How has open source software benefited you? Here are some things worth considering the next time you hear someone saying that open source software development is just another left-wing, anti-capitalist movement:
- It formed the foundation of MacOS X, allowing Apple to rebuild itself as a company and bring serious comeptition to bear on Microsoft.
- It powers Google's search products, allowing them to create flexible packages that have brought more refined searches to the public.
- It enabled the creation of the blogosphere by providing an extremely low cost platform for the development and deployment of content management systems for the masses. Without Perl, Python, PHP, PostreSQL, MySQL, Apache, Linux and FreeBSD, it would be too expensive and complicated for most bloggers to do their thing.
- It has forced high end database providers to start providing low cost database products such as Oracle Express that are actually useful.
- It restored competition to the browser market.
Open source software is not perfect, and it is not the be all, end all method of profitable software development. However, it has brought a lot of benefits to the public in its own right and it is a sad statement about the state of public policy that the wonks would risk legally endangering open source development for the sake of protecting corporations that compete with open source projects.
The right to tinker and create new property precedes civilization. It is one of the most fundamental of human rights. It doesn't surprise me that the legal profession, a profession that has never generated a single, solitary piece of wealth in its long, sordid history would not understand this.
It has saved us, the consumers money?