GNU considered harmful to software quality

[Dave Martindale]

Now wait a minute.  This is like saying that UNIX (which has always been
cheap for educational institutions) has had a detrimental effect on the
quality of software available to universities.  It is quite possible that
it made it uneconomic for someone else to develop a competing product
in that market.  On the other hand, the availability of a good operating
system which ran on cheap hardware at a low price probably fostered the
development of a large quantity of other useful software.  Besides,
what makes you think that a small group of dedicated, expert hackers
can't produce a public-domain system which is better than what most
commercial firms would come up with anyway?
Having public-domain software available is bad for potential producers
of competitive software, but good for software "consumers".

I don't think it is at all clear which route produces the greatest
"overall good".

	Dave Martindale
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