>Developing new technology is not cheap, especially if it is complex and without funding it's often incredible difficult >to have the people and drive to make innovations happen. The computer science field's been stuck in the mud for >the last 5 years with innovation and new anything going nowhere. I do blame the OSS movement for this because >most OSS projects look at existing technology, how to copy it and make it free. That ain't innovation.


First it is interesting to note that you give away some of your labor (SMTP). Did it lower the value of your other labors? Or did it help your status and make dollars? Maybe you have changed your mind about that decision?

As to the general statement that new tech is not being done is just silly. I heard it many times. I say yes it's true that many existing FOSS projects have to catch up. But I believe it is false to say they are not innovating. Today we would not have tabbed browsers, we would not have the ODT standard. If you review what the window managers (KDE, Gnome) are doing you will immediately see where MS is getting ideas for Vista and windows 7.

And if you take a look at MS. Where did their innovation come from. Xerox->Apple? What about word processors, speadsheets, Browsers - WordStar, WordPerfect, Visical, Jazz, Netscape. Yet you imply that MS is a innovator. If they are innovators then so are the FOSS projects.

I don't see much of a difference between what MS is doing and FOSS at least when it comes to innovation. I see it as building on the shoulders of others.

I'd also say that most of the universities are using Linux to experiment with parallel programming which I see as the future.

>By the way I submitted code to a FOSS project and it's being used. I could be the exception but I think there are 100's of thousands that are exceptions. I did it because I needed the code


>>WordStar, WordPerfect, Visical, Jazz, Netscape.
You might have added Multimate, DBase and Lotus 123.
How many of them were open source?

You cite Apple as a precursor of Windows - no one has demonstrated more
clearly than Apple that proprietary hardware and proprietary software can produce
outstanding results for the user and make good profits for the shareholders.
Why?
Because they make outstanding products.

This whole open source vs proprietary debate is academic at best and misleading at worst.
The real question facing us is what will do the job most economically and efficiently for the client over as long a period
as possible and allow us to make as much money as possible while delivering it.

Fox in all of its mutations was an obvious answer to that question for almost 20 years
and that was a pretty good deal - proprietary or not.








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