The business case is really a secondary issue. Getting a company motivated enough to write and donate OSS is the hard one. One problem is the people often expect OSS to 'always' have the same functionality as commercial software. Much of your mainstream OSS is better or equivalent, but one has to remember that OSS is a evolutionary process. People and organizations will adopt it when they feel it is useful and relevant to them.
But if we can get schools to adopt OSS that will be a big step forward. This probably where there is the greatest opportunity to expand the use of OSS. One problem is that so many teachers and people are only exposed to Windows that blindly accept it as a defacto standard. I really like the idea of Software freedom day. Perhaps we could something similar in front of Frys if we could get permission. We could give out distros, answer questions and such. ----- Original Message ---- From: Lan Barnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Main Discussion List for KPLUG <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, March 1, 2007 1:02:13 PM Subject: Re: Stallman giving a talk at UCSD On Thu, March 1, 2007 11:22 am, Randall Shimizu wrote: > I was up there and saw Tracy Reed, John Robinson. I have not seen Richard > Stallman talk before so it was interesting. While his goals are laudable I > don't think they are realistic. In many cases OSS, makes sense, but it's > hard to see why a business would produce Free software to acomplish cetain > buiness tasks in all cases. I agree with you. There are situations where OSS/Free SW is a good model for business. - standards and formats for data exchange (including doc files -- take THAT, M$!) - programs that span an industry activity, such as the airline reservation behemouth (developed decades before RMS and OSS -- and the industry needed a Justice Department exception to cover collusion accusations) - school, charitable, NGO apps. Microbanking comes to mind. -- Lan Barnes SCM Analyst Linux Guy Tcl/Tk Enthusiast Biodiesel Brewer -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
