squeen wrote:I have to ask, cosmos -- since you are only the second person I know of that speaks out against open source -- are you by any chance a professional programmer? (The other was). That is the only reason I could imagine (i.e. loss of wages) that would cause some one to dislike getting a thing for free.
i am a jack of all trades. yes i have coded for a living, managed systems, managed databases, and many other exciting roles along the windy road of making a living!
if "getting it for free" is your criteria for quality the end result is always going to be garbage. i am and always have been a business man. the economics of producing quality for dollars makes perfect logical sense. on the other hand giving something for nothing is always suspect and is not in line with basic human nature. the world is not a utopia; in fact, it is a rather dismal environment all around.
do you get garbage from commercial companies? absolutely! do i like alot of commercial software...hell no. but i do have some recourse and in the end can vote with my pocketbook which has alot more bite than lofty idealism. in the real world my time is worth money and it is utterly wasted if i am forced to recode or scour usenet and forums because open source widget number one does not work. multiplied by the enormous amount of open source products this quickly soars into astronomical amounts of wasted man hours. and in the end who pays? everyone but the open source programmer.
and quite frankly if i am only the second person you have ever heard speak critically about open source then something is very wrong. either you need to get out of the house more or something is rotten in the state of denmark. no one should trust anything in which critical analysis is absent. from my ivory tower it usually appears as if both the microsoft and the linux camps are near identical albeit at opposite ends of the spectrum. both are fanatical and both seem to operate in complete unison and oneness of thought. i make sure not to drink the kool aid.
there is a happy medium between idealiistic software development and monolithic corporate entities, it just has not been realized yet. until then i will continue to cry out in the wilderness as it would seem and collect my paycheck for services rendered since goods and services in the real world have not been open sourced to my knowledge.
keep the faith.
The preceding thoughts were brought to you by Jack Daniels.