Does Open Source Software Really Work?

reflexreaction writes "This article on NewsFactor does a decent job of covering some of the issues facing Open Source Software (OSS). It points to Linux's growth area, non-mission critical projects in mid-sized companies, and its main weakness, the desktop. It also briefly discusses Linux's potential growth into mission critical applications if scalability issues are addressed. Quick easy read. My favorite quote from the article "Linux on the desktop is toast.""

Comments

Wizard's First Rule:

[Teknogeek]

People are stupid.

It's the biggest obstacle to Linux.

They'll take one look at a Slackware install, say "WTF this doesn't have AOL", and go back to sacrificing money to the stone idol of Bill Gates.

It's a paradox: we can't get the big names to make Linux software if there aren't enough people to make it profitable, and there won't be enough people to make it profitable if there aren't any big names.

Re:Wizard's First Rule:

[Carp Flounderson]

Nope... the biggest obstacle to Linux is people who say: People are stupid. It's the biggest obstacle to Linux.

Why can't folks like you figure it out that not everyone wants to study the internal workings of obscure OS's. That has nothing to do with stupidity. Do you think most people who use windows even know a definition of "Operating System"? No! Because they don't need to and shouldn't have to! The interface is intuitive enough so that people can quickly figure out how to do what they want to do, move on and be productive. Learning thousands of rediculous shell commands with all their options is not intuitive and makes people become distracted from what they want to use their PC's for. Hacking config files, compiling software, unsucessfully hunting for apps with well thought out user interfaces... these are things that drive away linux users. Look at this story! If it were left in a comment on /. it would be modded into oblivion because nobody here can solve these problems, so they ignore them.

Re:Wizard's First Rule:

[tomstdenis]

People are stupid.

It's the biggest obstacle to Linux.

True, these people are also linux developers.

What I find funny is you guys look at people using MSFT by choice as a problem. Aren't OSS/linux cult people by nature pro-freedom-choice. So if a user CHOOSES to use windows isn't that a good thing? I thought the gloves only come off when they have no choice?

Since when was the Linux crowd about a bunch of pathetic sore losers? Maybe if y'all stop pissing and whining you'd get more credible attention instead of throwing fits like 6 yr old girls.

Tom

Re:Wizard's First Rule:

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, since you mentioned big companies and software in the same sentence let's see: Corel .. tried and fail ... The Kompany they are trying to make money but some people is giving them hell about it as alrady has been discussed in /. Loki ... a failure ... Ximian ... I don't know how profitable they are.
I don't know, but if i had a buisiness and i saw these companies failing why would i even want to try and write any software for people that are not used buying software?

Re:Wizard's First Rule:

[yatest5]

People are stupid. It's the biggest obstacle to Linux.

What a truly ignorant point of view. Boo hooo, the public don't understand how to use Linux, that's their fault. No - if Linux wants to successful on the desktop, it needs to satisfy the public's needs. If it's being written by a load of arrogant wankers (which I'm not saying it is) who think the public are 'stupid' for what they want, then it is toast.

On the behalf of the general public, fuck you.

Re:Wizard's First Rule:

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever modded this comment by Carp Flounderson "-1" is proving his very point (not that the moderator would notice for it requires a basic amount of intelligence).
Carp, I agree with you. Having to be an expert to use an OS is like being able to only drive a car, if you also know how to fix the alternator yourself. While I love tinkering with Linux and computers, I *hate* tinkering with cars, motorcycles and other things like it! I don't want to. Period. If it doesn't get me from A to B I'll bring it someone who *does* love tinkering with these engines. It is not a matter of effort and not a matter of intelligence. It's a matter of simple preference!
The stringing together of many utilities is partially the strength of Linux/UNIX but at the same time it's weakness. Why setting up sendmail, fetchmail and a mail client (even assuming it works on first try which is unlikely) when all one needed before was Eudora and three lines in EDIT/PREFERENCES? Again, it's a matter of preference, as in "why make it harder than it needs to be?"
Linux is awesome and I support it wholeheartedly. But it still has a long way to go. It will eventually, I am sure.

Re:Wizard's First Rule:

[sql*kitten]

They'll take one look at a Slackware install, say "WTF this doesn't have AOL", and go back to sacrificing money to the stone idol of Bill Gates.

