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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...."
it gets better and better.
We should use free software because it uses JPEG image format.
I passed the Turing test.
Wow, and I thought I had a lot of time on my hands.
1 Its cool
2 Its slanted towards nerds: we actually GET the cool interfaces and technology
3 It is, of course, in direct disagreement with the EVIL EMPIRE, Microsoft
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I use it because its free and generally isnt bloated or some with spyware or third party offers. (AOL icons, REAL ONE, etc) I don't really think the product is better. I would just rather deal with a crappier product without all the annoying bloat then a bloated good product that fills my computer with SHIT.
this is a joke. do you people not have a sense of humor?
Normal is a setting on a washing machine.
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.
Video Game cheats, hints a
Looking at a bunch of graphs deoesn't explain why I use Free Software solutions. Apache's market share might be impressive, but that's not the reason I use Apache on my server and linux on every box. I use Free Software because I like what Free Software has to offer. Even the article's "Non-Quantitative Issues" doesn't adress user preference. Gnome just Feels Good to use and would likely be my choice regardlesss of any superiority of licensing or cold hard technical superiority.
I don't see why people need to make these generalities.
"Open Source is better"
"Propietary is better"
whatever. just use what works.
blah blah. I don't feel like finishing what I was going to say.
don't mod me up.
"when life gets complicated, I like to take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner" - Hobbes.
Why use free/open source software when you can get the commercial software for free?
We've all heard how software pirating hurts the commercial software industry, but how about the cheap bastards that would otherwise be using free/open source applications?
The Red Pill
Open source would be nothing with out corporate source. Companies create new ideas and uses that idea to make a profit. Then the open source community makes it better and makes it free. It is really just that simple.
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.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Congratulations on what may be the first post during the dreaded Slashdot Blackout.
To answer your question, some of the people who were here a minute ago had no sense of humor, the Blackouters being self-important whiners that they are, but those who are here now generally do.
And, no, I don't think this is a good way to kick off "Quality Week", please moderate accordingly. I just couldn't help getting a jab in at their expense. Especially since they've sworn to not respond for at least a week! Heh!
And the nay-sayers, etc, etc about weither or not Linux is going to make it. It certain does give statistics and quantive measurements to make a good analysis of what is going to happen with Linux and it looks positive. I'm glad to see that there's something that PHBs out there are going to read and go "Hey; they're for real! I gotta get a Linux stradegy."
Karma whorin' since 1999
Why Use Free/Open Source Software?
Um, I don't know, maybe because it dosn't cost anything?
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.
Good to see stuff we've known / suspected for some time backed up by real data....
:-)
Looks like Slashdot has been particularly up to speed in that department today - given stories like this one.
Am I a hipster-doofus?
Well...I guess maybe #1 because it's free, however, it is often times hard to setup if you don't know anything about computers, but that's not who it's aimed at, neh? #2 Would probably be because you can do what you wish with it. Customize it to your pleasure! Don't you wish you could do that with your girlfriend?
First Hemos posts a story about how optimised JPGs are good for webpages, now a story announcing that OSS is popular and viable. Today's the day I can submit "Microsoft might be an evil monopoly" and I'll finally see my nick on the front page!!! Booyah!
"If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password." KB Q293834
The majority of the information provided by the given document is generally based on studies provided by other organizations, the most of which being magazines, news sites, and web stat sources. However, the spin put on such results by the author is rather one-sided, throwing the original interpretations to the win in favor of the author's interpretation of numbers alone. Similarly the document pretains almost solely to server software, and argues present usage and future potential, rather that presenting feature-to-feature comparison. I hate to be a rather biased critic, but the "study" could have been titled a bit better.... perhaps to reflect that we're not really considering consumer-level applications.... and, for that matter, that little actual comparison is done between software packages rather than their users.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/Embedded/sak/eval uation/compare/advantage.asp
Don't you ever think to yourself... we do this because we can. As a community of competent tech heads we create software that's powerful and useful for others like us, who know how to use it proper.
