Perhaps you are characterizing it wrong:
The point of OS software isn't a free lunch. It's cooperation.
If you have 10 people working on an OS project, for every hour
you put into it, you get 9 hours back. The more people you have
working on an OS project, the higher the payback ratio.
It's not free as in cheap. It's free as in freedom. Cheap just turns
out to be pleasant side-effect. When you don't have a monopoly on
the code, you actually have to charge reasonable prices for support.
Freedom has it's costs, but it also has it's paybacks.
___________________
Another analogy which they might be able to swallow more easily is
barn building.
A whole community would come out and help a neighbor put up a barn.
It wasn't an altruistic thing. They each new that the same community
had (or would) helped build their own barn.
Each person contributed their own expertise and toolset. The result
is that each person ended up with a better product than they would
have gotten building it themselves with less total expenditure by
the community (and each member), with the added benefit of more
productivity (and thus income) for the entire community.
The free(tm) software community is really just an extension
of the homesteader ethic.
Conlan Adams wrote:
Being a person who has managed to utilize open source applications at
every position he has held in the last ten years, let me say.
The problem with getting people to accept open source, is showing them
that they really are getting something for nothing.
It took us over 3 months to convince one of the people that OSS products
were reliable, feasible, and responsible. One of the guys agreed that
ASSP was a good product but required similar convincing before even
looking at OSS products in the future.
Yes sometimes there is such a thing as a free lunch.
--
Stephen Samuel +1(604)876-0426 samuel@bcgreen.com
http://www.bcgreen.com/~samuel/
Powerful committed communication. Transformation touching
the jewel within each person and bringing it to light.
