Why Use Free/Open Source Software?

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...."

Comments

Re:Yes among webservers

[magicslax]

[Yes among webservers] which are (mostly) run by people who know what they're doing - however the general public has yet to embrace this concept and have open source OSes running at home & in the workplace in numbers big enough to matter.

It matters that the concept has been adopted by people who know what they are doing. The ellusive 'desktop market' may or may not follow suit, but that doesn't really have to be an issue. A community composed primarily of competent members can survive without the masses. (Do i sound like a linux elitist? Bah. I appreciate efforts like Lycoris to bring FS to the general public, but I realize that their success or failure won't affect me or my computing future.)

The article is missinformed.

[tshak]

Microsoft publicly claims that OSS/FS (in particular its most common license, the GPL) will eliminate innovation

Microsoft has been publically opposing the GPL exclusively (nor particularly), and supporting (through action) Open Source via the BSD and "Shared Source" licenses. This is very similar to Apple's approach as well (although Apple has obviously taken it to a much farther level with Darwin).

Indeed, recent court cases give strong evidence that the only reason the proprietary Internet Explorer was the #1 web browser was due to years of illegal use of monopoly power by Microsoft.

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. If there where better alternatives then maybe everyone wouldn't have flocked to IE. Now that Opera is up to par it's gained incredible marketshare (especially considering the fact that it's a commercial browser). And, the 3MB download is not inconvenient on most any modern connection.

Indeed, when examining the most important software innovations, it's quickly discovered that Microsoft invented no key innovations

I thought this was about the benefits of Open Source software, not some poorly documented anti-MS troll fest. Too bad this article won't be taken to heart by many. The blatent bias in some areas discredit the author.

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

Re:The article is missinformed.

[Bobzibub]

...supporting (through action) Open Source via the BSD and "Shared Source"

Has Microsoft supported BSD by contributing any code or resources? I've heard they incorporate the BSD TCP/IP stack but to the best of my knowledge, that's the extent of their 'support.' 'Support' might not be the right word. 'Use' maybe.

'Shared source' is perhaps better termed 'viewed source' because the word 'shared' implies that the sharee gets the same benefits (but perhaps only a smaller proportion) as the sharer. Viewers get the right to view but they do not get any benefits beyond this in the sense that a BSD or GPL'd licence allots to them. Certainly they do not get to profit directly from this code, just from the knowlege derived from viewing it.

From these two points Microsoft appears to oppose licences like the GPL only because they do not receive any direct benefit themselves.

I have no problem with them using or even making money off of BSD code, for that is what it is intended to do. For them to ridicule other licences under the guise of the caring about the economic well-being of society is deceptive, and overly selfish.

Btw, please tell me if they do contribute code or resources to a BSD project that's code they use (in which case one cannot fairly say the above.)

-B

The Funny Thing About Statistics and Anecdotes

[Carnage4Life]

On the first read, it looks like most (not all) of his points boil down to IIS sucks compared to Apache and Windows NT sucks compared to Linux. However, these pieces of software taken by themselves do not really say anything about the quality of Open Source versus Proprietary software in general.

One could easily write an article on the poor quality of Open Source software compared to proprietary software if the comparison was Oracle vs. mySQL, Apple's OS X GUI vs. GNOME/KDE, Photoshop vs. GIMP, MSFT Office vs. OpenOffice, etc.

Basically statistics and anecdotes can be used to prop up either side of the argument if one so chose.

However, the article does do one thing well for dispelling anti-OSS FUD by providing a clear, high visibility example of where Open Source Software competes very well with proprietary software. Thus FUD like, "OSS can never be of high enough quality to compete with proprietary software" ready for primetime although dying can now be completely killed by pointing such FUDsters and their victims to that article.

Re:The Funny Thing About Statistics and Anecdotes

[Malcontent]

Well here are a few.

I use Apache because I prefer it IIS. I especially like the proxying support.

I would much rather use PHP then ASP. I trie dusing ASP and it made me want to stick needles in my eye with it's horrible error messages and inability to return values from functions. PHP is just a pleasure to use and as a bonus I get to benefit from thousands of pre-written applications for free.

I prefer Jedit to any commercial editor I have bought or tried.

I love mozilla and prefer it over IE on my windows machine. It's faster, it has more features.

I love debian. It gives me tingles every time I use it. I know it does not do everything as well as windows but it does many things much better then windows. I find my self cursing windows every day that I use it, I never ever curse debian.

PostgreSQL is the most fun any database geek can have with his pants on. It can do so many things SQL server can't I don't know where to start.

So if anybody wants to write an article start with those. Also touch on Zope, Jabber and the slew of projects residing on the Apache.org web site.

Oh yea one more thing. One fo the things I like most is that there are no restrictions. No weird licenses, no restirctions on the number of CPUs or the number of people who can connect, no forced advertising, nothing at all. The freedom is addicting.

The Budha once said the best thing in life is a clear conscience. Using open source software allows you to live with a clear conscience, it makes you a better human being.

Re:The Funny Thing About Statistics and Anecdotes

[mvdwege]

Basically statistics and anecdotes can be used to prop up either side of the argument if one so chose.

Oh, like you did in your 'Open-Source-is-not-so-secure-after-all' fluff piece? Based on raw data that was disavowed as unusable for analyisis by its own source?

Mart

Re:Free as in pirated?

[Planesdragon]

That's actually a good question; if I hadn't allready commented, I'd mod you up for it.

MS et al actually gain from someone pirating their software rather than using OSS. Many people I know of priated MS Word, and if they didn't learn it this way and get used to it this way, they'd probably be using OpenOffice or whatever was cheapest for the jobs.

