I'm reading the salon.com article at
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/leon/2001/05/03/microsoft_gpl/index1.html
and I'm wondering if it's possible to translate all of the volunteer
time/code contribution into an R&D dollar figure. What kinds of
investment are we talking about here? I mean, if M$ can complain that
OSS is un-American in that it costs corporations (such as M$) money and
is dangerous to corporations that develop software for a profit, because
they will be unable to recoup the cost of this software if they just
give it away, then we should be able to argue that if you put a dollar
figure on the amount of time and energy people have put into GNU/Linux
and other OSS it would dwarf any monetary amount M$ can claim to have
spent on R&D.
What do you think?
Russell
____________________________________________________
_its_ (no apostrophe) means "the thing that it owns"
_it's_ (with apostrophe) means "it is"
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