On Monday 20 Feb 2006 23:27, Mike Taht wrote: > Back from digression. The core analogy that I make regarding free or > open source software is not the one "would you buy a car with the > hood nailed shut?", but "Would you buy a house without the plans > provided by the architect?". I don't think either of these is very helpful. In both cases, for many people the answer is "yes, of course I would". Probably these people are equally happy with proprietary software, so your analogy may still hold, but that won't get you far as a persuasive bit of rhetoric. Analogy is often useful to describe, seldom to convince. (I have tried the car analogy on a few people not familiar with open source software, and the general response is that the question itself is perplexing. It would make no sense to sell a car that could not be serviced at all, while many people would indeed choose to buy a car that could not be serviced by users "at home". For example, the Audi A2 is sold with no user-serviceable parts except for fluid topups; it almost literally has the hood nailed shut. Nice car, I'd buy one. Meanwhile, I bet most people who own property here in London will never have seen the original plans for it.) Chris