That's the classic mistake that many technical people make, that if you don't know about computers, you're stupid.

If you do believe it, I expect that you are expert in the electronics in your TV and DVD player, understand the mechanics of launching a satellite to relay phone calls, the chemistry of an oil refinery that fuels your car, all the routes driven by the postal service to deliver packages to and from your door to anywhere in the world, etc...

Of course not. That's why we have specialists. You happen to be a specialist in computer technology, but you'd starve to death without specialists in field-ploughing to feed you. Remember that.

Re:Wizard's First Rule:

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Why can't folks like you figure it out that not everyone wants to study the internal workings of obscure OS's.

That's not what I took from that. Although poorly said, what he (I feel) is trying to say is something like:

People are lazy (yes, there's stupid ones too). They don't want to LEARN anything new. They want to be handed something that they know the person sitting next to them knows because when the person is stumped, rather than hit Google, or try to figure it out, they turn to the person next to them.

"Hey Sam, how do I change the background of my main window here?"
"Main Window? You mean the Desktop?"
"I dunno, I guess."

THAT is my point, and I think Teknogeek's as well.

I'm an Admin. I've seen this in action for 7 or 8 years.

Re:Wizard's First Rule:

[opkool]

Actualy, is all about the OS being pre-installed.

Take a look at this article:
Linux for Mom and Dad

This article "kills" a myth: only geeks can use Linux.

When reality says: only an expert can install and configure Linux or Windows so anyone can use it

This is why Microsoft is so against Linux being pre-loaded on computers, as seen recently.

Re:Wizard's First Rule:

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

Regardless of whatever anyone is trying to see, the simple fact remains. People who have better things to do than understand UNIX deserve freedom too.

Re:Wizard's First Rule:

[Lemmy Caution]

People are lazy (yes, there's stupid ones too). They don't want to LEARN anything new.

How arrogant. Many - most - people don't want to learn all that much about a computer. My Mom, for example.

My Mom, who, at retirement age, is beginning a 3rd career as a landscape designer, who takes dance lessons, who got 2 Master's degrees in her forties, who travels regularly to Europe and Latin America, who studies botany, history, and languages. She doesn't want to learn vi to get email, but don't dare say she doesn't want to learn anything. That you think of the computer as the horizon of knowledge is really very, very sad.

Re:Wizard's First Rule:

[DavidTC]

It's because, all too often, computer specialists end up working for people who don't know anything about computers, but still see fit to dictate rules and regulations about them.

It's akin to you hiring a car mechanic on staff and only telling him to buy parts from Sears. And that all vehicles must use the same viscosity motor oil, and that none of them can have functional cigarette lighters.

And it's fucking annoying. If someone is a specialist, they probably now more than you about what you hired them to do. (Otherwise, you'd be doing it.) Let them do their job. If they say a Linux server will work better, let them us it. If they say open document standards would benefit the company, let them set them up. Etc.

As for Linux on the desktop, it really depends on how much computer experience you have, and, forgive me for saying so, how smart you are. If you've used windows for the last 8 years, and learned it by rote, Linux is a bad idea. If you actually understand Windows and what it's doing, Linux isn't so tricky. If you don't know any OS, Linux is just as easy to learn as Windows, whether you learn it by rote or understanding.

NewsFactor

[prostoalex]

As usually, the article comes to the conclusion that it's mostly lack of applications that hampers Linux, more than anything else.

Re:NewsFactor

[ftumph]

What I thought was the most interesting is that this conclusion is quoted from one of the professional analyst companies, when this story in CIO (actually a link off another CIO article that appeared in Slashdot a couple of days ago) talks about how they a) often don't know what they're talking about and b) will have whatever conclusion they are paid to have.

Toast?

[PigleT]

"Linux on the desktop is toast."

Takes two to make a desktop work.

I'm running Debian/unstable, blackbox, mozilla, and a few multi-gnome-terminals, oh and emacs21, here, oh and the box is using XFS on LVM just for fun as well.

Do you think the author would know one of these if it bit them on the bum?

People ought to define this idea of "the desktop", because I keep thinking people mean "it's got to be accepted by mass corporations", for no good reason.
If there's one thing I've fought AGAINST it's getting the clueless masses involved in linux in any way; I am so not interested in fielding "mummy, if I click here it segfaults!" on usenet it's incredible.

