A Perception of Lack of Support for Open Source Should Not Stop Adoption of Linux

TC, Thanks that was a fun if some what weird article.

If any of you have looked at the cost of the programs specific to legal offices you know why lawyers have to charge so much for their time. Or you can DL the new Open Office.Org template add-on and have the boiler-plate for all the California pleadings. http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/100065/index.html The law office my daughter toils in pays a hefty fee for on-line access to these same forms.

Heh, yes, it is a bit odd. "I continue to take a wait-and-see attitude as the OSS picture changes." What's to change? Legally, FOSS is stable as a table. It's proprietary licenses and EULAs that change arbitrarily and whenever they feel like it.

It's amazing what all these different legal services gouge customers for. It's also scary how much information they have about us, that we don't even know about, and that they are profiting from.

Law office software has nothing to do with the price you pay for lawyers. (OK it has to have a little impact but minor).

The price you pay for lawyers is very much down to an artificial restrictions on the market and deliberate exclusionary measures by the sector as a whole. In other words in the name of maintaining standards it is a protected industry in regards to competition.

There is a saying: one lawyer in a town starves. Two lawyers prosper.

If I wanted to run this thread completely off topic, I'd mention that lawyers are one of the archetypes of "monopoly". By law, they are the only ones that can "practice" law. Merchantilism at its most raw and annoying, and profitable.

Considering the constant bemoaning of Microsoft's supposed abuses of "monopoly", maybe bringing up examples of real monopolies and their destructive nature isn't off-topic at all.

> One lawyer in a town starves. Two lawyers prosper.

My Mom tells me of some 19th century English novel, I'm sure everyone would know it if I could remember the name, where the kids fight over their father's estate. After years, the lawyers all come out of court and announce "That's it, the money is GONE!"

The lawyers had used it to pay their fees. Prosperity indeed, for them.

Basta! My daughter are one, a lawyer that is. Just because I don't talk to her since she passed the CA bar doesn't mean you can bad mouth lawyers.

Everything you have ever heard bad about lawyers is true, says my daughter. True to the extent that said daughter is now taking an auto-mechanic course in the evenings.

For fun info about "law" in the computer age try TWIL. http://twit.tv/twil

@Bob_Robertson:

Quoting:By law, they are the only ones that can "practice" law.

"The man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client." But there's no law stopping him from doing it.

> But there's no law stopping him from doing it.

You can represent yourself, but you can't represent anyone else, or offer legal advice to them. Of course, the ones who decide what "offering legal advice" is, are the lawyers.