Challenges

Choosing free software is actually not difficult, but many people believe that it is. This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, causing miscellaneous problems.

Here are some examples of the challenges you are going to face:

  • Psychological effects (“Under Windows it would work better”) ranging from personal reproaches for your decision to measurable side-effects.

  • When using free software, it is more difficult to get professional support, trained human resources, specialized hardware.

  • The end-users themselves use proprietary software at home and are reluctant to change their habits.

  • Free software cannot serve as capital. While this is the inevitable condition for remaining free, it also reduces the motivation of investors whose primary goal after to make money.

  • A widely spread attitude which I use to label “Uncle Tom’s Advice”[1] is to say “Come on! Stop making your own life complicated, we are all slaves of somebody, just let Microsoft or Google or Apple be your master and enjoy life!”[2].

Footnotes