Giacomo Graziosi

I just read an interesting point of view from James Stauffer’s blog. It’s interesting because it isn’t the usual developer side of the problem but the users’ one.
Making it simple: free software isn’t perfect, many times it doesn’t even get close to the features list of the closed software. How can we solve this problem?

If 50% of companies that buy commerical database systems instead used an open-source database and spent 25% of the savings advancing that open-source database then it would all work out well.
The one difficulty is getting the software customers organized to do this. It really helps if someone can jump start the project so that other companies can see the value.

Would you rather spend $100 for for Windows or get Ubuntu and spend $25 supporting it?

In my opinion this is just a dream: you must keep in mind that this kind of decisions is taken by people who pretend to force the world to their own vision built at the business schools. You can’t win when your opponent’s brain is ROM-powered…
So, is free software destined to lose in some areas? No. We only have to move the precedent decision from business-schools-guys to the Parliaments. European Union (where I live) is already sponsoring many software projects, they only should take this to a completely upper level. Would you pay the rent for your house forever if you could borrow the money from a bank to buy the house?
It’s just an investment on ourself and our future, I don’t really understand why we should pay a tax on computers to software houses like Microsoft, as a European Citizen it really looks like paying a tax to the USA.