The strange economics of open-source software

Post by teddyh » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 2:21 AM UTC

jlarocco wrote: post #87

teddyh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You list things which proprietary software does way better than free software. I remember when the list was the other way around – i.e. people would list things that free software could now do , which were not very many at the time. It’s interesting that this relationship has now been reversed, and people, like yourself, now instead list the things which proprietary software can do better.

I don't think the situation has reversed at all, and in fact open source has grown tremendously. There's more open source and free software, of higher quality, than any other time in the past. Commodity software like operating systems and web browsers are now dominated by open source. My point is that despite the growth, there are still many, many areas where the open source offerings are pretty lame and noncompetiti…