On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 08:53:00AM -0700, Trever Miller wrote:
[but it does do at least some portion of what you need it to do][snip]
or maybe you just can't afford it and you go out of business.
A little extreme. Businesses generally don't take kindly to scare
tactics.
I guess I haven't made my point as clearly as I could have. I'm absolutely not suggesting the use of scare tactics, or even trying to be particularly persuasive toward using free software.
My statement is simply that *if* you are in a position where you *need* to have changes made to some closed, proprietary program, and your vendor is not willing to offer you those changes at a reasonable price, then your costs to get the changes you need will probably skyrocket. With free software, changes have a market price that is closely related to their complexity, rather than to the business decisions of a single vendor.
As you stated, some businesses may never *need* to have changes made, or their needs may always be met by proprietary software vendors. If that is the case, then proprietary software might be good enough or even better than currently-available free software. If you think you might depend on the flexibility of your IT infrastructure, then freedom might be important to your bottom line.
Even though people typically see "freedom" as being an idealistic goal, it can have a real impact on your bottom line.
Later,
-- Dwayne C. Litzenberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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