Re: [SLUG]another advocacy rant

[Rick Welykochy <rick@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Danny Yee wrote:
> 
> http://danny.oz.au/free-software/advocacy/appropriate.html
> 
>         Imagine you are putting water pumps into a village somewhere in
>         Africa. You have a choice between two products...
> 
> (This is under construction, any suggestions for improvement would
> be welcome.  It would be nice to provide references for each point.)

We can summarise the comparative points you've made as follows:


   Product A                               Product B
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Widespread design + distribution        Single company design + intellectual hording
2. Open design + implementation            Closed design/imp - illegal to pry it open
3. 3%/30% split for specialists/maket      20%(?)/90% split for specialists/market
4. Very reliable                           Prone to malfunctioning
5. Add-ons are increasing                  Has more features and add-ons
6. Expenditure on hardware only            Expenditure on hardware, software purchase
                                           and software licensing fees


To this I add the following (Danny ... provide the details)


   Product A                               Product B
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

7. Support is entensive and usually        Support is meagre and expensive; broken pipes
   free of charges; broken pipes are       are fixed after lengthy legal negotations
   fixed with aplomb and pride             and/or extensive world-wide media exposure

8. Security of the is well-considered      Security is abrograted for the sake of
   and built into the design               access to water anywhere along all pipes

9. The water pump system can be cheaply    The cost of increasing the pump system to
   and easily scaled up to handle ten      handle a tenfold increase includes more 
   times the original serviced area        licensing fees, more hardware, and costly 
                                           reconfiguration of the existing pump system

10. The development of new and improved    You cannot develop new types of pump systems
   pump systems proceeds naturally,        from the existing system, except at the most
   free of incumbrance and with low cost   rudimetary level as proscribed by the owner
   from existing pump systems              of the intellectual property of the pipe system

11. When new pump systems are developed,   When the owner of the proprietary pump system
   the existing systems function well      deems to develop a new system, the new system 
   in unison with the entire newly-        is incompatible to some extent with some of the 
   configured system                       existing pump systems; the users and maintainters
                                           of the pump system in toto have no recourse but to
                                           support and cater to multiple, incompatible systems

   





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Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services Pty Limited