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I primarily use Linux, so I'm most productive there, but I understand your sentiment. I would use a nonfree OS if it increased my productivity.

That said, I think Linux and all the other FOSS OSes and software keep costs down. Without Linux, could you imagine what a Windows license would cost? I can't picture that we would have the same price points.

Do you think a similar argument could be applied to Android or any other free/commodity software/platform?




> That said, I think Linux and all the other FOSS OSes and software keep costs down.

That's because they're free as in beer, not free as in speech.


Perhaps the proximate cause of low Windows license cost is that there are alternatives that are free as in beer, but it's obvious to me at least that the only reason such "free as in beer" alternatives exist is because a lot of people work very hard to make sure that there are "free as in speech" implementations of fully fledged operating systems.




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