Well yes, if it’s free they really don’t owe a damn thing to you – it’s a fact – the only question is then:

“Do I want to do business with people who neither need nor want to do business with me?”

The answer, by the way, is: “NO!”

—-

This problem was brought up many times during the freetarded GNU/revolution, and every time freetards downplayed its frequence and consequences.

In the end it seems this is all there really is to GNU/freedom – the freedom to piss on your customers.

And I bet the autistic idiots really like it.

http://tmrepository.com/trademarks/itsfreeyoucantcomplain/
I find it amusing that duplications on TMR really showcase real life patterns in discussions with freetards – main purpose of TMR in first place.

@Linsuxoid:

I take your point, but I think there’s a subtle difference between the two. ItsFreeYouCantComplain™ puts the focus on the user; this one is more of a special plea on behalf of the “creator.”

Specifically, it cropped up in reference to CentOS, the Little Enterprise Engine that, er, isn’t. I imagine it applies equally to the Gimp, for similar reasons.

I should really have put the effort in and made that much more obvious, shouldn’t I? Still, I don’t owe a … er … forget I said that.

“Specifically, it cropped up in reference to CentOS, the Little Enterprise Engine that, er, isn’t. I imagine it applies equally to the Gimp, for similar reasons.”

Whoever said that CentOS and Gimp enterprise grade software? All people say is that they are pretty damn good enough for certain applications.

@Bassboy: first sentence at centos.org:

“CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor.”

apple has open source components too. in fact most of its core technologies are open source. however they are the final product maker and they stand behind their product. if dtrace or vi craps out, they can’t say ITSUPSTREAMSFAULT. that’s the crucial difference.
distros do not do that.

Hah, yeah, imagine Apple shrugging and saying “sorry, BSD changed something and broke our Core libraries; Sorry everybody, QuickTime doesn’t work anymore”.

“And they don’t owe a damn thing to you.”

This might not be entirely true. Since the warranty disclaimer of the GPL does not apply in all countries (the “to the extent permitted by applicable law” sentence exists for a reason), they might owe you a replacement product with the flaw fixed, or to reimburse the cost you spent downloading/acquiring the product. Just because they are lucky that someone hasn’t taken the issue to court up until now, it doesn’t mean someone won’t do it in the future.

I never understood the “it’s free you can’t complain” excuse. The law doesn’t work this way. In most countries, there are minimum warranty rights that no EULA/GPL can deny to the end user.

“sorry, BSD changed something and broke our Core libraries; Sorry everybody, QuickTime doesn’t work anymore”

I thought MacOS X was based on Darwin, which is a different OS from BSD. You have fallen into the MacOSXIsFreeBSDWithADifferentGUI™ myth the freetards propagate to downplay the work Apple put on MacOS X.

Also, Apple is smart to maintain an internal fork of all the core open source technologies they use, so they don’t have the ItsUpstreamsFault™ problem.

Of course, maintaning internal forks requires money…