Thane Sherrington wrote:
Technically, you pay MS for support by paying high prices for their
software.
I see a lot of "certified" MS Admins, but very few qualified ones.
Don't know about Linux though.
Okay, so you pay for the software from MS *and* get support for a period
of time. With Linux you're not paying for software and then have to find
some 3rd party vendor.
I don't think anybody will disagree that it's easier to admin a Windows
server than a Linux server.
2) You can innovate on an idea, but it will be hard to fund
development to bring the idea to fruition. And, since it's open
source, someone can just take your code, modify it, and call it their
own.
But doesn't that lead to competition and better products?
Yeah, but how long will that take? If it takes you 5 years to develop a
program on your own when a funded company could have it done in 5 weeks,
how does that help computing in general? And competition is not "take my
product and modify it" it's usually "lets create a product of our own
that does X but also does Y."
Except that one can charge for support - and since the software is free,
people might be willing to pay for support.
I wonder how many Samba implementations have paid support. Or how many
mySQL loads are supported by mySQL the company, vs the number of free
installs out there. There's a lot of people using a lot of software
without paying a dime. Why spend a ton of money to develop software when
the vast number of users will end up taking your ideas for free.