Re:Toast?

[Colin Winters]

I think one of the problems with linux on the desktop is that people want to see features they know from windows, and don't care about other useful ones. Last week I saw my friend's mom and brother complaining about linux because he hadn't set up anti-aliasing yet, and windows had it. But Windows XP wouldn't work with his cable modem, so it wasn't even worth booting into, but they still ragged on linux. The problem is people don't care about cool things like exporting displays or multiple windows- they've been conditioned to believe the only things that are important are things Microsoft gives them. Up until MS used anti-aliasing, they couldn't care less about it, but now it's the end of the world if it's not there.

Colin Winters

Bad Logic

[tapiwa]

One reason for enterprise is, 'You have the source code; if it doesn't work, you can fix it.' But the fact is, if I'm an enterprise, I don't want to fix it. I want somebody else to fix it," Goldman said.
This is a sign of bad logic. Because I want to be able to pay somebody to fix it, I need the source.

The CTO of BigCorp is not going to hack code, but he wants to be able to pay someone *lots_of_money* to fix it so it works for his organisation. The fix might be becuase of a problem unique to his situation... (we've all seen how some programs can break OS), and so not on top list of priorities for whichever co built the software.

With closed source this is more difficult.

An interesting analysis, and a good point

[Brento]

"I believe that if you supported the desktop side more and there were more Linux desktop users, you'd sell more servers," he said.

This is exactly how Windows invaded the enterprise: it was easy for businesses to buy into Windows servers simply because they looked & felt just like the desktop OS. Newbie network admins loved Windows over Netware because they could quickly transfer their knowledge into the server room.

Fast forward to today, and Linux is trying to invade from the other side. Suddenly, this guy makes me realize that it's just as if we were trying to get Novell to the desktop - it wouldn't have worked either, even if Novell had a desktop OS.

Then it's good news !

[mirko]

10 years ago, people were reproaching Linux with its lack of drivers and now, some whine about its lack of applications...

I guess it'll soon be fixed once people express their needs instead of their "états d'âme".

And BTW, the loudest ones are also the ones that are supposed to pay for apps, so, let's give money to Sun or Ximian or whoever develop corporate stuff and we'll soon have more than enough Office Suites, etc.

Of course, the others who actually work with Linux on a daily basis just didn't remark such lacks and, for example, are happy with the light-weight Ted when it comes to view/edit/print RTF :-)

VERY basic stuff

[hashinclude]

It looks like the article is more of a "i came, I saw, I wrote" stuff than a properly well researched article. The major (only?) things the article keeps pointing out is the "Lack of applications" and "No company pushing it"

Linux for the desktop is another matter. Its wide-scale adoption is still treated with skepticism by experts, who say that for consumer-level users, simply configuring Linux to dial into an ISP (Internet service provider) is a challenge.
What about KDE and GNOME diallers? Both work great.

But what hampers Linux the most, according to analysts, is a lack of applications that can run on the open source operating system.
I think what they mean is a lack of Microsoft Office Compatible applications. However, what about OpenOffice and StarOffice 6 (though there is a very brief mention)

"All the system vendors are pushing Linux on the server side, [but] there's really no large company that is ... pushing Linux on the desktop," Claybrook said.
Looks like Mandrake , RedHat et al. have been forgotten?

Well, Well!!

[ScottKin]

Can you say "vindication"?

I'be been saying this here for the last year, and I get modded-down or left in neutral, on top of getting diss'ed by Linux fans.

NOW will the Linux community wake-up to reality, or continue to delude itself that Linux is great for the desktop today?

Linux: Great Taste for Servers, Less Fulfilling on the Desktop.

ScottKin

Why do programmers choose windows?

[nordicfrost]

At work, a newspaper, the desktop publishing system is being changed. They have used Sun SPARCstations in the past, but changed them for Dells when they got too expensive. The Dells Intel structure isn't very stable with Solaris and crashes quite often it seems. Now, even worse, the Solaris is being phased out and Windows is in (!) with remote X windows. Is it just me or is this a perfectly stupid descition?

