Thus spake David Fitch: >it doesn't really matter who owes who how much money, it's all > just imaginery money (what are they going to do? foreclose on > the country?)
I beg to differ: The world needs trade, but not for products that have viable alternatives. 'Balance of Trade' which affects the wealth of a nation is a simple formula: export$ - import$ Countries do get foreclosed on. Ever been to a country called 'Newfoundland'? They got themselves in such a state as to be incorporated into Canada in 1933. Open source is a major boon to any government that is not a major exporter of software. Unfortunately, partly but not totally due to our government, we are in that position. Whilst we contribute buckets (technical measurement) of great open source code, not too many Aussie products are in the top 100 s/w sales. The German Govt are debating making Open Source a _requirement_ for purchase. What's ours doing? Writing tenders that basically force you use Microsoft products. Talk about shoot yourself in the foot. I still reckon that spare a $15Bn would be useful... Stuart Guthrie David Fitch wrote: >while I completely agree that the govt should be using OSS and not >contributing to M$' coffers, talking more generally about the >balance of trade and a world view: > >1) it doesn't really matter who owes who how much money, it's all > just imaginery money (what are they going to do? foreclose on > the country?) > >2) if every country only bought products made in their own country > (as they "should" do) then who would buy what we want to export? > (ie. we're back to the days of little villages all acting independently) > > -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
