Got OSS?

It was only a short time ago that M$ was saying, it is a hobbiests OS
and nothing more, I also remember Balmer or Gates answering a question
about Linux where the reply was along the lines of, It is a non-issue
and we don't even pay attention to it.

I was reading an article about how Oracle, M$ and IBM are now offering
free scaled down versions of their DB products. The reason this was done
was to be able to compete with OSS versions such as mysql and
postgresql. Their hope is that people will use their crippled version to
get familiar then pay for the full version.

I always hated hunting down an application that would do what I was
trying to do only to find it in a "lite" version. If I wanted the whole
app I would have to pay like 10 bucks or something. And it always seemed
like the feature I needed was crippled in the lite version and to do
what I needed would have to buy the program. Screw that.

That is exactly what drove me to Linux and OSS software, I was not
limited to what I could do through the program. Now these 3 monsters of
the midway are going to try to hook people on their lite versions of
their crippled software in hopes they will buy later. I don't see this
happening, people will use OSS versions that are not crippled and allow
them the freedom to do what they want without having to pay for this
feature or that feature. They are doomed to failure.

Its a great time to be into the OSS movement, I liken it to the 80's
when we watched the entire landscape of the political world change
before our eyes. We are again seeing this but in a different arena.

Viva la Linux!
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Received on Tue Feb 14 13:26:21 2006