It turns out that CCI, the DTP company, don't want the clients to run on Solaris, but on windows. That sounds fucked up. Why can't they port it to Linux, which is somewhat native for the app? And easier to deal with in a crisis?

Off the horse, sir

[Anonymous Coward]

"People" aren't "stupid" - but not everyone that could benefit from using a personal computer has had the benefit of being intimately familiar with one for years or decades, unlike most geeks. The Macintosh didn't take off in academia because the scientists and professors that took to it were too "stupid" to master the alternatives.

Unnecessary complexity does not appeal to everyone. Most, as is obvious from sales figures, are willing to sacrifice the extremes of utility, security, configurability, etc. in exchange for ease of use. View this as heresy if you like, look down on those "stupid" people all you want, but the fact is - most adults lead complex-enough lives as-is. If I hadn't been hacking UNIX for the past 20 years, there's no way in hell any Linux distro would appeal to me over MacOS or Windows.

People aren't necessarily stupid just because they can't be bothered to learn complex new OS environments for negligible gain (for their purposes, not yours). Most people just want to look at the mummies, and despite the museum curators' infantile protesting to the contrary, not learning to interpret hieroglyphs doesn't make them "stupid".

Re:Off the horse, sir

[The_Fire_Horse]

While what you say is fair, I must say that anyone who uses a computer for any length of time (in a business at least), should be trained.

Not Word, or Excel or graphics - but TRAINED HOW TO USE A DAMN COMPUTER

It doesnt really matter what OS they are using, the basic *understanding* is the same.

1. If I type shit in, I need to save it somewhere
2. The shit that I typed in, is saved in what is called a 'file'. This file exists in a folder/directory on the hard disk.
3. Just because I printed the shit out, doesn't mean it is saved
4. I need to make a backup of the file from my hard drive, because hard drives can - and WILL - fail.

People aren't stupid, but if they use a computer - they really need to LEARN the very basics of it.

Managers are NOT excluded.

Re:Off the horse, sir

[ethereal]

To use scissors, you do have to understand the basic concepts of "put something between the blades" and "squeeze the handles". You do have to understand that if the little bolt that holds the two blades together gets loose, then the scissors won't work as well. So there is a certain amount of functional knowledge about a tool that is needed to successfully use the tool.

Thus it is with computers - you have to understand that they are an information storage and processing device, that there are certain things that must be done in order to activate the processing and/or storage capabilities, and that like all machines they will fail eventually. Considering the trememdously increased utility of a computer versus a pair of scissors, I don't think that the additional knowledge required is too overwhelming.

Something that has occurred to me.

[Genjuro Kibagami]

You know what, Linux is going to win, period, end of story, no further debating, it is not an issue of if, it is an issue of when.

I've figured this out due to an earlier assumption I made about netscape, I thought, jeez, with the massive installed base that netscape currently enjoys in the www market, IE has no chance, no matter if it's free, especially considering that the early versions of IE, probably up until about 4.x were actually enormously worse than the comparitive time based offerings from Netscape, a lot of people at the time shared my opinion.

But, as we all know, IE won, and is probably about to be overtaken once more by gecko.

The reason IE won isn't bundling into the desktop as so many people like to think, it's because of a few things that it had going in it's favour over netscape and these few things that it had going over netscape, linux currently has going over windows, plus some.

1) Microsoft was giving away their product for free, as much as you like to blather on about TCO and crap like that, it's a simple fact that this matters, I've implemented corporate wide solutions before and seen people blanch at licensing fees for commercial software, especially the exorbitant rates which microsoft charge, and people are looking at ways to cut these costs, Microsoft could afford to give their Browser away for free because they had a whole bunch of other products still making them money and providing them with a nice fulcrum to leverage the www market.

Linux, is basically invincible, you can't kill it, you can't target the company and choke it by removing it's revenue sources, it doesn't matter if it's not a commercial success, there's nothing that you can do that will stop people from making linux a better mousetrap time after time after time, and it does get better, with every iteration, it's amazing just the difference between RH6.2 and RH7.2, what do you think will happen by the time we have RH8.2?

In this respect, Microsoft has no come back, there is nothing that they can do in the long run, short of making linux illegal (touch wood) that will stop it from eventually destroying their monopoly.

