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

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: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

Why?

[4444444]

Becuase of course