Tim Smith wrote:
In article <H1tfl.73704$1k1.65406@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Matt <matt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> quoted Ars Technica:
"It's intuitively obvious open source is more cost effective and productive
than proprietary software," McNealy told the BBC on Wednesday. "Open source
I'd like to see what open source software McNealy thinks is more cost
effective and productive than, for example:
Final Cut Pro
Premier Pro
Mathematica
Maple
Logic Studio
Pro Tools
AutoCAD
The above beat the open source alternatives on productivity. For the
case of professional users, the above will usually win on cost
effectiveness, too. The higher productivity of the professional
software will overcome the initial up front cost of the program and the
cost of upgrades.
I don't doubt that you're right about at least some of those. It is
only common sense that some of the apps that are used by say forty times
as many users are likely to be better. I don't know that there will
ever be full equality between FOSS apps and commercial apps. But there
is a progression whereby commercial software is replaced by FOSS,
starting with the compiler and the OS, moving to email, browser, office
apps, whose functionality is well understood, then to the less-used and
more complex and newer-conceived apps like the ones you mention.
The point is that a lot of desktops inside the government can be
switched to FOSS soon, as is now being shown in European governments and
even some US schools. Not every desktop can or should be switched soon,
but there is a process whereby the number of proprietary-OS desktops
approaches an asymptote at zero.
And there can still a future in which commercial apps run on Linux, BSD,
and their descendants.
By the way, since the threat of FOSS migration drives the price of
Windows and Office ever closer to zero, it seems likely that those MS
products are destined to be FOSSified someday.
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