In a message dated: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 14:55:11 PDT
"jim t.p. ryan" said:
>I've never really understood the free software thing anyway. Sooner or later
>somebody has to pay don't they? That was a real question, not rhetorical. I m
>ean is any really big, established business going to run on free software? I
>don't think so, it's unamerican;+} Really, the mindset is "you get what you p
>ay for", right or wrong, that is the culture. If it doesn't sell, mark it up
>and people will assume it's better.
More than 90% of all e-mail is sent to external-to-origin sites via sendmail
which is completely free, and which, up until 1998 had absolutely no official
commercial support. Companies running sendmail, almost never pay for sendmail
support, and pay for the software even less. If you don't count e-mail as
mission-critical in today's day and age, then I don't know what is.
Additionally, more than 60% of all websites are running on Apache, which falls
into the same category as sendmail.
Now, if you are asking if they will run *entirely* free software? Then I'd
have to say no, since there are many applications needed which just don't have
free equivalents.
But also, keep in mind, the word "free" as it relates to software doesn't
*have* to mean just that you don't give someone money in exchange for the
ability to run their software. The most important aspect of "free" software
is the access to source code, the ability to change said code, and the ability
to redistribute that changed code. With that in mind, I don't know why any
company would want to run their business on anything *but* free software.
--
Seeya,
Paul
----
"I always explain our company via interpretive dance.
I meet lots of interesting people that way."
Niall Kavanagh, 10 April, 2000
If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!
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