there. But this is the same objection, simply at the next level And no doubt SAP says the same thing about the Sun and lBM database support. So we all want everyone else to be open to us, at the very least. Let's emphasize that this is in no sense a theoretical issue. It is about get- ting work done day to day, under pressure, and with some guarantee of results. In most cases that work will be done by someone you hired. Here an analogy: You probably don't sign contracts without an attorney's review or send tax forms without an accountant's review. It is your right to read these documents that allows your accountant or attorney to read them. In some other legal system, you might not have that right. If you can read the source code yourself, it becomes more personal. The Free Software Movement originated in a printer driver that Richard Stall man was unable to fix because the printer manufacturer refused to let him have the source code. 1 have been personally frustrated on many occasions by problems caused by bugs in code I was not allowed to see by the software vendor, or by insufficient understanding of how the code is expected to work, such as what the meaning is of various parameters passed in. lf you have been reduced a couple of times to hanging on a telephone waiting for someone who is often not a programmer to basically read bits of the code to you in a sort of guessing game, you would want to work with open source software too.