On Mon Apr 21, 2008 at 08:33:05PM +0530, Rony wrote:
A thought comes to my mind. What if someone says, "At least M$ and Co. are spending money on IT education and providing free computers and learning infrastructure to rural children. What about the other side?". Just a thought. What infrastructure can we provide?
They're spending your own money. And it is a form of investment to them, to hook new comers to their products so that they remain loyal to them and purchase their softwares in the future, thus replishing the investment many times over. Free Open Source may not provide them with tangible infrastructure but it helps them gain knowledge about not just the product but the whole concept just avoiding midless lock in to just one vendor/a group of vendors. Like has been mentioned many times before if we bring in financial arguments they bring in statistics and freebies to tip the scale in their favour.