Re: Re: Re: How far Open Source has come...

[tilly]

But is free software the best thing to happen to the economy? Something to ponder as software development jobs are cut left, right, and center.

If you were considering posting the "employers will pay to modify free software" argument, you need an economics lesson :)

I think I have had the economics lesson. Yet I still think that free software is good for the economy.

The fact is that proprietary software development has never hired more than a small fraction of the programmers out there. And maneuvering between developers attempting to induce lock-in while customers minimize it costs serious time and money. Cutting out that BS game improves everyone's productivity, and the funny thing is that it is easier in the long run to justify hiring and paying IT workers when IT workers are productive.

What is good for Microsoft is no more necessarily good for the country than what is good for GM is.

As for software development jobs being cut, one of the biggest causes of that is the ongoing export of jobs to India, etc. Encouraging Microsoft to make increased profits on work done in Hyderabad isn't any better for US workers than having the Bank Of America outsource jobs to Banglore Place the blame where the blame belongs. It doesn't belong with free software. It belongs with increasing profits being achieved by a dwindling minority through squeezing the vast majority.

Something to consider. From 1980 to the present the size of the great fortunes of the US have increased tenfold, while their tax rates fell sharply (not as sharply as wealth increased, actual tax dollars rose) while the median family has seen wealth decline and tax rates rise. Strangely enough, in every period of US history where vast fortunes were made, the average person's fortunes stagnated. By contrast the largest expansion of the US middle class (in the 50's) was accompanied by such a sharp contraction in great fortunes that it has been nicknamed "The Great Compression" by economic historians.

Trickle-down anyone? (Sorry for the digression into politics...)