OpenSource Revolution?
According to Fox
News and NPR:
The government of Brazil says it will switch 300,000 government computers from Microsoft‘s
Windows operating system to open source software like Linux. Microsoft founder
Bill Gates wants to meet with Brazil’s president to discuss the change. Brazil is
dropping all proprietary software.
Does this mean that all software is inherently not worth paying for? In the
past few days I myself have pulled the following open-source packages from
the Internet.
As I browsed for an HTML slideshow generator, I even thought to myself, “Why
should I pay for software that will do this?” I found several commercial
packages and discarded them out of hand.
I am incensed at myself for this attitude. Why should my employer bother to
pay me? Clearly they could simply cobble together business solutions from freely
availalbe software. Is my job to simply know how to use other people’s work
to solve my own problems?
I am being a sarcastic here, but does this truly foretell the doom of shrink-wrap
software? If developers are willing to give their time to these projects,
then the only development that may ultimately get paid for is the salary
of an enterprise developer creating proprietary software.
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