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"Yet I think that a few programs, such as Adobe Photoshop, will always be superior to competitors like the Gimp—for some reason, I really don’t know why!"

See, that's what a name like The Gimp does. Even smart people will believe your product is inferior - backed-up by no real argument what so ever ;)

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Although maybe he's wrong about Photoshop vs Gimp, I still think he is correct in saying that some programs just can't be done in an open source manner. A better example might be something like Second Life - there is no way that could have evolved the way most open source software evolves now.

Some things just require immense dedication and concentration from a large amount of people from the very start - and in an open source project, you can't get that until you have a sizable project already done.

I don't know what part or aspect of SL you think couldn't have been done Open Source, but there was this company called Nevrax who developed and launched this MMO called Ryzom. It was not a commercial success, but it got done, and it was open sourced all along, which AFAIK did't hurt them much.

Edit: http://www.fsf.org/news/free-ryzom (where it also says Linden Labs has GPLed the client code for Second Life, back in 2007.)

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