> No, proprietary software is designed to serve the interests of the > customers of the company who sells it. Otherwise, why would they buy > it? Clearly it also serves their need to make money, but that > wouldn't happen if there were no customers. Free software, on the > other hand, is often also designed to serve the interests of the > companies who employ the programmers that work on it. I would argue > that there is often less of a need to serve the interests of outside > users, since they have a pretty big argument for their product already > in its price.
Yeah, I hate to say this on a Linux list, but I've found proprietary software companies much more responsive to consumer demands than open source ones. Open source software seems to think that the user should just code up the changes they want and submit a patch. The people you're paying for software are much more keen on serving the needs of their paycheck writers. However, the proprietary ones do take longer to actually implement fixes/changes than open source, when the open source one actually decides to do the request. I realize that's a generalization with many exceptions (Microsoft, for one), but it seems to be true more often than not in my experience. Greg /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
