Nick_Djinn wrote:I may have over stepped in a few of my assumptions, but you made it sound like Linux in general is just a side project that some computer geeks cook up in their spare time for fun, and if you dont like it then tough !!!! and dont expect the developers to care about you if you have problems because it was free and done as a hobby......those are not your exact words, but its my impression of the general picture you were painting. You didnt necessarily say all of those things specifically, but thats the feeling I got from your general implications.
It's actually somewhat funny seeing my words twisted like that. Oh well, what can I say?
I'll play ball with you, then. Here's what I read from your posts: You hate big multinational corporations, so you want to use the only viable alternative operating system (that fits this ideology of yours) for your PC, which happens to be Linux (there's also *BSD, Haiku, Syllable, etc., but these would be too "geeky" for you). You then decide that since you want Linux but can't put up with the "geekiness" of Linux, that you want to turn Linux into a dumbed-down system...something easy to use like Windows, except without a big company backing it (if Linux was owned by some big company, you would shun it as well due to "corporate distrust", conveniently turning a blind eye to the fact that in recent years, 75% of the code contributed to Linux is from those giant corporations you despise). And then you argue that open-source must fit this vision of yours, and since you're paying money for it (Mint), you must be right and Mint's developers have an obligation to listen to what you say.
Well, unfortunately for you, "voting with your wallet" works only for proprietary software. When you're dealing with a company developing closed-source software, you get to call the shots once you cough up enough money...after all, profit is the only reason proprietary software companies are in business. That doesn't work the same way for open-source software. You want to change something? "Awesome, we'd love to have another contributor to our project! Here's the source code, come talk to us on IRC/mailing lists when you've got a working patch, and we'll merge it with the latest dev branch if it looks like it won't cause any major borkage."
If you still don't get it, this is NOT about money. I'm not even going to bother to refute your last reply...donating money to Mint has no pertinence to the issue at hand here, aside from the belief that you think that money will get you what you want, like in the world of proprietary software. If the sole desire of open-source developers in general was to earn money like their counterparts in proprietary software companies, the open-source movement would long be dead by now. The open source movement was built upon the collaboration of thousands of developers wishing to work together to develop software that fit their collaborative needs, and to do so in a manner which would leave their code open and accessible to all. The open source movement is not about catering to a group of anti-corporate users with some spare change in their hands.
Yep, I could unplug network cable but I do want also work and be connected just some stuff I'd like to have under MY control and ME to judge what will connect or not to the net 
Registered Linux user # 449322
