Occasionally you’ll hear “why are all these open source people Mac slaves? Cognitive dissonance much?”
This is why:
The open source ecosystem is an ocean. Your PC is an aquarium.
For platforms the internet relies on, you want Free Open Source Software all the way. Linux, MySQL, Apache, PHP, and Firefox being open source helps keep themselves and their commercial competitors honest. The open source software ocean is often choppy, dangerous, ugly, and hard to navigate, but it is robust.
When it comes to the PC you work on, you want things to be pretty, elegant, functional, curated. You need the best tool for the job, regardless of its origin. This is especially true of the hardware and OS. They need to get out of your way and just work.
Mac users aren’t open source hypocrites, though we are sometimes guilty of torturing metaphors.
2 Comments ↓
I’m a Mac addict but I love NeoOffice. When I discovered it, I made a solemn vow to go cold turkey on Microsoft office or iWorks stuff. So far, so good (two years).
It also helps when I work on my Ubuntu-running Dell PC. Between Neo and Firefox, I’m in familiar territory.
I’m just saying.
I like NeoOffice too. Open source software is becoming usable enough for normal people and content creation instead of only being appropriate to run servers administered by *nix masters.