Out of all the "geeks" I know, only a handful are interested in these things. From the people I have known, it is mainly people with strong political beliefs that prefer the lifestyle of DIY.
Nike pays kids 10 cents an hour to make shoes? Screw them, I'm going to make shoes myself and not give money to a large corporation whose actions go against my political beliefs.
And about the beer brewing. How often do you drink Budweiser? I never will pay for that beer, I'd much rather support micro breweries. And this is also another reason why I brew my own beer as well, to give me a choice on what kind of beer I want, yet I still support the smaller companies and not the large ones.
Why spend expensive engineering time on a product that no one will buy? HDTV is finally starting to take off and people are purchasing HDTVs in the past 6 months. Personally, I only know one individual that purchased a HDTV. Most places that have HDTVs are businesses. If a business is going to make some HD footage, then they will rent a HD film camera. These Camcorders are not meant for high end use, but for people that want to own a HD recording device but don't want to work out the massive amount of money for a HD film camera. Sure it sounds expensive, but compare it to the cost of a HD film camera... a rental will run you around $1,500 a day. A purchase will run you over $100,000.
I have noticed that the founder of Smoothwall, Richard Morrell has some issues to deal with. He has a huge ego and does not like users that do not pay for his "open source software." He enjoys complaining about how much money he has spent on making CDs and giving them away for free and how people don't donate to him. I have a few quotes that I have collected that he has said on the mailing lists for smoothwall.
"i have contacts with people at the kernel team that none of you have... i know people who can get this fixed and i'm on top of it... so stop complaining because you don't know what you're talking about"
"i used to work for microsoft, i know how they work" (he worked in the sales dept selling licenses)
"You're also not a paying customer - I'll email DIRECTLY my friend who WROTE the official driver. Friendships help. Thats why I'm richard@linux.com"
"this is fuck all to do with SmoothWall its hardware level"
Also, Mr. Morrell decided to turn it into closed source "enterprise version" that isn't
free with extra features. So he's not allowing open source developers to add new features to the
open source project because it will compete with his private closed source project.
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Out of all the "geeks" I know, only a handful are interested in these things. From the people I have known, it is mainly people with strong political beliefs that prefer the lifestyle of DIY.
Nike pays kids 10 cents an hour to make shoes? Screw them, I'm going to make shoes myself and not give money to a large corporation whose actions go against my political beliefs.
And about the beer brewing. How often do you drink Budweiser? I never will pay for that beer, I'd much rather support micro breweries. And this is also another reason why I brew my own beer as well, to give me a choice on what kind of beer I want, yet I still support the smaller companies and not the large ones.
Why spend expensive engineering time on a product that no one will buy? HDTV is finally starting to take off and people are purchasing HDTVs in the past 6 months. Personally, I only know one individual that purchased a HDTV. Most places that have HDTVs are businesses. If a business is going to make some HD footage, then they will rent a HD film camera. These Camcorders are not meant for high end use, but for people that want to own a HD recording device but don't want to work out the massive amount of money for a HD film camera. Sure it sounds expensive, but compare it to the cost of a HD film camera... a rental will run you around $1,500 a day. A purchase will run you over $100,000.
I have noticed that the founder of Smoothwall, Richard Morrell has some issues to deal with. He has a huge ego and does not like users that do not pay for his "open source software." He enjoys complaining about how much money he has spent on making CDs and giving them away for free and how people don't donate to him. I have a few quotes that I have collected that he has said on the mailing lists for smoothwall. "i have contacts with people at the kernel team that none of you have... i know people who can get this fixed and i'm on top of it... so stop complaining because you don't know what you're talking about" "i used to work for microsoft, i know how they work" (he worked in the sales dept selling licenses) "You're also not a paying customer - I'll email DIRECTLY my friend who WROTE the official driver. Friendships help. Thats why I'm richard@linux.com" "this is fuck all to do with SmoothWall its hardware level" Also, Mr. Morrell decided to turn it into closed source "enterprise version" that isn't free with extra features. So he's not allowing open source developers to add new features to the open source project because it will compete with his private closed source project.