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gewg_ writes:

Jon maddog Hall blogged:

I am never again going to tell people why they should be using Free Software.

Instead I am going to ask them why they insist on using closed source software.

Is it because they love paying lots of money for software that does little more (if anything) than suitable Free Software?

Do they use closed-source software because they love waiting weeks and months for patches that they might have gotten much sooner in the Free Software community?

Perhaps they love getting new versions of the software thrown out at them every so often, instead of being able to directly interact with the developers through forums and mailing lists.

I will wait for these people to tell me that they use closed-source software because of the software warranty (laugh) or the support they get (bigger laugh).

What I really expect is that when I ask the question, I will get a sort of puzzled look and they will say "I do not really know why I use closed source software" and I will be most of the way to converting them.

There's also an old adage along the lines of "Tell me and I will forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I will understand." Has anyone here attempted the above approach? What results have you had?