On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 2:13 PM, William Robb <[email protected]> wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Larry Colen" > Subject: Re: point and shoot > > > >> >>> >Most of those features are purely software, so don't add anything to >>> >production cost. >>> > >>> >>> Software writers work for free? >> >> A lot do. A lot of software is being written for reasons other than >> financial motivation. For example a Finnish college kid named Linus >> Torvalds wrote the basis of an operating system for the fun of it. The >> upside of this is there is a lot of software available for free, the >> downside is that if you want to sell your software, it's tough to >> compete on price with "free". > > I think you are changing the subject to make a point. > We are discussing the software built into cameras, not the fun and games > that script kiddies like to play at. >
That little operating system that Linus wrote is the second most popular OS on the planet (Linux). The third (Mac OS X) also relies heavily on code written by people working for free (As it's based on BSD, which is also Open Source like Linux). Your camera firmware was almost assuredly written on a system running Open Source software and likely includes some as well. -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
