🚀 go-pugleaf

One claim that many proponents of the 'gnu considered harmful' theory
are making is that the existence of the gnu software harms innovation.
The line of argument seems to be as follows:

  Given a choice between an adequate free product and an excellent
  commercial product, users will nearly always choose the free product
  even though it may not fully meet their needs.  Gnu software is
  flooding the marketplace with adequate free products, and therefore
  people who wish to develop better proprietary products will not be
  able to make a living.  Thus Gnu software kills innovation.

The fallacy of this argument is obvious.  The argument claims that gnu
software harms innovation, since in the absence of gnu software better
products would edge out the poorer ones.  The history of the proprietary
software industry shows that nothing is farther from the truth:  the
success of a product has little to do with its technical merit, and a
lot to do with marketing and "standardization".  The ultimate example
is MS-DOS: early 60's OS technology at best, yet still millions of
copies are sold.

As a counterclaim, I would like to suggest that making adequate free
software available is a good way to help force entrenched obsolete
software out of the marketplace, and therefore the gnu project may
help improve software diversity.