On Thu, 3 Dec 1998, Dwight Hughes wrote:
> A comparison I like to use is that open source is to closed source as
> science was to alchemy. Science is built by sharing knowledge and
> discoveries openly so the work of anyone can be built on by everyone
> else -- alchemists hoarded their knowledge and discoveries, each to
> himself - his knowledge dying with him, so each generation started anew,
> and no one got very far. When products or their companies die they take
> many person-years of knowledge and discoveries down the drain with them,
> which gets laborously reinvented to a greater or lesser degree of skill
> again and again and again.

That's the down side, the up side is that people will pay you to work on
closed source software. Now if software was handled like drug patents...

Steve