p.daniels wrote: > So most of you are probably out drinking. Damn my poverty. I didn't see anyone else at Townhall. I had a nice Octoberfest and a blueberry oatmeal pale though. > A question that I walked away with actually stemed from the Q&A after > the main lecture. Someone brought up a question regarding perceived > incompatibility between free software and regulated industries (in this > example, medical device software). I didn't stay once they began auctioning the gnu, but I was interested in this question. I think it is a broader question: what about any software, such as medical or the software that controls your car, where there is a cost to failure. He was quite adamant throughout his talk about not using ANY software that wasn't free, and I would have been interested in his comments on this. I was disappointed in his painting things black or white. He was quite harsh on proprietary software developers: they were a single person who developed software as a power trip for controlling their users, and there is no way to communicate with them (to get features added). I was a proprietary software developer for the past 13 years, and I don't think he got a single thing right. I was part of a team, we did it to make money, but also because it was a cool product (J. River Media Center), and we had a support forum where we - the developers - interacted directly with users, taking ideas and sometimes implementing them. It was interesting - especially the number of people who raised their hands for programming in TECO. j