>>25
I hate the fact that the fsf is interested mostly in replacing non free software instead of offering better alternatives to it. Due to this, free software is usually a couple of steps behind proprietary software.
Its not a couple steps behind or any steps behind. People are ingrained with the corporate mentality that individuals cannot defeat the power of industry. For the most part that is true, an individual cannot design his/her own car, airplane, medicine, washingmachine, or anything and expect it to compete with the full infrastructure of design and production that goes on in a large company. But this is not true with software. Computers are universal, the same computer in your cellphone can (and did) launch rockets that put a man on the moon. Not only is software quality of open source software as good as commercial, it is often better as there are no funding restraints or supervisors who allocate design resources. An open source programmer is open to experiment with things that would never be approved in a commercial environment. For this reason many major software companies give free rein to their programmers to submit ideas. Most major software companies like MS, Apple, HP, Sun started out not as a corporation but just a group of programmers who had an idea for a product. We refer to such small companies now as startups. Companies that lose this startup mentality and use normal corporate heirarchy of design get bogged down and fall behind which is what is happening to MS.