As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter whether big business or the public in general catches on. Do we really want this beautiful stuff dragged down into the sewers? I'd say, don't get overzealous about encouraging industry or home users to get into the game.
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.
aus.music.scrapbook
To the average Joe six pack, XP is the same or better. Not to us of course but for playing games, reading MS Word docs or Ms Excel sheets, to browsing the web with MS IE, its just plain better then free alternatives.
Notice that I use the word MS alot. That is the problem and the reason why linux will always remain a niche. As long as Microsoft continues to control its not one but rather several monopolies the situation will not change. It doesn't matter if you can't setup a secure web server or do any real hacking with it. Joe six pack wants to process his Excell sheets at all costs! To him its the whole reason is machine even exists. What about Crashes? What crashes? XP is pretty stable for non server use.
To Joe, he just reboots or shuts down his machine Why for example should my mother switch? I can't give her a reason. She knows I use Linux and knows its more powerfull but Windows serves her purpose of checking her email and browsing the web alot better. The problem is that all the pc's come loaded with every ms package under the sun including office. To the average user MS-Office is part of Windows as IE is. Star Office can not touch it. TO Joe the best spreadsheet is Excell and the best word processor is Word, so Windows is the best platform. At least for %90 of the population. TO remove it would be to dumb the machine down to just an internet terminal.
I am not saying windows is better. If you all read my posts you all know that I do not like Windows. It just happens to be made by idiots for idiots and will always talor to this market. But believe it or not apps can make or break an os and really is part of the platform. I like to keep linux and freebsd around for their killer app. Namely Apache.
http://saveie6.com/
Holy shizzle, man, do you really think it matters to everyone whether companies are at "the top"? It's not all about profits :-)
Microsoft puts at least millions of dollars into their [web]servers and the plain reality of it is that their server product is technologically inferior (especially security wise) to another piece of software made by a bunch of hackers.
Revised as of April 16, 2002
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
Windows sucks, Linux rocks...
/. JJ.
Is this anything we didn't know before?
Not to mention, this article is old news. I remember reading this a while back. Is Cmd Taco getting amnesia? Because most stories about the superiority of GNU/Linux, I get as references from
Anyways, I love MS' section in their reasons on why to use Win2k that says "MS' license is better, and simpler".
LOL, yea right. The EULA, a more desireable license than the GPL? Laugh out fucking loud. One section from MS' page on why to use MS stuff says, "an Nvidia developer wrote drivers for GNU/Linux using some free code, w/c he didn't know was GPL'ed; then they had to redevelop, incurring extra costs." First, good for Nvidia, doing what's right. If they make something, and it -- either unintentionally or intentionally -- includes GPL'ed code, they have a moral and legal obligation to either not publish that, or re-write without the GPL'ed code. Second, notice how its MS that was whining, not Nvidia. No one forced Nvidia to re-write the drivers. They could've released them under the GPL.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I've probably seen hundreds, no, *thousands* of "Why open source is good" by Mr. James T. Linuxfan articles posted up in this mofo. Why another one?
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'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Working in security, I've been thinking about a similar line as Schneier for a while. Liability is what makes business go round. Software companies need to be held accountable for their mistakes, and made to pay.
But how do we protect some dude who simply sent some code out into the open for free from a lawsuit for millions of dollars in damages because of a bug he made? Simple:
Software companies are only liable for the software up to the amount paid for the software. In other words, if I download RedHat v11.2 and a bug within Sendmail 17 gets my machine r00t3d and my data lost it's my fault.
But if I paid $759.95 for the Datacenter version of the same and am supposed to be getting support I'm damn well getting my money back.
This would at the same time promote free software and guarantee the quality of software we all pay for. Of course there have to be limitations, and other such things, such as necessary registration for locating you to publish fixes. If a customer is notified and sent the patch and still they don't apply it, I mean, at least there was a good effort on part of the company. That could be money off the final lawsuit, or something like that.
Just imagine - my company buys one box of RH and pays $70, therefore RH is only liable for RH. My company buys a site license for Windows for a million, and Microsoft is liable for a million. Talk about a nice incentive.
