Comment Slogan on bottom of page (Score 2) 79
Knowledge is power -- knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley.
This comment get to the heart of the divide between big companies and open source / free software / whatever (and capitalise those terms to taste, btw):
Although big companies are primarily about making as much money as possible, they know that to make a lot of it, power (a monopoly or other device) is required. Thus, in the long term at least, the sharing of knowledge is an anathema.
Of course, one can make money without such motives; just not as much. In this milleu, altruism, regrettably, leads to the local, but not the global, maximum.
So while open source is a useful tactic for small companies, at most it is a temporary ploy of large ones who are aiming for an entirely different prize.
This comment get to the heart of the divide between big companies and open source / free software / whatever (and capitalise those terms to taste, btw):
Although big companies are primarily about making as much money as possible, they know that to make a lot of it, power (a monopoly or other device) is required. Thus, in the long term at least, the sharing of knowledge is an anathema.
Of course, one can make money without such motives; just not as much. In this milleu, altruism, regrettably, leads to the local, but not the global, maximum.
So while open source is a useful tactic for small companies, at most it is a temporary ploy of large ones who are aiming for an entirely different prize.
