[H-GEN] Interesting Trivia

[Robert Brockway]

On Fri, 17 Jul 1998, Frank Brand wrote:

> Martin Jackson gave his opinion that the important information in
> this ZDNet piece was almost buried. It mentions the comment from
> one manager of an unnamed "Very Big Company" who said his company "would
> never put their accounting system on an OS from somebody that they
> cannot sue--and get something." This is not so much a Linux-issue as a
> frightening comment on the priorities of American business. For an

It is all tied up with accountability, which big business holds up as a
false idol.  They believe whole heartedly andopenly that someone must be
made to pay if something goes wrong.  Alot of companies that won't put GPL
s/w in critical areas (if at all) base the decision on this.  It does tend
to suggest they don't trust their own admins to be ble to fix the problem
too :) but then maybe the suits don't really understand computers that
well :)

> alternate viewpoint, consider that moving to open source software could
> have the side effect of reducing corporate litigation ... 

It'd be nice.  We are moving towards America as far as litigation goes :(
Of course the lawyer(s) to be reading this won't be too worried at the
hefty pay cheques to come ;)

This is just a symptom of one of the problems of society - the belief that
money is a real thing.  It is not a real thing.  It is a medium of
exchange and has a non-linear relationship to actual wealth (as distinct
from actually being wealth).  Anyone wanting to discuss this statement
with me are best do to it in person as the concepts are a little subtle
for mail/news/irc.  IMHO, the majority of people in our society now see
the accumulation of money/material wealth as not only the primary goal of
life, but the only goal.  Too many do not seem to even consider the
alternatives.

Wow that got heavy :)  But I think it was worth saying.

As you can see I have my own theories of society and economics.

Now back to your regularly scheduled general stuff.
Cheers,
	-Robert


--Robert Brockway B.Sc.  Email: robert at blake.humbug.org.au,
				robert at humbug.org.au, r.brockway at uq.net.au
                         WWW:   http://www.humbug.org.au/~robert
Immediate Past President of HUMBUG (http://www.humbug.org.au)