Disagree with this single point all you like, but ask yourself how much people would be willing to pay for a car with metallic paint which cost 30,000$ vs a car which they could simply get for free and was just as usable as the original option.

2) Linux, unlike MS IE, is actually coming from a technical position of strength, if you all remember the version of IE that MS first put out, you'll understand where I'm coming from here, IE 1.0 was a joke, it was completely laughable, there was nothing even remotely in it that was percievably a threat to the dominant browser.

In the modern OS market, Linux vs Windows from a purely technical standpoint without the UI issues results in a resounding win to Linux, I will grant that application, driver, and even debatably User Interface is superior under Windows, but if you think that is going to remain the truth forever, I advise you to look back at humble old IE 1.0 vs the current offering from netscape, and Windows XP vs. the latest RedHat distribution, I think you'll find the gap to be quite significantly smaller.

Judging Microsoft's recent business initiatives I am beginning to think that perhaps they're hedging their bets on the windows hegemony with the .net initiative and Xbox, etc, it leads me to believe that they have also considered the possibility that over the long haul, they just can't compete.

Anyway, the article, oh yes, the article.

Bunch of fucking hacks.
;)
Cheers
Genj

They are so wrong

[CanadaDave]

But when it comes to Linux on the desktop, experts' tone is less upbeat.

"Linux on the desktop is toast," said Goldman.

"Pathetic," Claybrook noted.

These people, whoever they are, don't know what they are talking about. I think the prediction that Linux is toast on the desktop is so far from the truth. I wish the myth that Linux is for servers and Windows is for desktops would stop. That categorization only looks at a few features of each OS. Sure Windows IIS Web or whatever the hell it's called sucks, and Apache rules. And Windows ease of use on the Desktop for doing stuff like web surfing and general file handling is far better than in Linux (IMHO). But I think that in general you could use either one for server or desktop and do just fine IN GENERAL. It's sort of how you use it, not what you use.

But about Linux's potential for the desktop now...

After switching to Linux as my desktop OS just a few months ago, I've come to realize that Linux can do almost everything. For example, just today someone sent me a link to a 7 MB DivX home video. I was in Linux at the time, I have dual boot with Win98 but I like to stay in Linux. I had installed a DivX program in Windows a while back called The Playa, which comes with the DivX codec. But I wanted to see if Linux could play it. In Mandrake 8.2 I looked on the distro CDs and found "aviplay" which has just added DivX support. I installed it, and it showed the video clip beautifully. This could not be done this easily in Linux before. For example, in Mandrake 8.1 I don't even remember finding anything for DivX on the CDs, unless it was hiding somewhere.

Another example of things that Linux can now do: Ximian Evolution is quite an amazing program. It is a total Outlook clone but still, it exists. And Ximian Connector which allows it to connect to all that Microsoft crap.

OpenOffice and StarOffice are now being included in the Mandrake distro for the first time AFAIK. OpenOffice is almost identical to Word as far as I can tell (they are still missing a few features, but those are of course being worked on as we speak). I just noticed the other day the OpenOffice Writer even has reviewing capability. I also think it is better than Word in many ways. It is far better than WordPerfect, which some people believe it or not, still use. I find that inserting pictures and figures into my text with OpenOffice gives me 10 times fewer headaches than with Word.

The things I still need to run in Windows: Microsoft Money 2002 (GNU Cash has far more potential, it's system of handling catergories and accounts is far superior. I just haven't bothered doing to switchover yet), Mathematica (although I could buy a UNIX version of this), Matlab (don't actually need this anymore because I have GNU Octave for Linux. That's about it. I'm thinking of looking into Wine in the next few months to try and run any of those programs in Linux. Wine development is pretty heavy apparently and it's getting better all the time by the sounds of it.

That's the best part about Linux and open source. Development is so much quicker when it really matters, for things like Mozilla (it has MathML before IE did), KDE (which is just getting better exponentially), and the kernel-type stuff as well, which is always on top of the latest hardware advances (USB was a litte slow to come, but I think it is getting better. Look at ATA133 for example). I think Linux has gone as far in two years as Windows did in 5 years. The best is yet to come. Windows can never win. It is programmed by a bunch of people in Redmond who aren't really in touch with the customers as much as they could be. Linux is programmed by the customers/users themselves. The open source model works, and it is what has made Linux the best server OS and will make it the best desktop OS in the future.

