Simon Law gave an OSS presentation to the Computer Science Club of the University of Waterloo that was fantasitc. I was actually most impressed with the question and answer part of his talk. First of all, the Waterloo CS club asked some awesome questions. Questions that really deserve good answers but usually get much less and Simon’s answeres were the best I’ve heard ever. Please watch the video if you have not already.
Simon’s answer that really impressed me was in responds to the standard “if OSS is open source and free, how do companies get a compatitive edge and how do people get payed?” Simon answers this in the video with flying colors. After asking him about it personally, he gave a great quote which pretty much sums it up:
Creating an artificial scarcity to benefit yourself is like blowing out other people’s candles to make yours shine brighter. It’s childish and rather intolerable. Whereas real scarcity is actually something you have to work at to solve, and so you deserve to be rewarded for your efforts.
Please watch the video to put this in context.
- None Found