Lost jobs due to open source

[Michael Shigorin]

On Mon, Aug 22, 2005 at 05:20:03PM +0200, Ruben Vermeersch wrote:
> Their latest counter-argument is a more economically minded one:

It's sound argument (the latter form).

> "You can't live of open source, you can't make money of it" (a classic),

You can manage to make money with it, you can manage to loose
money beyond it.  So the thing is about something else it seems.

> but also a more sophisticated one: "If we all do open source
> software, a lot of jobs will get cut, the amount of IT staff
> with a job will decrease dramatically".

It's correct -- seems that either Ballmer or Gates have mentioned
the same thing in Australia it seems.  ALT Linux father, Alexey
Novodvorsky, called them luddites immediately afterwards.

Why have more jobs at such boring thing as IT, reimplementing
wheels over and over again, when there's so much to do in the
real world?  It's way better to reuse ideas and code.

In fact, comments like "did you see NNN?" or "oh no, not this
again, maybe you'd better help MMM?" are the bulk of my
freshmeat's comments.  Indeed they've had an editorial like 
"too much free software" or so a few years ago, and 300 CDDA
players (most of which don't do freedb even) just arent' needed.

But then again, Windows shareware is even worse. :)

> and keep building the magic!

*gasp*

-- 
 ---- WBR, Michael Shigorin <mike at altlinux.ru>
  ------ Linux.Kiev http://www.linux.kiev.ua/