Hacker News Reader

> oh, you can’t make it yourself? Maybe that’s why it’s not free.

That's not a complete argument. Anyone can mop the streets, but we still pay for their services.

Until someone actually do it, and better. Good luck monetize your proprietary alternative then!

You're perhaps forgetting that people use price as a value indicator. If you take FOSS and package it for sale then people may well buy it who wouldn't "use that shitty free software". Humans are complex beasts.

Or you know, the FOSS alternative might still be 100x weaker than the propietary incumbent. I'd love to ditch Adobe products but Gimp and Inkscape don't quite cut it.

"Goodbye to your propietary business" applies when you have a commoditized product that's easy to replicate feature-by-feature. In which case this is not a free vs propietary problem - another propietary competitor could leave you in the dust just as bad - it's a general vision and execution problem.

iTunes

Love this!