Free Software and Business/Administration

[Georg Jakob]

Hi,

On Tue, 14 May 2002, Bernhard Reiter kindly wrote:

> On Tue, May 14, 2002 at 06:13:38PM +0200, Georg Jakob wrote:
> > If you talk about freedom in a sales presentation, 
> > you'll be laughed out of business quicker than you can say "GNU". 
> 
> Have you ever tried it?

Yes. If they like you, you'll understand from their questions what they 
are interested in. If they do not like you, you'll get no more questions and 
the famous "You'll hear from us" that never happens...


> Because you can make other experiences.
>

What are your experiences in the field?
*starving for a less pessimistic view*

 
> Especially if you come to the aspects of freedom
> which have made it into business stream of thoughts, too:
> 	freedom from one vendor
> 	freedom to compete
> 	freedom to learn
> 	freedom to teach
>

Absolutely right, but my experiences point in another direction, in a 
strange and disturbing, but nevertheless constant way.

I can't say much how bighshot companies, the fortune 500 react on it, I'm 
talking about rather small businesses, local, regional... It seems 
sometimes as MS is the reliable reality to them. Whereas freedom yes, 
beautiful, but hey, get real *we* can't do that.

 
> Look in history, only the freedom in our modern democratic societies
> made modern business and great wealth for societies possible.
> How can business people deny this? :)
> 

This is a mystery to me, too.


-- 
kindest regards,                   University of Salzburg
Georg Jakob            Department for Law and Informatics
jack at unix.sbg.ac.at                 ++43-(0)662-8044-3559
key ID 1ADA7E2C          http://www.users.sbg.ac.at/~jack