Apples actual response to the Flash issue

[Richmond Mathewson]

  On 02/05/2010 11:26, Ian Wood wrote:
>
> On 1 May 2010, at 23:44, Randall Lee Reetz wrote:
>
>>  I have yet to hear an open source advocate talk to the evolution of 
>> technology.
>
> Depends on your definitions. One of the big new features for CS5 
> (content-aware fill) was already available as a plug=in for the GIMP.
>
> Ian

Randall Lee Reetz has already declared his antipathy towards Open Source 
software so
many times that this was sure to be his response to my posting.

In an OPEN world (hey, look, Richmond is also using that 
over-used-and-abused word) there should
be room for 100% Open Source stuff and 100% proprietary stuff and all 
possible stuff in between.
I belong to a broad church that admits all levels and types of beliefs 
(well, at least as far as
software is concerned).

Open Source offerings have now reached a certain level of maturity that 
means they can compete with
and complement Commercial software; I think if GIMP and Photoshop want 
to play leapfrog with each
other that is an extremely healthy situation. Frankly, as a lot of Open 
Source developers seem to
use false names it would not entirely surprise me if some of the people 
who work on Photoshop
don't work on GIMP in their spare time . . .  :)

We are all well aware that commercial companies are always 'stealing' 
ideas from each other; the
fact that Open Source is involved in this and vice-versa should neither 
surprise or worry us.

What should worry us is when somebody comes along and blocks the chance 
for that healthy sort of
competition to take place. There should always be space for all sorts of 
types of software and types
of marketing; monopolies, whether state controlled or company controlled 
are what we have to
fear because that is when stagnation sets in.