vinayak@myrealbox.com wrote

Also you will agree that being not being tied to a single s/w vendor also makes sound business sense. So that you are not at the nercy to the whims and fancies of that particular vendor

It makes good sense only sometimes. Consider this example: I am a company developing some solution for a specialised domain. I choose some OS and a commercial tool for the development from company X. I also buy the support package offered by that X. Well, during the development process we face many problems which are promptly dealt with by the support team at X. They also patch the product for a few of our specific needs. I find it a well worth investment for buying the tool from X.

Replace X with Xanalys. The 'tool' was Lispworks. The guy who posted the above at c.l.l was Dave Bakhash and he was extremely satisfied with Lispworks and Xanalys. It helped him complete his (telephony product I think) ahead of schedule.

The point is Commercial Proprietary Software per say is not evil.

The Free Software Movement come from a Utopian spirit exibhited by some people. There is no need for one side to be evil for the other side to be 'good'.