Some good replies. Your responses have reassured me a lot. I guess that I work
for a "traditional" company, and all this talk of free software scares the hell
out of them !
I really, really hope it works out as well, my Linux box is loaded with
downloaded software !
Thanks,
Owen
On Sat, 06 May 2000, you wrote:
> OS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > Call me clueless but surely it is all this talk of 'free software' and 'you may
> > sell it but you must release the source code' that is putting many companies
> > off Linux !!!
>
> I'm not sure..
>
> If you see companies such as IBM, Sun, Intel, they're getting more and
> more involved in open-source development.
>
>
> I think it's sure that "traditional" companies do care a lot about
> patents, copyrights, etc, because once they get a good product, they want
> to sell it to many customers, thus protecting their advantage from their
> competitors.
>
>
> With open-source, we're currently trying something different. Who knows
> what companies such as Redhat, VA, Mandrake, will be within 5, 10 years?
> We can't know..
>
> But some people are predicting it's gonna "work", i.e. the companies are
> gonna live out of this sort of business.
>
>
> And, moreover, it's a social issue: we do like that our work shall be
> available to many persons, for a very low price; we also do like the
> possibility to change a little feature we don't like in a program [cf. the
> save-as bug in Netscape, still in last 4.73... :-(], the possibility to
> verify if security issues/backdoors are included in the software we use,
> and generally speaking this space for freedom that it opens.
>
>
> We certainly would like this to work!
>
> We do hope so..
>
>
> PS: sorry this is a bit off-topic but..
>
> --
> Guillaume Cottenceau