-Jack Ash
I was about to say exactly the same thing before realising you've already said it, so instead I'll just support your comment.
The "real data" in this article is nothing more than statistics that are being presented from a biased source whose primary intention is to prove a point rather than fairly weigh out two options. It wouldn't be difficult to find alternative "real data" that supported Microsoft and other closed source alternatives in the same way. In effect it doesn't say much useful about whether OSS is better than closed source.
Any given business really needs to evaluate the options for itself before it can know what the most appropriate option is. Maybe they'll decide open source is a good choice, it it might not be, but at least they would have done a proper evaluation instead of living off the lobbying that's now coming from both sides.
If this article is useful for anything, it might be to convince someone that OSS shouldn't be thought of as a write-off that's not worth considering.
why you ask....
i ask why not?
other OS's will have a problem gaining substantial market share. I forget who it David Voies (the DOJ lawyer) before the MS vs DOJ trial and he said that the government had the wrong issue in the trial and that preloads was the smoking gun. He was right. These should have been banned along with the per-processor fee that MS has charged (known as the MS tax).
Because I said so, damnit!
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
Remember that quality products sometimes do not enjoy large market share (OS/2, Sybase ASE, Linux) while others which may have lesser quality have large market share (Oracle, MS Windows, MySQL). Because of this, someone without knowledge that Linux is 'cool' or 'Oracle is bloated' will mis-read the statistics. I would include them as an anicdote but should not be relied upon. I was reading on MySQL market share data which counted an 'install' as simply someone who has downloaded the software!! How can that be even close to the actual number of MySQL servers in production (the number which should really count and can only be found by doing legwork)? Again, another reason why 'market share' is a BadThing(TM) to cite as a reason. I love open-source (Linux and PHP especially) but remember that if I'm finding fault the *anti-s* will easily as well.
Thanks,
--
Matt
The major advantage of open source rather than proprietary is that, because the source is open to all, it can be criticized and improved by all rather than being let loose in a "good enough" state.
The "best" route for producing reliable, feature rich but unbloated software is to have one man (or a small group) produce it to a clear, well-designed, specification, have it thoroughly tested and have it marketed inline with its design.
The best model for doing that is probably the proprietary one but, in the absence of an altruistic corporation able to act as "benign dictator", open source is as good as it gets.
I would like to bring to the attention of my fellow Slashdot readers some troubling news: Linux is being used by Al Qaeda, Abu Sayyaf, and other terrorist organizations with equally cool sounding names as an affordable and powerful tool for purposes of recruitment, passing coded messages regarding planned terrorist operations, and other insidious purposes. I will attempt to show some of the more obvious proofs I have discovered to back up my arguments.
I am sure I have only scratched the surface of this disturbing conspiracy. I strongly urge the Slashdot readership to support American companies such as Microsoft who only hire patriotic American citizens and to boycott any company which is involved with Linux (as they are directly supporting terrorists). I sincerely hope the CIA or FBI can look into the actions of open source developers. People like Linus Torvalds should be taken into custody and have all assets seized.
Act now before it is too late!
The demographics suggest MS will loose out in the long run (yah,yah...Keynes...in the long run we're all dead). World demographics support the development and use of OpenSource/FS and, perhaps sooner than later, OS/FS will hold the same advantage MS now has in file monopolies as per MS Office. Once that critical number of users has been reached the question of why pay for proprietory software will become a killing point. Mr. Gates envisions a world wherein all countries and their peoples will bootstrap into the american dream of a 'perfect' capitalist system, but it ain't gonna happen. I suspect what will happen is that proprietory software will have to sell security bigtime and generate closed communities of users who are willing to pay to know their online data has the best possible security and who knows what other highend goodies. The 'world domination' of OpenSource/FS is not a joke it's a demographic given but by then MS will probably have a lock on the big dollar accounts.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
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.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
This might have been a credible troll. But...
