Computers and Composition Online: A Monocultural Alternative: The OpenCD

“In April of last year, Henrik Nilsen Omma was discouraged. He
and other enthusiasts of freely distributable Open Source Software
(OSS) such as the Linux operating system grew increasingly
frustrated at the lack of widespread appeal of this and similar
software, beyond the so-called “techie” crowd. They knew the
problem was not with the software itself. Free software such as the
excellent Mozilla web browser was feature-rich compared to its
often-patched, yet feature-bereft Windows counterpart. The same
could be said for OpenOffice, a full-featured, free office
productivity suite that included many standard features unavailable
in then-current versions of Microsoft Office. Nilsen Omma voiced
his concerns in an article on Newsforge, one of the premier sites
devoted to Linux and related OSS. In this article, titled An Idea
for a Free Software CD, Nilsen Omma argued that:

“‘there are many hurdles when persuading people to switch to
Free Software. Most people will not change their entire operating
system just for fun; it’s too unfamiliar, and they will lose the
use of all their favorite programs at the same time. …The key, as
I see it, is to encourage people to use the high-quality Free
Software now becoming available in the OS they are already using’
(Nilsen Omma, 2002)…”

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