GUI design newbies making UI's for linux newbies

[Ilan Volow]

Most linux programmers come from a developer community that up until recently hasn't been tasked with designing user friendly interfaces or has even considered UI design very important. For almost 30 years, the target audience for unix software has been either other unix geeks or servers, and human non-geeks never really figured into the picture. We keep hearing "Linux has already gotten so far on the server, it's only a matter of time till it gets as far on the desktop". It is incredibly naive for the linux development community to think that any of its attitudes, design values, and methodologies are going to carry over from the server to the desktop. Linux got as far as it did on the server because linux programmers were the absolute best kind of people you could ever hope for to do server stuff. Unfortunately, they are the absolute worst kind of people you could ever sent to do desktop stuff.

The reason why MacOS X is currently the most successful unix desktop is that the mac development community has always been very committed to designing usable and consistent interfaces. They don't have 30 years of anti-newbie, RTFM baggage they've got to get rid of, and no one has a problem saying the word "folder" instead of "directory".

To get to the point that the mac community is at, linux developers will have to undergo a radical attitude debugging. The problem the linux development community faces is not a technological problem like the kind they've had in the past, but a people problem. Unfortunately, fixing people problems are a hell of a lot harder than fixing technological ones.

Re:Linux on the Desktop is only beginning

[billsf]

Here in Europe, people are going out of their way to get out from under M$Windoze. I've found FreeBSD and Linux emmulation and Gnome make a fine desktop -- even at work! Integrated 'office applications' are being developed, but that isn't very interesting since all the features of "NT" and alot more can be found in any Unix. Just that they aren't integrated into lame packages like "Office" and "Outlook". There is no great demand to develop a Unix equivalent of "Exchange" as it will probably fall into dis-use in a fairly short timeframe.

On the server side, there is no excuse not to use Unix. Some customers want "NT" so they can hire low quality, low paid workforces. Firewalls at the provider proxy all input and output, so the end users are actually talking to Unix which is talking to "NT".

The remark in the FreeBSD handbook that it costs 100x more to run a "NT" server is no exageration. It is well justified for providers to charge upto 1000x or so more for "NT" services.

IMO, it would be better business to train people to use computers and pay them. Presently there is a very high turnover in the low paid "NT" office user section. A very large organisation here in NL is actually paying over 100k Euro a month to a provider so they can hire semi-skilled, computer illitterate labour from the street. People who are well paid and given challenging work tend to stay far longer than 'people off the street'. This is a very bad, shortsighted business model and "NT" seems to encourage it and somehow convince managers it is the right move.

*"NT" is a generic term for any Microsoft product, generally Win2k today.

Linux is great, but there ARE flaws

[bildstorm]

Ok, I started off with a blatantly obvious statement that can be said about just about any software. I have yet to find a piece of software that does more than one or two things that doesn't have flaws. (Kudos to those out there who have done it. Too bad I haven't seen it.)

Anyway, I know even from a server position that there are issues with memory management and garbage collection that make Linux unwieldy at times. We use it, but we also know that sometimes we have to reboot systems. Yes! We reboot Linux machines because we haven't coded around the lack of features. We easily have RAM allocated on our machines and then can't release it easily for other applications. Oh well. Rant, rant, rant.

I see the posts about Aqua and how Macs are so great, but I hate that I can't customise Aqua to how I want it. I hate the big bulky bars. Yeah, Apply MAY have been really great, but I think they've lost touch with people now, and are fighting a losing battle of trying to control. Microsoft may be a big bad behemoth that has wielded a lot of power out there, but at least I can customise windows to some degree as I like it.

As far as getting applications onto Linux, it's not that hard. Support the companies that are building good IDEs! Get better and better documentation written. If you wonder why widget X and Y hasn't been built to work with your application, perhaps your documentation isn't so good. I found this with our own developers in that we had lots of docs written by our developers ostensibly for others, but only really targetted towards themselves. No one had any idea beyond a basic presentation as to what our apps did as standard features and how they could be configured.

