Go, maddog, go!

Brazenly stolen from a Network World article... Mad Dog tells us exactly why open source will be succesful:

"You must be telecommunications people who expect your software to work," said speaker John "maddog" Hall, executive director of Linux International. His riposte came after he received a smaller-than-expected response to his request for a show of hands of how many people in the audience had sent bug reports to software companies and then actually had the bugs fixed.

Some 850 million people globally use software and 250 million of them want to change it in some way, Hall said. "I know because they've told me - all 250 million of them have told me." Of that number, 250 million actually have time to make a change, while 65 million have the expertise. In the end, 33 million software users will actually change software code to suit their needs, he said.

Hall also took a swipe at Microsoft. He noted that for a company in China that brings in $1,000 annually in revenue buying Microsoft Office is the equivalent of paying $40,000 in the U.S. "If I had to pay $40,000 for Microsoft Office, I'd put a black patch over my eye and go, 'Arr, arr, arr! I'm a software pirate!' "