[Boston.pm] Proprietary software....

[Ranga Nathan]

This is an OT rant! Netgeek and dskippy, are you listening? This is the convert talking!

I admit I grew up using proprietary solutions for as long as I can remember. But the last three years of development using Linux / Apache / Perl / MySQL has changed me so much that anytime someone brags "we have proprietary technology" I cringe in revulsion. Ok, I should be realistic. But seeing the unashamed arrogance that pervades software industry and the gullibility of big corporations, I wonder if people realize the cost of proprietary software to the society at large. Take for example the Orace -> PeopleSoft -> JD Edwards dog-eat-dog show that is going on. Oracle wants to see Peoplesoft ERP solution extinct bu buying it out. In that process they can extinguish JD Edwards as well.

Now the user community is running scared not wanting to touch any of them! Is there a message somewhere? Hey when Tcl developer got out of business, did Tcl disappear?

Someone ought to pick this up and send a message to the corporate world. I fight the corpos as much as I can but it is like fighting the city hall.

Good weekend all!