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Opposing Open Source?

Posted by Cliff on from the listening-to-the-other-side-for-once dept.

Carl Nasal asks: "For a college class I'm taking, I have to write a research paper. I chose a topic of how open source software affects businesses, focusing on the use of Linux. While doing searches, I have actually found it hard to find opposing views of open source software. Mainly, what I'm looking for, are opinions, articles, looks, and evidence about the drawbacks of using open source software in business. They can either be online or offline, but preferably from reliable sources. (In other words, I'd rather not just have someone's homepage that loves Microsoft and hates Linux.)" The more constructive criticism we get about the drawbacks of Open Source, the better we can address and fix them.

2 of 567 comments (clear)

  1. Cathedral and Bazaar Criticism by j7953 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I guess you've read Eric S. Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar. You might be interested in also reading A Second Look at the Cathedral and the Bazaar. It's not directly open source criticism, and doesn't focus on business usage of free software, but it's a good read nonetheless.

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  2. Ask Dave Winer by jalefkowit · · Score: 5, Informative
    You might check out Dave Winer's site, Scripting News. He's a rare breed, a software developer who (a) is passionate about openness and interoperability and (b) skeptical about open-source software. He is also a pioneer in Weblogging, so you can find several years' worth of his outspoken opinions on the subject on his site.

    Some examples:

    • "Stallman's philosophy is not open source, it's not the spirit of sharing, it's not generous. It has other purposes, it's designed to create a wall between commercial development and free development." (9/7/2000)
    • "Talking with Nicholas Petreley a few days ago I said that the problems that open source addresses have already been dealt with." (9/9/2000)
    • "It's possible to be an open source developer with high integrity, I'm sure of that, I know people who do that. But it's not inevitable that all open source developers and middlemen have high integrity." (8/8/2000)

    And that's just a few of the more recent posts to his log. Don't get me wrong, Dave is a very thoughtful, articulate guy who's no Microsoft parrot -- he and his company, UserLand Software, were one of the authors of the SOAP specification that is proving so critical for future interoperability. He's just got a keen intelligence and is fond of applying it, which means he'll often come up with a different angle on things than you might expect. Go search his site and I bet you'll find, if not the answer you seek, at least some interesting questions.

    -- Jason Lefkowitz

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    Read my blog.