I can see how this would be and appealing solution to oil disposal and energy costs at McDonald's or another fast-food fryer joint. But what about a larger market? As any owner of a car that runs on vegetable oil can tell you - one of the side effects of burning fryer oil is a strong and persistent smell of fried food.

This may be acceptable at some restaurants that are already saturated with this odor, but wider adoption of such appliances may be limited by nuisance and customer concerns.

There are plenty on non-economic (read: money) reasons that open source won't die from this recession, but even if we look solely at monetary concerns we can see that this guy's hypothesis is flawed.

The Red Hat article is not the only thing on Slashdot that directly contradicts this guy's claims.

If we enter a deep and protracted recession, and programmers loose jobs, then we don't even have to ask what they'll do for enjoyment, edification, or a sense of purpose. Simply ask what they'll do to develop and keep an advantage in the job market.

Furthering your skills and education, building a portfolio, and establishing a reputation are all things that will give you an advantage in more competitive employment markets. Just take a look at current graduate program application and enrollment numbers to see how many people are willing to _pay_ for these opportunities. OSS offers the self motivated programmer the opportunity to accomplish all of this for free.

Unless this economic crisis castrates our motivation and conviction we'll see a boom of OSS projects develop for a variety of reasons. OSS is usually lauded for being free to use and free to edit. We shouldn't forget that it is also free to write.