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To: GeorgiaFreeper
Sorry, supply and demand--and besides:

(1) Open source code will never overtake Windows--Windows is MS's game to screw up. And besides I think that the "security" features of X11 make it very very difficult to develop an user-friendly OS... you can't get a handle to other windows, AFAIK (I could be wrong here, I only know Win32, not X11).
(2) Most programmers don't work on projects that would interest the average 21-year-old. Most of the work is in custom business apps that have zero chance of being pirated. And Access for Linux is about, oh, 1500 years off.
(3) Even with the most frequently-pirated programs, the actual money is in business licenses and business support. Oracle does offer its database for free for personal use, but they're not exactly in the crapper.
(4) Using open source in the business workplace has a lot of hidden costs, which may actually result in programmers being paid more.

I'll use an example here. There's a huge Internet Japanese animation (anime) community. These people are willing to translate, subtitle, and release anime for free. "Legal" anime used to sell for $30 for 3 episodes with horrible translation quality. But, animation companies didn't take the RIAA route--instead, they actually upped the quality, put 4 or 5 episode per DVD, lowered the price to $15-20--and on top of that, they bundle lots of goodies with DVDs. Guess what... it works. The solution isn't to stop open source, but to work around it.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
20 posted on 03/01/2004 9:07:13 AM PST by Nataku X (<a href="http://www.michaelmoore.com">Miserable Failure</a>)
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To: Nakatu X
Writing 101: Whenever you write, actually make a point.

My point was that open source will not hurt businesses or individual programmers' paychecks at all.

Worked with GIMP and OpenOffice for about an year before switching back to Windows. It was like going from horse carriage to a Lexus. The only complaint I have is that Photoshop doesn't appear to provide alpha support as well as GIMP does (as in being able to assign a 8-digit hex value to an individual pixel).

Sure, programmer jobs are threatened, but none of the threat is from Linus...
22 posted on 03/01/2004 9:21:20 AM PST by Nataku X (<a href="http://www.michaelmoore.com">Miserable Failure</a>)
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