You are absolutely right but there are a great quantity of Hackers who will downmod you (or me) for simply suggesting that OpenOffice is not an adequate substitute for the M$FT version.
The dogmatism on these issues is sufficient deterrent and frequently I would rather avoid stating the truth than face the wrath of the FSF enthusiasts.
"We're all adults here, right?" -- besides the fact that this is a patronizing way of putting things, history (and hacker new fads) shows us adults at times are no less capable of groupthink than children. Age is by no means sufficient for establishing wisdom.
That's exactly the childish behavior though. People getting offended by others likes and opinions and downvoting because of their disagreement or offense.
Not to say that all FSF people write MSFT as M$FT -- it would only be a small subset. But getting angry, offended, annoyed by people that do this and then voting them down is childish.
It's not as much a question about being angry or offended, or even downvoting based on disagreement. It's more about (to me, anyway) indicating what kind of stuff doesn't add to the discussion.
A few days ago, I called out someone for making a pair of spelling mistakes in one name (spelling "Jimmy Hendricks" instead of "Jimi Hendrix"). I was downvoted because what I had to bring didn't add anything relevant to the conversation. And you know what? That's fine. I should have been downvoted. It was a totally pointless and irrelevant and smart ass thing for me to say, motivated by pedantry and affection for one of the best musicians to come from my home town.
Replacing the letter S with a dollar sign is the same sort of thing. At best, it's neutral and adds nothing, at worst, it's a distraction that will serve to discredit any valid point you're trying to make. It it ever had any novelty or cleverness, it wore off long, long ago.
If that was the entirety of the post, I'd say you would be correct. However, given that the point was defending the utility of Microsoft software against pure FOSS-inclined folk, I'd say it is pointless to downvote simply because the person in question (myself) referred to Microsoft as M$FT in the same posting. In fact, it is a bit like your behavior before -- did you downvote someone for misspelling Jimmy Hendrix's last name in an otherwise good post?
No, I didn't downvote based on the misspelling of Hendrix's name, it was basically a joke. But the joke wasn't really funny, and it wasn't really insightful.
I agree in my case that the substitution (i.e. S -> $) didn't add anything to the post. But I don't think it detracted much either. I'm surprised it is such a big deal to folks. It wasn't really the point and it was really just to heighten the contrast between FOSS enthusiasts and Microsofties.
Using the dollar sign is effectively an insult. Just like if I was to refer to Apply as crApple. How is it not childish to resort to name-calling like that?
If I starting my reply with "Look lhnz, you moron, ..." would you not downvote me or defend me if others did so?
I downvote people for things like M$ because I think that name-calling and inflammatory remarks aren't conducive to a worthwhile discussion.
I agree with you that people can get pretty worked up about the topic of free software, but I think you need to be a bit braver in the face of downvoting and disagreement. I can't ever recall seeing a respectful, well-thought post getting downvoted below 0 on hacker news.
One tactic for this situation is to post your truth then never look at the thread again. It might be rude to people who want to engage in honest discussion on your point, but if your post was a good one it will still benefit the hn community more than not posting at all, and you won't have to stress about troll replies.
Just be respectful. Assume the people reading your post are as smart as you and your post won't get hammered.
I've been downvoted below zero plenty of times -- sometimes when I am attempting to present a non-standard potentially provocative opinion -- but often not. I've also had comments that started off w/ a few upvotes and then went south to -4, and others that started off w/ a few downvotes and went up (this is less frequent).
I think part of the problem is you get penalized pretty quickly w/ the shading differences, and people are happy to knock you down. Believe it or not, the post you are responding to go at least one downvote before the upvotes boosted it back to normal text color.
As for your tactic for "post[ing] your truth" this doesn't work so much if it does get downvoted, since it fairly quickly becomes near invisible.
update: the post you are responding dropped to 0, went up to 3 (presumably both upvoted and downvoted along the way), and has dropped again to 1. I find these trends fascinating.
I think Microsoft Word excels for the power user. My guess that once you get into advanced functions mail merge, change tracking, word art, etc. you will find that Microsoft's version has a lot more functionality and is easier to use.
Don't get me wrong, I have a great deal of respect for the FSF, for what it does, and for what it stands for. I am even willing to put aside some practicality (as I stated above) in order to use Free software. But when I have a job to do, and the candle is burning at both ends, I simply can't afford to fiddle with config files.
As an aside, I really admire RMS for sticking to his guns, especially after reading his biography. I don't appreciate the approach of "the Free way or the highway" (hah, no pun intended) because it's so uncompromising and shuns people like you and me from the "club". However, not a lot of people in this world can say they never compromised their ideology in the name of practicality, and I definitely admire that.
GNU has taken money for proprietary-friendly licensing of GNU projects. Entirely within their rights, of course, but they have certainly compromised their ideology for practicality in the past.
I mostly agree with your second statement -- building GNU tools on a proprietary OS was pretty much the only way to get started, especially considering the ongoing state of HURD, although I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to call that "compromising". Can you give me a reference for the proprietary-friendly licensing? Depending on exactly how friendly you mean, I didn't think their contributor agreement allowed them to do that.
The dogmatism on these issues is sufficient deterrent and frequently I would rather avoid stating the truth than face the wrath of the FSF enthusiasts.