Andy, Don't you think that the "warm comforting feeling" is because the product is backed by a big company as opposed to "individuals" no matter how good or talented they are? Note that I talk of individuals in the broadest sense of the word not as single entities.
The managerial mentality of thinking is usually that "big" means "safe" as in "nobody ever got sacked by buying IBM", which, even though we as developers see the bigger picture seems to be indelibly stamped on the small brains of the PHB's. As you say, you have never needed support from Lotus/IBM and I guess that if you HAD wanted it, it would have been charged for at a large premium and probably been useless anyway. We all know that the best support comes from other developers e.g this group for example. Unfortunately, my take on the situation is that even if say VFP were made open source, that the large institutions still wouldn't accept it as a mainstream product without the support of a major player. Stupid I know and I do hope this short sighted attitude changes but I doubt it will. Dave Crozier -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andy Davies Sent: 25 July 2007 09:26 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NF] Dabo ++: Open Source and Instability Ted Roche said: "I don't want to hunt you down and kill you, either, but really engage you on this idea that Open Source is more unstable. I thought that way for a long time, until I realized that *all* software is unstable, unless its stone-cold dead." I see an example of this with my current employers - we have a lot of end-user written Lotus Approach apps which the powers that be say must be replaced because IBM no longer support it. We (and I suspect 99.9% of users) have never needed support for Approach, but the lack of support is seen as a killer (or was until users asked IT to provide a replacement and support it <bg>). Now if it were an Open Source product the ptb could have the warm comforting feeling that in the unlikely event of us needing 'support' the source code was available. Andrew Davies MBCS CITP - AndyD 8-)# ********************************************************************** Manchester City Council supports Smokefree England - 1 July 2007 This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept by MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses. Please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] with any queries. ********************************************************************** [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
