Permit me to share Edward Cherlin's interesting
point of view, which came up on the BytesForAll list
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers
in another context. He makes some interesting points.
(I think a better word for 'commercial' software
would be 'proprietorial' software.) --FN
Bill Gates has a vested interest in denying the reality of progress in anything
that Microsoft didn't invent (BASIC and other programming language products) or
buy (much of their business) or copy (Windows) or have handed to them (PC
DOS)...
Yup, we have it. It's called Free Software. Apache is the dominant Web server.
You can even get it for Windows, now. Firefox recently started cutting into
Microsoft's market share in browsers. You can get OpenOffice, and there are
two projects to clone Outlook and the Microsoft messaging server. Countries
like Rwanda are creating complete sets of software in their own languages. The
full effects of these changes have yet to be felt....
E-commerce is another good Copernican idea.
Overstock.com is now the biggest
employer in Afghanistan, selling art and craft items on the Web and paying the
creators 70% of the final selling price. Compare that with the pennies an hour
that children are getting in rug factories in Asia....
The big deal about Free Software is that the manufacturing cost is essentially
zero. I am running a Linux system with Free applications that would cost
several thousand dollars in commercial near-equivalents. All it cost me was the
download time. From my current setup:
Free Commercial
OpenOffice Microsoft Office
MySQL Microsoft Access
Quanta Plus Microsoft FrontPage
Korganizer + Kmail Microsoft Outlook
Gnucash Microsoft Money
Kivio Microsoft Visio
GIMP Adobe Photoshop
Sketch Abode Illustrator
Maxima Wolfram Mathematica
Kig Interactive Geometry Geometer's Sketchpad
FontForge ParaType Fontlab
C, C++, Perl, Python, LISP/Scheme, Tcl/Tk
When I feel the need for a new program, I don't have to ask myself whether I
can afford it. I just do a little searching on the Net to find and compare the
alternatives, and install my choice. Or maybe I install several to try out, and
then decide which to keep.
--
Edward Cherlin, Simputer Evangelist
Encore Technologies (S) Pte. Ltd.
The Village Information Society
http://cherlin.blogspot.com
Forwarded via:
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Frederick Noronha (FN) Nr Convent Saligao 403511 GoaIndia
Freelance Journalist P: 832-2409490 M: 9822122436
http://fn.swiki.net http://fn-floss.notlong.com
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Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your
vocation. --Aristotle