And for those trolls who love to bash anyone who's not a great tech geek, well, I'm sorry, but someone has to pay the bills. And people who design those pretty boxes and that cool anime and write a lot of great sci-fi books, scripts, and so on, tend to not be the most technically oriented people, and they don't like fighting to get an OS to work for them. If you don't have the user base, you don't get the supporting tools, and without the tools, you can't easily increase the base. The Linux user base has to reach critical mass, and not only in the server area.

OSS works. But bad attitudes and bad practices by the self-appointed mini-evangelists (i.e. trolls) who would rather engage in idealist wars than work together have hurt OSS more than Microsoft or any other corporation. There are very few idiot users. But there sure are a lot of socially inept engineers.

Does Closed Source Work?

[nagora]

Funny how these people happily ignore all the problems of closed source apps, isn't it? The security issues, the continual upgrade payments, the bloated system requirements, the worry of the company dying and support drying up. Not to mention the cost.

The most pathetic thing in the world is a prisoner what spends their time rationalising about how much better off they are than those poor saps that have to pay for rent and food outside.

TWW

Re:Does Closed Source Work?

[nagora]

*Cough* KDE or Gnome + Star/Open Office *Cough* A combination which will bring a machine to its knees

This is true, that why I use WindowMaker. Yes, WindowMaker for all your desktop needs. The problem with KDE/Gnome is that they are repeating Windows' mistakes in the belief that users can not cope with change when in fact what they really can't cope with is not getting their work done. This error has led them both far down the bloat path.

Star Office is moving away from the "load everything at once" approach but does still have some way to go I'll admit.

But, on Linux you have the choice to use something a little more svelte if you want to.

TWW

An example

[Anonymous Coward]

In my hospital, different sets of proprietary software are used for path results, patient records, radiology reports, etc.

A unit head had become frustrated that he was paying his registrars to do hours of work collating the data from the various (incompatible) sources before each ward round. (paying doctors to do paperwork is expensive ;)

He reasoned (correctly) that it SHOULD be easy to make a little program to collate the data. But the vendors weren't prepared to talk to one another, or to give advice on how their systems worked. Quotes from the companies to do the work were exorbitant.

If you have the source, little ad-hoc, specific additions are cheap and easy. If you don't, vendors can hold you to ransom and demand as much as they like.

The logic seems clear to me, but there is a lack of (production quality) open-source code for such applications.

Re:No open source, please, we're British

[Courageous]

Not to flame you, but until someone cracks the problem of making actual cash money, you know, the stuff that buys groceries and houses and cars (spending venture capital is not making money) then there will be no open source industry.

It's already been cracked. What's happening is that software service companies... companies that make money off selling their workers for hire on a contract basis... are using the product of open source code as a market descriminator for their services. This is in tune with the larger-scale socioeconomic realities: we are becoming a service economy. Open source is actually well-synchronized with the changing economic landscape by that standard.

C//

"Linux Not Ready"-discussion of the month

[bankman]

"With respect to enterprise computing, analysts agree that for smaller projects that do not involve mission-critical elements, there is room for open source software, such as Linux."

Excellent, that's probably the reason why we don't see any Linux rendering farms in digital FX companies or Apache on webservers of e-commerce outfits.

Every month or so some creep winds up telling us that opensource or Linux is not ready for whatever. Who cares?

Regarding the lack of applications, only one thing can be said: Do it yourself or help others to do it for you, damn it!

There are opensource developers out there who actually listen to what you have to say. It's not "If you build it, they will come", but rather "If you tell them, they will build it right." Well, depending on how you do it. Most developers of opensource projects where thankful for useful comments and at least tried to implement the feature suggested. How often do you see Microsoft responding to your inquiries? Hell, they don't even give required security patches in a timely manner.

The problem IMHO isn't the acceptance of opensource software, but rather a complete misunderstanding of the opensource processes and the way they can be influenced by anyone with at east half a brain and some decent manners. That's still often enough a problem with managers (I am one myself, and I have seen enough of those already), especially at large corporations: "I WANT X, Y AND Z!!!! AND I WANT IT YESTERDAY!!!" rarely works in opensource. Hmmmm....., it doesn't work anywhere else either, but gets rarely noticed.

I love this quote as well: ""[Linux] just doesn't easily plug into the management framework," Goldman said. "The applications aren't standardized. When that level of standardization occurs in terms of applications and management tools, then I think Linux will get there. "For now, it's great when you want to tinker," he noted.

