Re: [dvd-discuss] Gedanken Experiment -Unix and Norton

[Noah Silva <nsilva(at)atari-source.com>]

I'll chime in here...
>
> You see profit as exploitation, I see it (at least partially) as a
> premium on risk taking and investment.  Can for-profit employers be

This seems to be common.  People don't realize that even if you want to do
-good- you need to have some power to make good happen, which usually
means money.

> As for software companies... we'll just have to agree to disagree.  To
> date no free software (and I've tried them) has the convenience,
> completeness, and "fit and finish" of Word, Excel, PhotoShop, PaintShop
> Pro, Maya (ahem... including a modest contribution from me) or even
> Visual Studio.  These attributes (convenience, et. al.) have value to
> me.

Free software catches up more and more, but a lot of it is because of
commercial contributions.  The best Office Suite (StarOffice/OpenOffice)
was commercial.  Mozilla/Netscape? was commercial.  The new OpenGroupware
that was just released? commercial?  FilmGimp (whatever it's called
now)... improved because companied needed it.  SAP database ? it was
commercial.  Sun just recently released Sausalito, a nice web gui for
controlling servers, etc.  That was commercial too.  It's good that
companies realize that releasing something is better than squatting on the
source and doing nothing with it, and I think linux desktop is perfectly
usable for most things now (unless you want to play "barbie's playhouse"
from the K-mart software section) - but it will be a little while before
we can claim to be the most convenient, etc.


 -- noah silva