Originally Posted by Jonny Oh they don't do they? You know this forum? It uses vBulletin which happens to be using an open source database software called mysql. Maybe if there was only your beloved Microsoft's MSSQL software which you have to pay for vBulletin wouldn't have been created. Also Apache, another open source piece of software which millions of webservers run, was created just for the developers own good?

Hmmm... I don't think so some how. Firstly of course because there are a great number of Forums that do take advantage of MSSQL (vBulletin does now too if you want it to). Forums were designed before MySQL, they would have existed without it. Whether vBulletin would have I do not know, if you're going to get rid of MySQL you'd have to get rid of PHP, and you have to wonder then if there could have been an ASP vBulletin? Probably, it is impossible to tell. Ask Kier. The cost of the Database would no inhibit the use of Forums, Hosting services with a shared MSSQL Database Server are generally only a pound or so more than hosting with MySQL, and that includes it being a Windows Server.

As for Apache, it is a big question that if you took apache out of the question what would happen... who knows. Apache goes back that far that it is impossible to tell. Was it created just for the developers' own good? Quite probably. It would have been written not as a release server, it would have been written as a server for use on a server. The developers' own good would have been on creating that server. Now of course it is different, and developers develop Apache either to make it better because they have the mindset that nobody should control anything, or to develop. Both are for the developer primarily, although you could argue that secondarily they help people.

Originally Posted by animalcrackerb0x Lord katlthron what experience do you have with the stock market? have you ever traded? If not how can you speak like this about something that you have never experienced. Have you ever studied investing and the stockmarket?

Hmm... well I watched the BBC's Business program a few weeks ago. On there I saw some graphs from the stock market. That is the full extent. I am not dealing with the stock market or its technicalities. I have no intention to study economics either. I was talking about, and dealing in, the honour of a system that allows people to purchase parts of a company and make money off the talent of others without doing anything and without any particular talent. That purely, which is what I was talking about, it so dreadfully wrong.