[lug] my latest guilty pleasure -- Linuxhaters Blog

[Nate Duehr]

On Jul 26, 2008, at 10:47 PM, Nate Duehr wrote:

>
> On Jul 26, 2008, at 8:46 PM, Michael J. Hammel wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 2008-07-26 at 16:13 -0600, Nate Duehr wrote:
>>> Again, I'm not a software designer, so asking me to code a  
>>> replacement
>>> for Visio is the open-source community's way of saying open-source  
>>> is
>>> not willing to take on the hard challenges, I guess.  (And I have no
>>> problem with that... I'm not taking it on either.  But it's  
>>> reality.)
>>>
>>
>> That's not really what open source is about.  It's always been about
>> scratching your own itch.  That's why you hear a lot of "if you  
>> want it,
>> code it".  The idea is that the source is available to anyone  
>> willing to
>> scratch their own itch.  The problem these days is that the user  
>> base is
>> so large that the number of people available to scratch itches is a  
>> lot
>> smaller than those complaining about poison ivy.
>
> The user base of commercial applications has always been what?   
> 1000:1, 10000:1, 1000000:1?

Er.. this wasn't a complete thought.  The user base of commercial  
applications to developers of those applications... is what it should  
have said.

--
Nate Duehr
nate at natetech.com