🚀 go-pugleaf

In comp.os.linux.advocacy Donal K. Fellows <fellowsd@cs.man.ac.uk> wrote:
> In article <F0CBvu.oE@a2e.de>, PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de> wrote:
>> Therefore even those people who want to buy a computer without any open
>> source software on it already have profited from the existence of an open
>> source software code base.  Paying 1% would (although needn't) be justified
>> in every single case.

> While I agree with most of what you have said, I must admit that I
> failed to see how this last paragraph quite followed from the others.
> Not that a 1% charge towards supporting unencumbered software is a bad
> thing necessarily, but I just don't exactly understand how much people
> who have a 100% M$ system have benefitted from an open source software
> base.  Sure, they *could* (and I would advise them to) but how are
> they actually benefitting right now in practical terms[*]?  Inquiring
> minds want to know...

> [* For the sake of argument, say they don't have any kind of internet
>    connection - this is definitely the case still for many people, and
>    I *am* aware of how involved free software is with the internet. ]

For the sake of argument, what innovations in corporate-developed software
do not have some sort of "freeware" precedent?  Proprietary implementations
of similar preexisting ideas aside, what major software innovation did not
come from a university or thinktank?


-- 
Clancy Dalebout	| xmsho@!spam!nein!yahoo.com

I keep trying to tell my boss that no, Satan is a tool of Linux, 
	not the other way around.