No PowerPoint, Please!

PowerPoint seems to be pretty much the only M$ stronghold left in the astronomical community, where both long-standing Unix practice and more recent Linux availability have largely kept M$ "out of the door". M$ so-called "commercial strategy", actually boiling down to the practice of secreting and constantly changing its file formats (as summarized here by Richard Stallman), together with difficulties and delays in the creation of efficient free software presentation tools has so far prevented the casual user from taking this last step.

I feel it's now a suitable time for this "quantum leap". Not only different ways exist to create PowerPoint-like presentations using free and freely available software (see e.g. my page dedicated to free computer-based presentations), but the number of free software users appears to have reached that "critical mass" guaranteeing a future development/feedback virtous circle.

These considerations, and more generally the philosophy underlying the free software movement, urges anyone interested in allowing free access to high-quality software to drop use of any proprietary (and particularly M$) software products.


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