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Comment by aston | Hacker News Reader

Where's the irony? Matt thinks proprietary software has its place, and he likes free (as in beer) software.

Where is the awesome proprietary software that has smashed Wordpress to pieces which he referred to? His analysis about relative quality is off the mark. Looking at Photoshop and ignoring Emacs, gcc, gdb, git, Apache, and all the other great free software isn't fair.

From the article: "There are lots of great open-source projects out there, especially in the development world." I think that covers Emacs, gcc, gdb, and git at least...

He's not ignoring the great free software, he's pointing out that only using free software means that you give up using proprietary software in the cases where it is better.

I'm curious if he even read the article. I was pretty explicit that I use many free products, because they're often better, and many proprietary ones because they too are often better.

I do have one blog on MT and one on Wordpress, and to be honest I'm not sure which I prefer. It's a close call either way. Given what I've heard of Wordpress's scalability issues, I think I'd use MT if I were running a blog with the expectation of large traffic numbers.

Proprietary software is never better.

Depends on your definition of better. The fact that Adobe's revenues were over $3 billion would indicate that quite a few people would define "better" in such a way that Photoshop is better than GIMP.

photoshop is better than GIMP. paint.net is a great free alternative but windows only. in relation cheap is better than expensive, and any alternative that challenges a monopoly or overpriced incumbent can be a very good business to start and a product/service that many people will happily try out.

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