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Hmm I wonder if cost is actually a consideration - but in an inverse way? I have been reading "The Spirit Level" which talks about how income inequality in society creates "Social Evaluation Anxiety" which then leads to an increased psychological need to acquire indicators of status. The thesis of the book is that frustration of the acquisition of status markers leads to all sorts of social ills (violence, crime, drug/alcohol abuse, loss of social mobility etc etc) It is interesting that the USA and to an extent the UK are amongst the most unequal in terms of income (and have generally the most social ills). Is the need to use proprietary (and usually expensive) gadgets and software an expression of the need to have visible indicators of status (i.e. wealth)? I guess it would be possible to use the ranking by income inequality in the book (for developed nations and also by individual states of the USA) to compare adoption of open source? If technology is seen as a status marker, then maybe that should be factored into the way Linux is "marketed" Phil On Sun, 2011-03-27 at 10:13 +0100, Eion MacDonald wrote: > Sorry top post. > An example, company I occasionally do work, whoo ned to cut costs drastically, for > could cut 4000 odd Windows licences and keep oldish XP style era computers if > running say a Linux system. Us eis word processing, email, spreadsheets, so no > problem on runninmg, but accounts use Windows program so all the company machines > will be upgraded and repaced with Win7 and current era machines so one department > finds it easyto continue. Cotts do not count when trying to CHANGE human fear of > the unknown > eionmac > > --- On Sun, 27/3/11, Vivi Griffin <vivi.griffin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > Businesses are run by people so, this same attitude prevails in the world of > work. Cost is still a secondary consideration. > > Viv > > > -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq