Over on the MSNBC technology board, I just finished reading a bunch of irate comments from a couple of Microsoft employees who are upset that the government might stop buying Microsoft software in some cases in favor of Open Source software. My reaction is this: So what?

It's not government's job to protect Microsoft (or prosecute them, for that matter -- I have long held that the lawsuit against Microsoft was unnecessary, because market forces dictate that any monopoly eventually fails). The government's job is to do the business of protecting me from criminals, building roads and other basic infrastructure, etc. with the least amount of money out of my pocket possible. Why should some Microsoft worker have some kind of "right" to money that the government takes out of my pocket? It doesn't make sense.

Then there's the argument that "a lot of programmers could be out of a job". Oh boo hoo. Should the buggy makers have run to Congress and gotten special protection against those mean old auto makers who were putting them out of business? Well, they tried, but of all the buggy makers only Studebaker came to the obvious conclusion -- that making buggies was on its way out, and it was time to get in the car business (at which they made a good living for 50 years, before management incompetence doomed them). If some programmers are too incompetent to make a living in an Open Source world, why should that be my concern? Let them find some other career if they're too stupid to make a living in the programming profession. Just like all those buggy makers had to find another way to make a living after the car drove their employers out of business (except those who worked for Studebaker, who went to work creating car bodies instead of buggy bodies).

Frankly, as someone who's making a damned good living from selling into the Open Source marketplace, I have very little respect for those who would go whining and crying that they'll go out of business if the government doesn't take money from my pocket and put it into their own. I have a term for such people: "Welfare whores".

-- Eric