It turns out that its just this article, with "heterosexual" subistituted for "black", and "NAMBLA" substituted for "Ku Klux Klan". This also explains why the acronyms as displayed in this plagiary don't work.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
You got your history wrong. IE only started becoming a better browser around the time Microsoft had basically managed to destroy Netscape's business model through bundling and dirty tricks. Of course, a completely demoralized Netscape couldn't do what was necessary and compete with Microsoft.
It has taken open sourcing Netscape to counter Microsoft's dirty tricks. But the open source strategy has been successful. IE development has largely stalled, and Mozilla today is a better browser than IE.
No need to read Linux Today, everything has already been posted to Slashdot.
Hogwash. After the LoveBug wreaked havoc on Cyberspace and many articles pointed out that Microsofts monopoly of the operating system makes it as vulnerable to viruses as the entire state of Kansas when planted with a single breed of corn would be vulnerable to diseases, Microsoft, in the person of Bill Gates himself, wrote a rebuttal. The rebuttal was printed in in a newsweekly, I forgot whether it was Time or Newsweek.
Essentially, Mr. Gates defended his company's monopoly by pointing out that it enables Microsoft to create innovation and provide value to its customers. The very same premise you expounded in your post, by the way. Naturally, Professor Gates needs to provide an example to his wide-eyed students in order to drive the point home. Now, guess what MS innovation did Professor Gates provide by way of example? The spreadsheet?, nope, Visicalc invented the spreadsheet. Wysiwyg word processing?, no way!, Wordstar was doing wysiwyg back in the days when Billg still counts himself among the hackers of Basic. The graphical user interface?, no, XEROX PARC invented that one.
Give up? Bill Gates provided the toolbar as primary evidence of the innovation that a Microsoft monopoly benefits the world. I laughed myself silly after reading that one.
no thats just semen on your hands
All my classmates are Joe Averages. Before I held my lecture about Microsoft and it's monopoly, they were hardcore pro-Microsoft fans.
I convinced a few of them to try out Linux. So they downloaded and installed Mandrake Linux 8.2, and think it's great. One of them has WinXP, but think Mandrake is better/faster/more stable.
Of course, like any good work of art, it's not done. There are a few things I wish he'd change. The top of my wish list is that he should just start calling it "open source" and be done with it. "OSS/FS" just is too confusing a term, and the abbreviation is almost as bad. Ys, I respect the concept of "Free Software" and the people who prefer that term, but "open source" sells the stuff much better. Next, I wish he'd break it up into separate pages instead of all one page. If the problem is that he wants a single printable page without having two texts to maintain, that could be worked out with a little Perl. David, if you're listening, I'll be happy to help out with that Perl.
Miko O'Sullivan
I use commercial and frre software (fro example Bea and Apache).
The quality of Open Software is high and in some case the commerical software look poor.
But commercial software must provide more support: some software house do not provide so much tutorial or docs on their software!!!!
This is very very dangerous: why I must buy something with same quality of open source and with worst doc-quality?
-- Giovanni Daitan Giorgi http://gioorgi.com http://www.siforge.org
I remember way back when I decided to get IE and Outlook Express, etc. This was shortly after the 4.0 browsers came out for both IE and Netscape. The big reason I dumped Netscape was because if I tried to use it for mail and browsing, if the browser crashed, my mail would crash, and I had a POP3 account, and occasionally lost mail because of that.
Now, you could argue monopoly in that perhaps if Netscape knew how the OS worked better they might have been able to build a better browser that was more stable. But then again, I doubt it. The 4.0 branch was bloatware and was focused on having opposing standards to Microsoft, who was also building tools, unlike Netscape.
Now, Mozilla, on the other hand, makes me happy. I have standards support and I can count on a browser that runs on multiple platforms. I'm waiting for a full release for Windows so I can dump a slick fast version on my work machine, which (unfortunately) is bound to use Windows (for now).
As a person who loves Linux and the open source community, I have to say, that I chose IE as a chose between two CLOSED SOURCE applications (IE and NC), but now I prefer an open source browser (Mozilla).
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Even the navy rely heavily on NT and...you get what you pay for.
