like it without using any other OS, with having the proprietary issues.

Anonymous said...

That is the beauty of being able to choose what you feel comfortable with and not what everyones tells you is better(for them). Open source has been out there for about 30 years now and it hasn't gained a whole lot of popularity like it should have, with the advent of the internet, if it was so easy. If programming was so easy to understand then everyone would be doing it but it seems they are not.

Fakhruddin40 said...

I have registered with windows7sins.org, it's good to aware yourself.

Plastic Card

Fakhruddin40 said...

I have registered with windows7sins.org, it's good to aware yourself.

Plastic Card

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