Happy Free Software day!

by Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net

Today, yes, Sept. 20, is the Free Software Day!

So, I wanna give you a joke as the gift.

What is the No. 1 bug of Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution?

You may say, my wireless card doesn't have open source driver, or my multimedia key can't work out-of-the-box.

But, you are wrong. The No. 1 bug of Ubuntu Linux is: Microsoft has a majority market share.

I am kidding? No, I am serious. If you don't believe me, then go to launchpad.net and see what's the top 1 bug of Ubuntu.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1

See? This is a bug, and it's in progress, and it's critical, and it's assigned to Mark Shuttworth, the founder of Ubuntu Foundation.

Here is the description:

Microsoft has a majority market share in the new desktop PC marketplace.
This is a bug, which Ubuntu is designed to fix.

Non-free software is holding back innovation in the IT industry, restricting access to IT to a small part of the world's population and limiting the ability of software developers to reach their full potential, globally. This bug is widely evident in the PC industry.

Steps to repeat:

1. Visit a local PC store.

What happens:
2. Observe that a majority of PCs for sale have non-free software pre-installed.
3. Observe very few PCs with Ubuntu and free software pre-installed.

What should happen:
1. A majority of the PCs for sale should include only free software like Ubuntu.
2. Ubuntu should be marketed in a way such that its amazing features and benefits would be apparent and known by all.
3. The system shall become more and more user friendly as time passes.