The fact is, software piracy only "hurts" the comercial software industry in the way that me walking into a store and not buying anything "hurts" the store. Counting non-certain purchasers as "lost sales" is a logical fallicy that's propagated to grant powers of asinine enforcement, and outrageous legal fees.

Isn't the fact it's free...

[galaga79]

Isn't the fact it's free reason enough to use it. Being a poor university student, who earns a measly $11 AUS (or $6 US) an hour for answering phones for Pizza Hut I don't exactly have much money to splurge on software. So if need a tool to get the job done I will try to find a free alternative. Sure I could pirate software but that doesn't gel to well with my conscience. Which reminds me, I think it's time I started personally thanking free/open source coders for what they provide.

Re:Free as in pirated?

[Tyreth]

Piracy actually helps proprietry software. For that reason I wish it wasn't possible.

When people pirate software they help that product establish a monopoly. More people install it, the firmer entrenched it becomes. Imagine the next version of windows being impossible to pirate through some subscription service. How many people around the world would there be who would:
a) continue to use the older versions indefinately
b) convert to an open source alternative because they can't afford the new product

If people always paid for new versions of Microsoft products (or any other company) I think the product would eventually fail, or certainly never hold a monopoly - or make computers available to the elite few.

This is new?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked, this was all the same information we already knew.

I'm still waiting for the article that covers how people will start making *nix something worth developing non-networking style apps.

I personally don't give a damn about OSes. Just considering the whole point that everyone seems to cheer about, "Open software! Selling software for money is evil!" etc. etc. is a bit irrational.

I cannot personally think of aCompSci major/graduate who goes through 4-6 years of college, a few tens of thousands in college bills to walk out and say, "I'm going to develop software for FREE!"

I think the whole concept of StarTrek's utopia has diluded too many.

What about donations for payment?
Well, just consider the fact that all people are cheap. Wish to contest this? I cannot personally think of a single person who would pay ANY of their bills were they setup on an "honor" system similar to donations.

I do agree that linux has potential, but until people start putting effort in as many non-network oriented areas that they can, I don't see much happening.

"But Macintosh is switching to *nix"
They didn't have that much software to begin with. What's really changed? Well we finally got an OS that will USE the great hardware that is inside. (I always thought Mac's worst enemy was its toxic-waste-like-OS.)

If linux is to start moving on I personally think this short little wish-list would make a large impact.

1) start producing an installer. Most people are beyond lazy. Unpacking 150 different flags is far to combersome for the average joe. Joe doesn't care about how cool you are for writing a program. He also doesn't care about running setup. If you're after a model, think that your software is going to 100,000 clones of homer simpson. If his fat fingers can't get it to work, you'll be losing sleep with those phone calls.

2) Get to work on a DeviceDriverDevelopmentKit. Start to streamline the whole process. Show that "free for all" spirit by offering free kits which include a CD (with libs, OS and extras) with a cat-killer book. (Personal experience) It comes down to a choice, I can pick through the haystack of linux articles for writing a driver, piecing paragraphs together to form an almost complete picture. The other method is to write WDMs. Yes they're probably more of a pain to code, but there is documentation in strict bounds. The documentation is there. Driver Development Kits are there too. Want to get a One-Up on MS? Go above and beyond their idea of service.

3) (The one you guys will really hate.)
Setup a means of getting paid for software development. GPL is nice and dandy, but this is the real world kids, we all have bills to pay.

Thats my 25 cents. If *nix is to become real competition to Windows owned by "that huge market share," it must start placing effort on simplicity and usability. Linux is already beautiful in the respect of what customer's take for granted: Stability. Time to work on the front-end.

Anti-virus software cost should be included in TCO

[knorthern knight]

This paragraph was in the "security" section of the referenced article, but it should also have been pounded on in the TCO section...

> Virus infection has been a major cost to users of Microsoft Windows. The LoveLetter virus alone is
> estimated to have cost $960 million in direct costs and $7.7 billion in lost productivity, and the
> anti-virus software industry sales total nearly $1 billion annually.

1) You don't pay for antivirus software for linux (what viruses ?)

2) You don't pay for your IT people to deploy it.

3) You don't pay support contracts for continuing updates.

4) And of course, you don't lose productivity due to downtime.

I'm not denying that linux *SERVERS* can be cracked, especially WU-ftpd (bleagh). But end users opening email does *NOT* cause the same problems as Outlook. We don't have major worries every time we open an email (Yes, there was a buffer overflow in an old version of Pine). Any distro that enabled backtick expansion and allowed auto-execution of email scripts would be laughed out the door. But Windows Scripting Host continues to exist.

I don't think a lot of people get the article

[Kunta Kinte]

I'm seeing some highly modded posts saying "this is OSS fud!"

I think that's true, although fud is a strong term. It's OSS marketing, and marketing is ugly. I know most people here are tech types and don't have the stomach for it, but it's a necessary evil. This same type of resource has existed for commercial software vendor interest for years, and all we say is "well that's to be expected".

I was happy to see this page, and I hope more of this papers are written in the future.

Now when I go up against those guys who seem to have a Microsoft default answer to every IT question that comes up, I have some documents to show the boss.

We're not all techs. You can't argue to a suit using the same logic that would make you popular on slashdot. And I bet I'm not saying anything you haven't figured out yourself.

I think the more, well written, scientific papers that the OSS community produces on specific topics, then the better for adoption of OSS.

Microsoft and others have billion dollar marketing budgets, what does OSS have?

http://splint.org - write safer C code.

Why?

[4444444]

Becuase of course