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South Korea Jumps To Open Source Software
mormop writes "Following on from the news that a far-eastern Linux distro is on the way, silicon.com is carrying news that South Korea is switching $300,000,000 worth of PCs to Open Source Software.
The only question now is will Steve Ballmer be capable of covering the sort of distance needed to pull back all these switching governments before collapsing with exhaustion, or is he en route for the Air Miles record?"
I'm not advocating anything, I just think that it is important to remember that jobs are lost due to OSS as well as foreign outsourcing. On /., we focus on losses due to outsourcing, but ignore the OSS losses (because this community, including me, tends to be pro-OSS and anti-offshore). In some cases, those losses are the same, when OSS work is done in foreign countries. If you want to be protectionist by making it harder to off-shore work, shouldn't you also be trying to limit OSS?
You start with agreeable arguments (People doing things for free in their spare time means less jobs in the field), and yet reach a very weird (and dangerous?) conclusion: We should limit what people do in their spare time for free.
This is rediculous, capitalism should encourage resources that come for free. Jobs that are created by artficial limitations and would otherwise not be required are not really good for the economy as they may seem.
Might as well pay these people that same money to do anything that's really required, while getting the original service for free.
Maybe the oxygen producing factories are not making enough money now? Jobs are being lost. We should cut down trees and limit their ability to create oxygen because those trees are hurting the ability of oxygen creation factories to make a living. I see this as equivalent.
Not everyone is in IT I would agree. But just imagine if MS went away tomorrow, where would you be? Even non-IT people can benefit from learning other tools besides MS.
I'd be in more trouble if the sun suddenly exploded tomorrow, which is about as likely. What IS more likely is using an obscure OSS package, then the kid who wrote it, say, gets kicked out of college, and doesn't have broadband at his parent's house, so he can't support it any more. Or, the OSS company that wrote it goes belly up. Call me nuts, but I feel a bit more secure with one of the largest companies in the world backing up my software than some college kids working out of their dorms.