Let me just start of by saying that I in no way have anything against OpenSource, SharedSource or any other initiative that opens up source code and makes it available to the vast public.

But, when that has been said..  I've been confronted with several people over the last couple of weeks that has given me a couple of interesting thoughts in my head. Several incidents involving hatred towards "the evil empire" called Microsoft Corporation. People moaning and complaining about their monopoly and how their software is buggy and that "the empire" will soon enough pay the price through bankruptcy and the software freedom shall start.   I myself, must admit, that I am one of those crazy people that's actually somewhat a fan of Microsoft and find myself counting to ten when confronted with this kind of hatred. One argument always comes up is that the Open Source community opens everything up and let's everyone fix the bug there and then. People use arguments such as "Microsoft stops innovation". One of my favourites is "Microsoft steals jobs from others by integrating everything into the Operating System". Sure, they do sort of squeeze competitors out of certain markets, I'm more than willing to admit that. After having all these incidents I figured I'd blog about something that I feel is somehow a reasonable argument against Open Source and this so called "freedom".

When someone creates a piece of software and opens it up through any open initiative, I claim that they are potentially stealing/ruining someones job. Let's have a look at some of the software you can get for free and what the extreme consequences could be :

* Linux - Operating System. If fullfilled as the Open Source community are dreaming; could potentially result in several thousands of jobs being lost at Microsoft.
* FireFox - Browser. Again, same result within Microsoft if it were to be the number 1 browser.
* Apache - Web Server. Could cost some jobs over at Microsoft this one as well.
* Open Office - Office applications. Yet again, some thousand jobs over at Microsoft

Ok. So I've mentioned but a few and all would have great consequences over at "the Evil Empire". What if we took a look at some other applications :

* GIMP - Graphics tool. Adobe would be a clear target for layoffs.
* MySQL - Database Server. Bye bye Oracle.
* Postgre - Database Server. MySQL Took care of Oracle. Maybe IBMs DB2..

My point being; Open Source can also prove to be just as dangerous as any huge corporation. I'm a software developer and love what I do for a living. I get very scared by the thought of standing in the unemployment line looking for a job. One could arguee (many do) that a lot of software is default stuff and no one should be making money of it. But wouldn't that be the robbing me of the kind of freedom the community claims to be pushing? If I would like to make money out of creating whatever I want to create I should be free to do just that. But when the Open Source community already has the solution, why should anyone want to buy it from me?  Why should I limit myself to be doing consulting on existing software when I could be making money from selling my funky MultiPlexing Super Lightweight Hardcore Terminal Client ?   The market should be choosing what they want to pay for and what they don't want to pay for, not the developers. If the market is willing to pay $100 for a Media Player, then any company should be able to sell it for that. Ofcourse this applies for Microsoft as well. I know that they have ruined some companies with their interpretation of software freedom. But I think the picture is far more complicated than blaiming Microsoft or any other huge company for it all.