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Why Use Free/Open Source Software?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the quantitative-analysis dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes "I came across Why Use Open Source / Free Software? at Linux Today. As the author says in his intro: "This paper provides quantitative data that, in many cases, using Open Source / Free Source software is a reasonable or even superior approach to using their proprietary competition according to various measures." Good to see stuff we've known / suspected for some time backed up by real data...."

1 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The article is missinformed. by burtonator · · Score: 4, Informative


    Any objective person will see that IE was the better browser then "Netscape Communicator" and it was gaining incredible popularity well before IE was "integrated" into the OS.


    You are both wrong... There are a number of issues here.

    First off... there is no single reason why IE won the browser wars. It was a combination of numerous issues.

    1. Netscape was having Engineering problems by the time IE was released. Microsoft had an advantage because they started with a fresh code base right when everyone was learning from Netscape's mistakes.

    Netscape had plans for Netscape 5.0 but obviously this didn't happen (hint: keep reading)

    2. Netscape had near 100% market share of the browser space when IE 3.0 came on the scene (IE 2.0 sucked). Obviously the choice of an alternative made some people switch.

    3. Microsoft shipped IE 3.0 with Windows 95b (OSR2). This was making it into the OS on OEM machines VERY early on. At this point MS was gaining a lot of market share.

    4. Netscape 4.x sucked... face it. It did...

    5. Because MS was giving IE away for free (which has now been ruled illegal) this destroyed Netscape's revenue stream which essentially prohibited their future development.

    6. Microsoft started basing all their products on libraries provided by IE. For example IIS, Office, etc, all required IE 3.0, 4.0, etc. Even though they might not have had modern IE versions on base 95a and NT machines; this situation quickly changed.

    So anyway... yes... Netscape screwed up. They aren't perfect.

    The important thing here is that Microsoft really played hardball! ... the bastards broke the law and now are making a mockery of our justice system!

    Yes... Netscape sucked... but this was only a small part of the reason they lost!


    It's amazing how religious "computer scientists" can be about technology.

    It's not religion, it's politics! Quite frankly we need more people paying attention to this stuff!

    Peace!

    Kevin