Yes we do take things for granted. But your article shows that you don’t take everything for granted, and have the wisdom to feel fortunate. You are very fortunate to have a Mom and Dad that care for you as they do.

The subtopic of open source is very interesting. Sometimes open source appears to be free but it really isn’t. For example, your free games might have advertisements, and you may end up buying something you see in the ads. The gamemakers will get $$$ for this to happen. This is how Google works; Google offers a “free” service by inserting subtle ads in its answers. In addition, some of theses companies are building a secret database of your likes and dislikes and will sell this information to other companies so they can concentrate their advertisements on likely buyers.

On the other hand, some open source is actually free. Quite often programmers think of themselves as artists, and they are not motivated by how much money they get but rather the number of people that appreciate their art. Other programmers just like to program and they do what they do for fun. An example of this is the Emacs editor I use, Wikipedia, or the Linux operating system.

Some open source programs exist out of the work of failed companies. For example, OpenOffice, which does almost the same stuff as the $$$ Office, was created by a failed company. Another company (Sun) bought this failed company on the cheap and released OpenOffice just to annoy Microsoft. Firefox is another example; it’s origins come from Mozilla which came from a failed company Netscape, which was built off of a university research project, which used ideas from another research project, which was probably funded by government research money!

You might also want to question why some bored programmer(s) can write a free program that seems to have most of the functionality that is being sold by a Company for a hefty sum. What is really going on here?

I think my apple pie is burning… gotta go!

Auntie Ipswitch