The Yorktown lost control of its propulsion system because its computers were unable to divide by the number zero, the memo said. The Yorktown's Standard Monitoring Control System administrator entered zero into the data field for the Remote Data Base Manager program. That caused the database to overflow and crash all LAN consoles and miniature remote terminal units, the memo said.
I'm sure he was just checking up on bugs "hey what if I feed this thing a zero" when he suddenly rendered a 2billion dollar ship virtually defenseless and without propulsion. Something a 2.95$ calculator would avoid.
Oops.
Anataka suki desu. Itsumo. Itsumademo.
--
perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
Even if the msie-crash.txt file was named msie-crash.html but there was "Content-Type: text/plain" in HTTP response headers it should be displayed as plain text, and in fact I was sure that this IE bug is only present in exactly such a situations. I'm really surprised that if MIME type and file suffix (the main data type indicator in MS software) tell the IE that it's a plain text, it still tries to render it as HTML.
It's a very serious problem if you want to make an HTML tutorial website, having links such as: http://tutorial.host/example/foo.html and http://tutorial.host/source/foo.html where both foo.html are just symlinks to the same file but you set up your web server to send "Content-Type: text/html" under /example
to show how it looks like
and
"Content-Type: text/plain" under /source
to show the source.
Not to mention problems with sending different MIME type to force the download and saving of file instead of displaying it (try downloading a 100MB flat text database when your browser wants to display it first). It's a serious problem and making all of the workarounds can be often a real pain in the ass (like when you have to display HTML source, as HTML page including HTML source with s/</</g etc.) because 90% of "web browsers" out there can't even understand a damned Content-Type header, the most important HTTP response header, present in six years old HTTP 1.0 specification (and with the Web, six years are the whole ages), and I'm sure it was used in pre-RFC, pre-1.0 HTTP much earlier (if anyone knows, I'll be glad to hear about the real age of Content-Type header - thanks).
OK, I'm glad you touched this subject. For those who don't know about it, let me quote HTTP 1.0 from May 1996: "HTTP uses Internet Media Types in the Content-Type header field in order to provide open and extensible data typing." and HTTP 1.1 from June 1999: "HTTP uses Internet Media Types in the Content-Type and Accept header fields in order to provide open and extensible data typing and type negotiation." It's not used without an important reason.
See also:
Very serious bug, I wonder when are they planning to fix it.
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
Why use open source/free software?
1. It's free. That's a no brainer
2. It's open, meaning people who are smarter and who have more time then me are improving it.
The Internet is generally stupid
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.
Funny thing is, OSS most probably reduces piracy in a major way, for the same reason it is eating into Microsoft's market share. Every great OSS application you go and download decreases your inclination go pirate some disgusting piece of bloatware for an OS you don't much care for anyway.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
On an unrelated note, could someone please recommend which license is better, the GPL or BSD?
As a IT director for a federal agency's site, I'm happy when someone takes the time to research and assemble a paper like this.
That the federal government has been married to Microsoft's technology in a big way, for a long time, is no secret. In fact, my agency is in the midst of a huge services rollout in which Windows and it's apps will be the centerpiece of all userspace activity.
In recent months, however, I've begun to convince people up the chain, in a small way, that the use of OSS provides better performance and a more secure environment than anything Microsoft provides. My location's small but important conversion has been to replace IIS servers with Apache/Linux boxes and a flaky, expensive NT-based commercial firewall product with iptables on Linux. All using existing hadrware and downloaded distributions and source, making the initial cost zero (thay have to pay me, no matter what).
Even people in a more visible portion of my organizational community are now praising OSS in print and in public for my community's evaluation. The use of OSS in some scientific endeavors gives it a legitimacy that I can only hope to provide.
Yet, there are still segments of the group who either aren't sold or aren't aware. A recent project installed at my site is a perfect example.
