| On the Subject: Yes I believe so, in fact I talked about this 2 years ago and many skunks didn't agree with me. I believe so because Open source's business model isn't competition friendly because there isn't enough room to make money thus the market can only handle a handful of companies. The existing handful of companies have managed to spread an illusion of open source. These companies will truly give out their code but they understand very well that very few people can make useful modifications to the code, useful enough to have a product worth selling *cough* supporting *cough*. And the developer/company that does so will be bought out by them (even if they're not bought out, they better be as good as the company making the open source otherwise they might not compete). Let me cut this short: As I concluded 2 years ago, the best thing is a balance of Open Source and Proprietary but not either. To answer Barrack's request: I would say that age is an indirect factor. Usually programming requires lots of time and effort including mental effort. The average 30-35 year old is probably looking at having a family plus other life commitments which also take up time therefore I think these factors directly affect whether one can dedicate time to start learning about programming. Personally I plan to move on to other stuff. I'm already good at many kinds of programming (languages and/or systems/platforms). The really interesting stuff is research that produces interesting algorithms and techniques. O_O --- On Thu, 11/5/09, Steve Obbayi <steve@sobbayi.com> wrote:
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