Free software preferences

[Ozor Mox]

Just an out of interest thread. Do you have a preference for free/non-free software or do you use one or the other exclusively?

By free/non-free software I mean as in freedom.

[karellen]

I use what I like

[starcraft.man]

I tend to prefer to support FLOSS products over not even when it might be a bit inconvenient. I'm not opposed however to using non-free when I don't really have an alternative.

Edit: karellen where is your Chuck Norris week spirit?

[AndyCooll]

I support free software and use that where practical and possible. However there are times where a free version either isn't available or hasn't yet reached an appropriate standard, in which case I have no problem using a proprietary app instead.

:cool:

[LaRoza]

I have nothing against paying for software, but I haven't done that in a very long time because I don't need to, everything I want is free (legally).

I voted that I use Free software only, because I do.

[igknighted]

Good poll.

I personally will give preference to Free software and would always prefer it, however if non-free software was of significantly better quality and of reasonable price I would buy (legally) and use it. This is especially true of games, where I have every intention of buying UT2007 (non-free but linux native) when it comes out this fall.

[Luinar]

I'll always endeavour to give preference to free software, and I wish it were possible to use free software for 100% of everything I do, but unfortunately that just isn't practical or in some cases even possible at the current moment in time.

[Amazona aestiva]

My non-free software: Nero Linux 3.

[Ozor Mox]

Seems I match the preferences of most. I always try to support and use free software where possible, but I have nothing against non-free software and use it where there is no alternative or if I prefer it. This includes both freeware and commercial software.

Incidentally, by free software I mean as in freedom not just as in beer.

[hessiess]

only use free with the exeption of afew drivers

[Kingsley]

I have no preference. If it works, it works.

[happysmileman]

I use pretty much all free software, though I don't mind companies making money from software if they make it multi-platform (which they pretty much never do).

I use the NVidia drivers (AFAIK NVidia are good to Linux users, but mainly because I'm 15 and need 3D) and Opera (Opera for Linux is better than Firefox for Linux, and Firefox can't be considered multi-platform by me if it crashes about 5 times as much on Linux as on Windows).

But other than that all open source I think

[FuturePilot]

I prefer free, and will usually choose the free alternative first, but I don't mind using non-free software if I have to.

[Kzap333]

I used to use a lot of non-free software but now I am 100% free apart from
Adobe Premire Elements V2.0 (unfortunatly there is nothing as good for free),
MS Word (because my dad got it free with his work and although OpenOffice can open Word files it does not all ways work 100%)
and games.

[DalekClock]

I don't really see what all the fuss is about. If it's good software, I'll use it. I don't really care much about the lisencing.

[happy-and-lost]

I use mostly free. The only non free I think I use are codecs (I'll stop using mp3 when ogg becomes more widely used) and flash. Oh, and Firefox as opposed to Iceweasel ;)

[super breadfish]

I use free software wherever I can. I only use proprietary (free as in beer) software when the free software alternatives really aren't up to scratch.

[danny joe ritchie]

My non-free software: Nero Linux 3.
Same here, K3b is probably just as good though!

[vexorian]

I prefer free software that is also open source.

I have however been forced to use closed drivers and codecs, sun's Java and flash; I also use several compilers, the mother of all propietary garbage (windows) and MSOffice in some virtual machine (although those are pirated...)

edit : I was using brazero until last friday, I was going to burn a DVD but brazero kept complaining I had no space (even though I pointed it to /tmp which had 4 GB which was enough for the 3.1 GB disk.

Seems it fails with a too full /home, so I had to go to synaptic and install k3b

k3b, as always seems to me that it is the flag ship of KDE, shows how good those guys are when they do things correctly. IMHO it is better than nero.

[jc87]

I always prefer free software, but when necessary i use non-free.

In my Ubuntu partition the only non-free software that i have is flash beause i tried gnash in the past but didn´t worked so far (i will try again and again until it starts to).

I also an windows partition with proprietary drivers and steam/CSS, so yes the whole partition is non-free software.

Everything else is served as good or even best by free software, so is what i use.