People argue that open source only copies from the commercial world. They site Linux and OpenOffice.org as examples. Well, the commercial world it seems only buys technologies from the independant developers who are actually the ones who come up with ideas. The big companies spend a whole lot on Research and Development to come up with ideas. Though in the software market, they only do it, if they have competition. For instance, take Microsoft over the years. In my eyes, everything Microsoft has done has been done to specifically answer the threat of competitors. When Linux started making a buzz, Microsoft started making Windows more stable. Since the Linux people used to say that Linux is stable, does'nt crash and so on, Microsoft came up with Windows XP. Which is a much more stable OS than the older Windows.

Now, people are saying that Linux has all that the business people need on the desktop. The Linux desktop has become easier to use, some say even better than Windows. OpenOffice.org is almost as good as Office, though in some places it might lack. Gnumeric and Excel. AbiWord and Word. Microsoft suddenly has more competition. So again, suddenly there is this flurry of announcements on the work being done on Longhorn, the new version of Windows, which will have that brand spanking new file system based on a database. Suddenly the next version of Internet Explorer will not be released in a stand alone versiion, and people are going to have to upgrade to the next version of Windows to get the new web browser. Office 11 now will support XML, which everybody should be moving to. Office 11 suddenly has a new tool, InfoPath. The be all and end all of XML design tools. Or something like that. Ha. At least they are trying. At least they dont sit on thier butts, watch competitors take business away, and bitch and moan, like Sun.

On the other hand, I've been using Free software since 1997. I've seen a steady increase in the quality and quantity of Free software, and I see no reason for this to go away. If a Free software comes out, I know I will have to wait for it to get better. Because people will continue to work on it, and slowly but steadily it will gain in popularity, and with that, it will gain stability and ease of use. I've seen it happen over and over again. I have seen people open companies based on this software, and build services (Ximian, the Kompany, Redhat, Suse and so on). Free software is the way to go.