[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Your product was recently recommended to me be a nice chap at PC
World. I had never heard of it before. Upon looking at what it
offers I am very tempted to download it. However, call me an old
cynic, but I keep asking people, why is the product free? What's in
it for the producers of the product? What am I missing?
Clearly people are working hard to promote and expand the use of this
product; and somebody has worked hard to create a major program
which seems to rival Microsoft in its capabilities.
Yet, without knowing what the agenda of the company producing Open
Office is, I hesitate to embrace it. Something for nothing is a rare
event which defies the laws of physics, let alone human behaviour.
I'm sure that there is a very obvious and benign reason for the
existence of this product, which is not obvious to me; but I would
love to know what it is? Please could some one tell me?
1) Writing and improving computer programs is fun.
1a) No, really, it is.
2) Once a program is written, distributing copies is cheap.
3) Monopolies are bad. The current Microsoft monopoly has largely made
the software industry into something like American car manufacturing in
the 1950's: there's never any real improvement, just rearrangement of
chrome, and bigger and bigger tail fins.
--
John W. Kennedy
"Compact is becoming contract,
Man only earns and pays."
-- Charles Williams. "Bors to Elayne: On the King's Coins"
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