I disagree. My company uses a variety of proprietary (WinTel, WebSphere, DB2, etc) and open source (Linux, FF, Eclipse, etc) software and we have seen some real high quality work in both camps (and bad ones too). And to say that the open source code is stolen from for-profits is untrue and disingenuous. Many governments, not to mention Fortune 500's, are using open source. Some of these entities are very, very careful institutions--they won't dabble in stolen code (too much to lose). Witness SCO vs. IBM.
Thanks, makes sense. Although I was told to turn off my noise cancellation headphones by the stewardess, so go figure. So the rule is not always applied sensibly.
For the longest time airlines were telling us not to use electronic gadgets, fearing "interference with the navigation system." Well, if they're OK with having bunch of passengers putting out 1 Watt each @ 2.4 GHz, how come they were objecting to the little blackberry (albeit at a different frequency) and other two way radio devices?
The last major browser war led to divergent implementations of HTML & JS which drove web developers crazy. The rush to more features led to frequent but poorly tested releases that were (a) unstable; (b) not secure. It is true, however, that it eventually led to a new generation of browsers and much benefit to the end users.
One way to avoid the instability may be to somehow enforce and demand adherence to standards, but this is easier said than done.
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I disagree. My company uses a variety of proprietary (WinTel, WebSphere, DB2, etc) and open source (Linux, FF, Eclipse, etc) software and we have seen some real high quality work in both camps (and bad ones too). And to say that the open source code is stolen from for-profits is untrue and disingenuous. Many governments, not to mention Fortune 500's, are using open source. Some of these entities are very, very careful institutions--they won't dabble in stolen code (too much to lose). Witness SCO vs. IBM.
Thanks, makes sense. Although I was told to turn off my noise cancellation headphones by the stewardess, so go figure. So the rule is not always applied sensibly.
For the longest time airlines were telling us not to use electronic gadgets, fearing "interference with the navigation system." Well, if they're OK with having bunch of passengers putting out 1 Watt each @ 2.4 GHz, how come they were objecting to the little blackberry (albeit at a different frequency) and other two way radio devices?
The last major browser war led to divergent implementations of HTML & JS which drove web developers crazy. The rush to more features led to frequent but poorly tested releases that were (a) unstable; (b) not secure. It is true, however, that it eventually led to a new generation of browsers and much benefit to the end users. One way to avoid the instability may be to somehow enforce and demand adherence to standards, but this is easier said than done.