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^^^^^^^^^^^They are so like liberals in their communist software beliefs.^^^^^^^^^^^^

It's not that they're *like* liberals..............

They *are* all liberals And leftists. Well, the vast majority of them.

But what're you gonna do? If your sole reason for not using open source software is to avoid leftist leadership, then you're stuck up a creek without a paddle. Both Gates and Jobs are also liberals.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^I am all for open source software for anyone who wants to make something and give it away free. go ahead! Just don't expect everyone to agree or try to FORCE them to agree.^^^^^^^^^^^^^

My sentiments exactly. But the original post of mine gives you a good idea of *why* these people think the way they do. I don't take it to the religious level that these people do, but it's a problem that I to have no choice but to deal with. We all do. Perhaps you can afford to buy new software and hardware within the planned cycles. I can't.

No - we're not all leftist liberals.

Open Source makes good money sense, for profit minded corporations, and for their profit minded customers.

It's not work for free, it's work for a different form of payment - share and share alike.

I (and/or the company I work for -- I'm being vague here) run alot of Open Source work side by side with proprietary work. Where I have a lead over my competition, and a particular expertise, it's proprietary and paid for in good old fashioned money. Where it's infrastructure or less bleeding edge, and not something that I have any paricular expertise in, but still depend on, it's Open Source. For Open Source work, I'm sharing the development with my peers at competitor companies.

I like to say, when involved in internal discussions over whether to Open Source a particular piece of software, or not, that it's not a matter of if, but when, it will be to our advantage to Open Source it.

Five years ago, I managed a group of developers, doing it all inhouse, proprietary. Now the group is gone, laid off, and I write the proprietary parts myself, and share the load with others for the Open Source work. My customers are getting better product, minus the proprietary lock in for much of it, for less money. And it's using the same infrastructure as what they buy from my competition, so it's a big win for them as well.

Any of my competitors that didn't make the switch in the area we sell are toast; they can no longer compete. Our customers get the benefit of a dozen world class experts in the area of their needs, for the cost of one such, whereas before they paid for a couple of experts and ten additional less experienced developers, for the cost of a dozen head count. And it's much easier now for customers with particular expertise of their own to build on top of what they get from vendors.

It's good old fashioned capitalism, by a different means.

Essentially, it's an intellectual property barter system.

The end quality of what customers get, and the pace of technology improvements, have both increased dramatically over what it was under the old fashioned, proprietary, model.

Even those I laid off are doing just fine - working in new companies, leveraging the rapidly increasing opportunities presented by Open Source infrastructure and technology gains to make money in new ways.

Unlike physical items, intellectual property is not a scarce commodity. An essential property of software is that sharing it increases its value in many cases. Imagine we are all out in the desert, in boats run aground, with a few gallons of water each. We would likely each hoard our water ration. But if water begot more water, and if we could each pour our few gallons over the side and float all boats in the newly rising sea, then that would change the entire economics of it.

Just because it is a different economic model doesn't mean its anti-capitalist.

Which isn't to deny that some Open Source advocates, such as Richard Stallman (rms), author of the key open source license, the GPL, aren't leftist or perhaps, I don't know, anti-capitalist.