Re: Re: Stress calculation

>I would suggest that commercial programs (as they exist now, the "high-end"
>stuff) are going to be on the way out within the next 10 years. This will
>happen because of the increased usage of open source software running on
>Linux.

Not likely. It might happen that way if the users were the people responsible for buying software, but that's not the case in the enterprise market where the money is being made. Dedicated users may still do their own development, but the effort to develop large scale general purpose CAD and FEA software is too much for individual users. I can't imagine that any individually developed software could possibly replace Photoshop or Acrobat--the development is just too complex. Software used to be developed by users, just as pilots once built or oversaw the building of their own aircraft. But thos days are gone.

>After all, the only proprietary bits about most software is the user
>interface; it's not like the underlying, basic calculations are protected by
>copyright.

This is flat wrong. FEA solvers and CAD graphic engines and operating systems, to name only three, are very much proprietary. Again, this might have been the case when the Apple II and MS-DOS were cutting edge, but not now.

Christopher Wright P.E.    |"They couldn't hit an elephant at
chrisw@skypoint.com        | this distance"   (last words of Gen.
___________________________| John Sedgwick, Spotsylvania 1864)