[kwlug disc.] "people don't respect what they don't pay for"

[Robert P. J. Day]

  the above is something a good friend of mine said to me recently
when we were discussing open source versus proprietary.  we weren't
having a deep, philosophical discussion, i had just made a throwaway
statement that i like the idea of working with open source and
freely-available software as opposed to the opposite, which is when
that statement came out.

  to be fair, this friend works for a large software concern whose
entire business model is founded on (no surprise) selling
closed-source software, so what else would you expect to hear?  it's
possible he really didn't mean it, he was just parroting the defensive
and territorial party line.

  but what if he *did* mean it?  how do you respond to something like
that?  and, yes, we all know the standard responses we've heard for
years, so let's not go *there*.

  i'm more curious as to what you'd say if this was a good friend of
yours who, out of the blue, made that rather astonishing claim.  it
wouldn't do any good to speak of the value of linux, or apache, or
openoffice, if said person had never used any of them, and was
perfectly happy in a microsoft-centric environment.  if that's the
case, i'm not sure *what* kind of response you could make.

  i'm just curious -- what have others done in this situation?  and
keep in mind, this is a friend that you want to *keep* as a friend,
but whose entire livelihood exists because of a closed-source
software business model.  *is* there a counter-argument?

rday
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Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

http://crashcourse.ca
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