George Kettleborough wrote:
> On 21/01/09 16:23, Doug Mentohl wrote:
>> Hadron wrote:
>>
>>>> "A move to open source will lower costs and increase capability,"
>>
>>> Of course it is for most companies who simply steal the code and
>>> rebrand it. MUCH cheaper than developing it themselves.
>>
>> Can you provide some examples, apart from Oracle and Cisco ?
>
> I can provide an example. Sony used code from the free software LAME mp3
> encoder in on of their pieces of malware. This was discovered but the
> LAME team decided not to do anything about it. Unfortunately, enforcing
> your own copyright is only for those with money, like Sony, MS, Apple
> etc.
>
> Having said that, they probably could have asked the FSF and/or OSI for
> some financial help. But they decided not to anyway which I thought was
> a shame.
>
> Also I see in this article the misconception that "open source" or free
> software is actually free as in beer to everybody. This is wrong. While
> some free software is provided by hackers in their free time, hackers
> still have to make a living. At the moment we see companies like IBM and
> Sun paying hackers to write free software. In a world with only free
> software, someone at some point is going to have to pay for the person
> hours that goes into the software. I believe this would still be much
> more cost effective than proprietary software, though.
>
It is a misconception that most software is OSS and closed source.
The vast bulk of software is never sold (or free as in OSS), it is "in-
house" software written to be used by the same company writing it.
Most programmers never have their software used outside of the company
they are working for
--
Microsoft software doesn't get released - it escapes, leaving
a trail of destruction behind it.
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