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>Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized mapping product for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable. If startups nee

>Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized mapping product for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable. If startups need a giant subsidized operating system for free or else they weren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable. Do you see how ridiculous that argument is? >As it turns out, yeah, there's a lot of value we as a society can derive from low cost pervasive mapping. So let's find a way to share the cost and not just whine about Google, no? Yeah, Google has vacuumed up incredible amounts of mapping data from users and has now jacked up the prices with the lead this gave them. OSM (or something similar) is the way to share the cost. Google just abused their goodwill and used their other power positions to discourage open source. Whining about Google while moving elsewhere is entirely appropriate.

jayd16 8y ago
>Do you see how ridiculous that argument is? What? Your counter-counterpoint doesn't make sense at. Lots of startups can afford the per seat cost of OSX or Windows. If your business can't recoup the cost of an os per employee then yeah...maybe it's not a worthwhile venture.
- paganel 8y ago
  > Lots of startups can afford the per seat cost of OSX or Windows. On the desktop side of things that only happens because of Linux, otherwise (if guys like Ballmer would have had their way at the end of the '90s - early 2000s) those startups would now be paying hundreds of dollars per Windows license per each machine (and maybe more depending on the number of cores? the sky would have been the limit, the same as Oracle did in their field). And not to mention the server side of things, I'm pretty sure the costs for server OS licenses would have been prohibitive for the vast majority of startups without the alternative free OS solutions.
  - lagadu 8y ago
    We pay a lot more than that for MSDN licenses (which includes the OS if it's only used for development).

jayd16 8y ago

>Do you see how ridiculous that argument is? What? Your counter-counterpoint doesn't make sense at. Lots of startups can afford the per seat cost of OSX or Windows. If your business can't recoup the cost of an os per employee then yeah...maybe it's not a worthwhile venture.

paganel 8y ago
> Lots of startups can afford the per seat cost of OSX or Windows. On the desktop side of things that only happens because of Linux, otherwise (if guys like Ballmer would have had their way at the end of the '90s - early 2000s) those startups would now be paying hundreds of dollars per Windows license per each machine (and maybe more depending on the number of cores? the sky would have been the limit, the same as Oracle did in their field). And not to mention the server side of things, I'm pretty sure the costs for server OS licenses would have been prohibitive for the vast majority of startups without the alternative free OS solutions.
- lagadu 8y ago
  We pay a lot more than that for MSDN licenses (which includes the OS if it's only used for development).