Yes it is great if you want to tinker, because you can. With most closed source products you have to tinker as well to get it running the way you want, but alas, you can't. Instead you get any number of consultants in who will then tell you, that you have to reengineer your business processes (if you can't pay for the software customization) to fit the software. While this is sometimes a very good approach, this is often enough not the case. With opensource a company, even with a limited budget, can influence the developers of OSS projects and maybe donate hardware, money or whatever else is required. Yes, it might take a little longer and cost is hard to predict, but so it is with business process reengineering.

The real reason most companies don't use it...

[zerofoo]

It's right in the article:

"There are different reasons why people advocate open source. One reason for enterprise is, 'You have the source code; if it doesn't work, you can fix it.' But the fact is, if I'm an enterprise, I don't want to fix it. I want somebody else to fix it," Goldman said.

That about sums it up. Most corporations are not in the software business; they have IT staff, but not programming and development staff....just guys that maintain and secure the servers and networks. These guys aren't going to desk-check all the code for buffer overflows and the like, they just want to install it, configure it, and apply security patches that the software developers wrote.

This is not an unsolvable problem; hopefully Redhat and other Linux vendors will eventually get the respect / trust that other commercial OS vendors get from the business community.

Re:Bad Logic - Not so Fast

[CrazyLegs]

As a senior IT guy at a Very Big Corp (and former geek) I must humbly point out a few errors in your logic:

• I do not need the source, I need a support structure (i.e. a vendor) who has the source
• I'm not willing to pay "lots_of_money" to fix something I already bought from the vendor
• closed source or open source - no matter. As soon as I pay for support (under the above rules), it's closed source. Let the vendor worry about it.

Now, folks may not agree, but this is the way it works. Big corporations are in the business of doing their business, not maintaining an o/s (unless that is their business). Fact is, there's no such thing as "free' in the corp world. Corp wants to pay someone else (under an SLA) to maintain stuff. Where Linux is concerned, they want to (1) buy licenses from a vendor and (2) buy support from a vendor within an SLA. Any other arrangement does not work.

That said, I would love to exploit Linux desktops (and I'm considering that option for about 21,000 OS/2 desktops I have today). Why? Because I think it could be cheaper than going the M$ route - assuming vendor support is there. My biggest risk is the lack of applications (with support) and lack of peripheral vendors (with support). However, the picture is getting clearer and I have hope.

Re:Bad Logic - Not so Fast

[Chris Burke]

That may be the way it works, in IT.

In engineering, there's more to life than fixes and support. It's about doing things, creating new things, using your tools to get things done. You might have software that you would like to perform some function, but the vendor is under no obligation to provide that function for you. You can apply pressure on the vendor, and if they get enough of the same kind from enough companies, maybe the next release will have it. Or not. But that doesn't help you if you want to get something done before the next release. Having the source code is an invaluable asset for an engineer.

Re:Bad Logic - Not so Fast

[Fjord]

Havign been a serior IT guy at a mid sized corp (and present geek), I must mubly point out a few errors in your logic:

Many open source projects have support structures that have and know the source well and you can pay to apply bug fixes and enhancements.

You can pay lots of money now or you can pay lots of money later. Either through licensing it then forcing the vendor into making changes, or deploying it for free and purchasing changes. There no clear win either way. Sometimes one way works out better, sometimes the other way does.

closed source or open source - it does matter. Patches on open source come from all over (this is not an open source myth, it really does happen IME). Closed sources comes only from the vendor.

Maybe it's because I was in a only a mid sized corp and am now in a small one (I prefer smaller companies. Just a preference), but when you are that small, the vendors don't care about you. The business of business is business, but if you can't get the changes you need for your infrastructure, then you aren't able to run your business in the ways you need to.

I will certainly say that using open source is more of an advantage the smaller you are. You can get changes you need easier, and the amount spent is O(1) so it scales well as you grow. It also has advantages when you are a behemoth, as you can afford large projects to taylor everything just right, and you don't even have to share those changes with competitors (remember, GPL just means you share the source with who you distribute the code to). If a vendor puts in an enhancement for you, it's typically enhancement for everyone, unless its custom work.

Which is really just how open source works.