Z:gnu-www-ja-software-libre-commercial-viability--2c19c9-As more and more people are ch/en

As more and more people are choosing Free Software to address their needs, I'm sure some software companies will try to demonize GNU/Linux and both the Free Software and the Open Source movements because they are losing their own market share. Such companies will probably try to demonstrate that IT employment is decreasing and that humankind is being damaged by the general adoption of Free Software. This whole argument is bogus; computers exist to be programmed, and the more you allow programming them, the more you build employment opportunities. If you count the number of people who offer Free Software consulting, you will greatly exceed any shrinkage of proprietary companies. Sticking to my previous example, the physiology lab hired my company to write the program, and other centers interested in the product are willing to hire a local consultant for installing, maintaining and enhancing our package. Did I say &ldquo;enhance&rdquo;? Isn't the program working? Yes, the program is working well, but there is room for enhancement of the product. The local lab decided to stop development &ldquo;because we must run our experiment rather than invent new software features&rdquo;. As anyone knows, every program has a bug and a missing feature, and this is where we build our credibility: bugs can be fixed and features can be implemented. As I suggested before, the more you make things programmable, the more they will be programmed.