How Does a Poor Economy Affect Tech Innovation?

sshuber writes "It's no secret that the US and other parts of the world are currently having some economic problems. How is this affecting new technologies under development? With the large numbers of layoffs, are we seeing projects, such as things under R&D, that are being axed? Are companies playing it safe and sticking with what they know sells in lieu of pushing the envelope? Finally, how is this affecting the open source community, either positively or negatively?" A lot of open source work happens with the backing or at least the sufferance of corporations. Do laid-off tech workers contribute fewer cycles to open source projects, or more?

Comments

Re:Is It Really A Poor Economy?

[ergo98]

Remember, when you (the top 5%) can't afford your second SUV for your family it usually means the rest of the world is hurting badly. I think even rural America sees things differently than you.

Aside from tremors, China is doing fantastic. India is much the same. Europe is doing pretty much the same. Russia is recovering nicely from their economic doldrums.

I would guess that there are far fewer people worldwide living in poverty today than there were 10, or even 5, years ago, despite some speculative food price run-ups.

However, disparity of wealth distribution isn't even the point in contention (no one disputes that it is a real problem). This submission is quite clearly playing upon the current "the economy is in the gutter" meme, but it just isn't supported by the numbers. Things aren't great, and there's some bouncing atop a potential recession, but it's actually remarkably robust given some of the inputs over the past couple of years, which many expected to yield much worse conditions.

Re:Depends...

[Darkness404]

As much as I'd like to believe you, the train-wreck of Vista was supposed to usher in the year of the Linux desktop...

Look around you, Linux adoption is higher then ever. Ubuntu has made Linux easy, Dell has Linux installed on normal PCs (along with some other computer makers), the gPC is many times sold out at Wal-Mart, the eeePC with Linux is quite popular, and the use of Linux-based tablets such as the N800 is on the increase. Never before could you get Linux so easily, it still isn't as common to walk into a large retailer and find computers pre-installed with Linux but if you spend 5 minutes hunting around, Linux is easy to find.