RE: [Fsuk-manchester] freedoms analogy

[Pete Morris]

To give other slightly less theoretical (but equally preposterous in my eyes) 
examples...

Why do people pay £15 to get into a "trendy club" where they can listen to 
tunes they already own on their iPod and pay inflated prices at the bar for 
flavoured toxic drinks that they know are going to make them feel ill the next 
day?

Why do people buy £150 plain white t-shirts from Vivienne Westwood when you can 
get exactly the same product for £2 from Primark? (or £10 from a fair-trade 
source)?

Why do people drink strange homeopathic brews prescribed by expensive private 
'doctors' and perceive an improvement in themselves, despite near unanimous 
evidence that they do nothing beyond placebo?

Humans are a strange breed. They sometimes do things that 'logically' are very 
illogical, simply because its the done thing to do, or because it is seen as 
what everyone else is doing, or they perceive a benefit that is not really 
there, or they just choose to believe something. There is a lot of psychology 
and sociology around things like this, and its the backbone of marketing.

Ubuntu is a perfectly usable operating system, but in a way its freedom is its 
own worst enemy. People say "where is the catch?", and no matter how much you 
say that there isn't one, they will be suspicious. Safer to stick with good-old 
trusted Windows. It's only £50 after all; oh and we'll give you a discount 
because you are NHS/student/whatever. I strongly suspect if Canonical started 
charging £100 for Ubuntu, you'd see its market share increase quite 
considerably. Not that I hope they do that, but it's the way humans are 
hard-wired.

Pete


-----Original Message-----
From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden On Behalf Of Simon Ward
Sent: 14 January 2011 08:03
To: address@hidden
Subject: Re: [Fsuk-manchester] freedoms analogy

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 10:22:48PM +0000, Roy Evison wrote:

> not everyone is as far thinking as you, nor as skilled.

I provided a ready made solution, it had already been designed and created by 
skilled people.

Then there are the freedoms that are not taken away from you with free 
software.  It’s all too true that many people don’t see why they should care 
about these because they wouldn’t be able to take advantage of them.  It is 
then important to emphasise that these freedoms are still useful, even if not 
everyone is skilled, as I said:

> > You can change the design, or *get someone else* to do it for you 
> > (because *designing these things well is not everyone’s forté*)

I just about managed to replace a washing machine door handle without leaving 
the door in bits, but that’s about as far as I go.  A few years ago I had a 
leak when using the washing machine, and didn’t know where to start, so I 
called someone out.  I’m not a skilled washing machine mechanic (I don’t even 
know if you call them “mechanics”), or a skilled plumber.

(The washing machine is proprietary, but at least most of the plumbing comes in 
standard sizes.)

> The lure of a quick quid or an easy to use solution appeals to many, 
> handcuffs not withstanding.

If you didn’t notice the analogy with Ubuntu, that’s what it was.  You hear 
stories of peoples’ grandparents being able to use Ubuntu without many problems 
at all (I doubt that’s really the case but it’s no worse than trying to figure 
your way around Windows or Mac OS X), and those people are somehow surprised by 
this (I’m not).

It’s not “an easy to use” solution that people latch on to, it’s a familiar 
solution.  They’ve used Windows in education and work, and it just seems easier 
to use something that is familiar, after all, they’ve already learnt how to use 
it.

The surprise grandparents may well have had relatively little experience with 
*any* system.  This allows them to learn to use something that to others may 
seem like a strange and unfamiliar system without being held back by 
pre‐conceptions about how the system should work.

> The immediate impact of time vs. money is also a factor in people's 
> choices, as short sighted as that maybe.

You can wear my ready made shirt, created using a free design, right now¹.

¹Any implication that I have designed and made any shirts in real life that you 
can have right now is simply unfounded.  I’m not a very skilled designer or 
shirt maker, I usually go for something already designed and made for me.

Simon
--
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple 
system that works.—John Gall