"John Woodard" mail@johnwoodard.co.uk writes:
Why? AFAIA a pragmatist is a person who takes a practical approach to problems. What is the matter with that? I can understand that sort of reaction for anti-Microsoft zealots. Those partisans really don't do any favours for the open source/free software movement but as you say "Realists are good" surely in this context realists and pragmatists are one in the same, or at least a pragmatist is a type of realist.
Pragmatists are people who like something because "it does the job". These are the people who are coming to Linux because they feel it does the job better than Windows, but they do not feel any particular sympathy with the software freedoms which are the root cause of why Linux does the job better for them. As a result, they're all too happy to continue using closed software on a free platform and we will sink slowly back into the mire, losing each iteration of software development through corporate games, instead of standing on the shoulders of giants as free software allows us.
Realists are people who can see the value of software freedoms, but can accept that sometimes the perfect world doesn't exist here yet. A Linux-using pragmatist is someone who wishes they could run Microsoft Office on Linux (or maybe does). A realist is someone who is using whatever tool does the job now, but is helping to test or develop one of the free office suites.
Yes to realists. No to pragmatists. Just my opinion.