Posted by: Gary Lawrence Murphy
on April 17, 2006 12:00 AM
"Might as well make arguments that free software is better for lesbians, or african americans, or people with false teeth."
BINGO! Right on the button there,sir, you have it exactly right. All those groups should indeed evaluate their use of proprietary systems such as your Mac, and you are very keen and perceptive to realize how they should be looking at FOSS for exactly the same reasons, key among them the ensuring universal and perpetual access to their information.
Hollywood blockbusters, on the other hand, have an expected useful lifetime of approximately 3 days (one weekend) with perhaps a further 6 weeks in premium rental; the lucky few get another few months in sleeper-ville rentals before being completely eclipsed by the next Greatest Movie Ever, and thus, for this very same very logical reason, Hollywood has no need, requirement or even desire to encode their work in open and trade-friendly formats. It's just not good for business. cf the astounding success of Nintendo and other cartridge-based gaming systems vs the relative paucity of PC/Mac gaming moguls.
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Re:Amazing
Posted by: Gary Lawrence Murphy on April 17, 2006 12:00 AMBINGO! Right on the button there,sir, you have it exactly right. All those groups should indeed evaluate their use of proprietary systems such as your Mac, and you are very keen and perceptive to realize how they should be looking at FOSS for exactly the same reasons, key among them the ensuring universal and perpetual access to their information.
Hollywood blockbusters, on the other hand, have an expected useful lifetime of approximately 3 days (one weekend) with perhaps a further 6 weeks in premium rental; the lucky few get another few months in sleeper-ville rentals before being completely eclipsed by the next Greatest Movie Ever, and thus, for this very same very logical reason, Hollywood has no need, requirement or even desire to encode their work in open and trade-friendly formats. It's just not good for business. cf the astounding success of Nintendo and other cartridge-based gaming systems vs the relative paucity of PC/Mac gaming moguls.
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