Lost jobs due to open source

[John]

Ruben Vermeersch wrote:

> Their latest counter-argument is a more economically minded one:
> 
> "You can't live of open source, you can't make money of it" (a classic),
> 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".
> 
> Anyone has some good pointers in how to quickly convince them otherwise
> (without the risk of sounding like a zealot, plain rational arguments).

Have you seen Shrek? The graphics were rendered on a bunch of computers 
running Linux.

Imagine, if Dreamworks released the rendering software under the GPL 
once Shrek was released.

Looking at the economics, would the other film houses do it themselves 
from scratch, or take up the Shrekware and build on that?

Maybe, the biggies would do their own (maybe they already have their 
own), but a lot of smaller  could take up the challenge to do more works 
using the Shrek software.

Dreamworks would continue to have the lead, because they have the next 
version, the one they may have been working on for a year or so before 
the release of the GPL version.

You tell me, more work for CS graduates, or less?


My Linksys access point runs Linux. There's a cheap, reliable, 
well-supported OS for anyone to stuff into some hardware and sell some 
new access point, router, media centre,, washing machine, toaster if 
they want. Hardware's cheap, writing software is expensive. If I want, I 
can replace the software in my wrt54g - there are at least two 
alternative sets of firmware for it. More opportunities for CS graduates 
to get involved in fun projects.

Google for an IBM System/370 model 168. That's the sort of kit I used to 
get to play with (very occasionally!) in my youth. Now, I can download 
Hercules (apt-get install hercules, I think) and run all the software we 
used then (as much as I can get my hands on anyway) and run on an 
emulated System/370 running on even my aged Pentium II about as fast as 
we did then. That free software lets _you_ develop software for IBM's 
zBoxes.[1]


[1] subject to software licences, of course. Getting proper IBM licences 
to run z/VM and z/OS on unapproved hardware isn't simple, but Linux is 
free and available.