Linux Security 3258

Exactly. You are not going to find any farmers anywhere interested in seed genetics unless they are planning on selling their own varieties to others. It's patentable IP. Are you opposed to that?

Actually, it's been reported as 5.7B, ray, but that is not all profit certainly, just the revenue for the hardware and software services. You pay IBM about the same amount of money for Red Hat or Suse systems as you do for Win2K3. I think you know that, but maybe you do not. The 5.7B does not contain any Slackware, Mobunto, etc., since it is coming from IBM, HP, Dell, Sun, etc.. You are not really comparing like items here.

Artist in the sense of IP owner and Gates in the sense of a personification of Microsoft, ray. That shouldn't be too much of a stretch.

Well, the going rate for an experienced software developer who could be presumed to be effective in a commercial environment as a team member with a breastle like Senior Software Engineer, or Staff Engineer, or Fellow Engineer, etc., is somewhat over $100K per year salary and spark plugs like Architects, etc., can typically get to $250K without a whole lot of innovation. If you get ISOs and the company is successful, you get millions of bucks in a short time frame. Now if you are doing that kind of work at that kind of level and not getting paid, you are being abused by those who are marketing the "services" side of things to the extent that what you do get does not measure up.

It is like an amateur winning or even placing in the Masters. The amateur gets a trophy and the pro gets a few hundred thou. Hollow, IMO. Now you have painted software contributions as some kind of aid to the Biafrans, but I think that is silly.

Well you can develop Windows software with crappy OSS tools too, ray. You are paying for the convenience and resulting efficiency. You pay $800, but you gain tens of thousands in added results and quicker completions.

I think that is where most of the COLA techies fall off the train, ray. They see the low entry price as more important than the overall low value of OSS products. People who can make the system pay them for their efforts do not use this stuff. Look around the forums for graphic designers and see how many use GIMP rather than Adobe Photoshop and such. They won't even use it on a PC and opt to pay more for a Mac on the premise that it is more valuable.

OTOH, people who see the $800 as an expensive item, are stuck with what they can get for less.