Unfortunately, this doesn't always work. Building the infrastructure costs money. Even if you could cover the cost of setting up a rival service with reduced profit margins, you run the risk of the rival service undercutting you. Of course, Google have shown it can be done, but they have a lot of cash to burn.

BBC4 not Radio 4. But that too.

I think it's OK for the BBC to have a few flagship shows for ratings sake. Keeps them on their toes. Such shows unite families too.

It's defiantly OK for them to spend money on programming that would otherwise not be commercially viable. I want quality & diversity.

It's good value when you look at the diversity the BBC provides. Sure you cant agree with the BBC on everything, but a lot better overall. Look at the Olympics. In the US, they got highlights. The BBC showed just about everything, live, without any breaks, for no extra cost.

Personally, I'd like to see the BBC paid out of taxation, providing it cant be touched by MPs. Link the rate to GDP or something, so there is never any question over how much money they get each year.

What nonsense. BBC4?

The BBC is so cheap for what you get. It has to cater for all tastes, so your not going to like everything.

No thank you. If it weren't for the BBC, The Sky At Night, would never have even existed.
If there was no BBC, all we would have to look forward to is wall to wall reality TV.

I run a big 24/7 mission critical GPS and Mobile network on Linux/Mono for a household name. It better not be dead!

Hardly dead. Its very much alive on Linux, Mac & Android.

http://g.co/maps/9exvb

I dont really like being forced into using JavaScript. If NaCl would become a standard across browsers, then we would have an explosion in new developer languages and tools to develop content. Why limit ourselves?

You can switch it off if you want. Whats wrong with choice? Just how open is Firefox anyway?

If they would only just adopt Native Client like Google has, then we wouldn't have this terrible Javascript lock in. Let me use whatever language I like.

Why not? Plenty of C# developers around. Commercial support is available.

.NET != Windows any more. Mono is a robust, fast, and well supported system for the running on backend UNIX based servers. For example take a look at what the online gaming industry are using it for like Second Life.
Look at the popularity of C# on StackOverflow.

I dont agree on the .NET thing. .NET is leaving J2EE for dust, and for good reason. And thats not including Mono, which is getting some serious commercial users now.