The project was a database system providing critical data for military pilots. Originally, it required SQLServer and a proprietary app built in VB, and required security holes in my firewall for access. When the project was taken over by another branch of my organization, they decided (after a lot of prodding from people like me) that the whole thing needed to be web-based. Use standards, we urged them. So what do they do: they stick with SQLServer, upgrade to W2K/IIS5, and build the whole backend in SOAP and ASP. They then insist that we make the server SSL capable (now a requirement for all web servers in our agency). Yet, the organization that issues certificates hasn't figured out how to accept requests from IIS5 yet.
Stubborness like this (or perhaps a lack of understanding) just makes my quest that much more difficult. Which is why I appreciate the paper, warts and all. I can overlook the minor flaws and the accusations of an OSS bias, since the quality of the arguments is too strong to ignore.
Joe Dougherty, Florida, USA
The words I thought I brought, I left behind. So, never mind.
The Apache chart confirms what most of us know - Apache Rulez! When you combine Apache with
PHP,
Perl,
MySQL/PostGreSQL
you can build anything a website would need - with minimal overhead and almost zero maintenance. How can you beat that? Bill?, .... Bill?
Nevermind - he's off patching some new security hole in the emmenthaler of all software.
I do have a concern with the first table comparing OS usage in that there is no mention on the 'doze line of XP.
I don't follow things_gates but when did XP hit the street?
Was the lack of XP in the table a historical fact, an error in labeling or an artifact of data manipulation?
This is not a troll call - just an honest question.
I quite agree. I tried to install NT on a partition on my linux box (just to experiment). After 12 hours of downloading drivers and patches I finally got it running, only to blue screen when I tried to install TCP/IP. My RedHat installation took about 1/2 hour and everything worked out of the box.
As for the desktop, my wife (who has no computer savvy whatsoever) has been using Linux on the desktop for three years, and would not go back to Windows for any price.
Because we're all cheap.
In September of this year a set of FDA guidelines called 21CFRPart11 will start being enforced. These guidelines govern the way electronic documents are stored and validated in the Bio-Pharma industries.
While still a very interpretive document, it does specify that the software used in the electronic Submission of new drugs to the FDA to be held in escrow (presumabily the source as well). This makes OpenSource products very attractive to the submission departments of large Bio-Pharma companies.
I try to use OSS products where ever I can, but I think some people go way overboard. If there is a _good_ commercial product (Not talking about Ms Office) that has the features I need, I will pay for it. Think my idea is crazy? Ask Linus Torvalds why he is using Bitkeeper.
Matthew. Too many bloody matts, matties, matthews. Every second person in the pub is a Matt, so when someone asks me where Matt is, I say "which one????"
Chris/Christian/Kristoff
Mark/Marc/Marcie
David. Still loads about.
Danny/Daniel
George/Jorge - Georgeous!
Gary/Garry/Gareth
Carl/Karl. This was fairly unique, but then a whole bunch of them turned up.
Michael/Mike/Mikey/Miguel
Stuart/Stewart - yup.
Steve/Stefan/Stephan - a few around.
Paul. Less than there were...
Russell. A couple about...
Martin. There used to be loads, but there seem to be less now. Maybe they've all settled down and gone to live in the suburbs.
John/Jon/Jonathan. Hmm, less of them around these days too. A few Jans though (pronounced Yan)
Other names (one offs) - Spencer, Sam, Spike, Yakir, Damri, Marion (OK that does sound a little bit girly) Sergei, Patrick, etc.
See! doesn't match your list at all :-) Now just go to the official list of popular names are see how it compares - fairly similar I would hope.
Have you downloaded Netscape lately? It actually works quite nicely now (i.e., it loads decently fast now). Meanwhile, Mozilla 1.0RC1 is chock-full of bugs and incompatible with Netscape on the same machine. For those of us web authors who like to ensure that our sites run well on most browsers, being able to play well with other browsers on the same box is a requisite.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Although none the ideas are original, I'd say this article does a near perfect job of summarizing and referencing just about every possible angle from which to encourage people to switch from proprietary to Open Source / Free software. It also does a great job of debunking a lot of the stupid FUD that even many clueless slashdotters have been spreading recently. See section: "Unnecessary Fears" Nice to see that some people still think for themselves.
And best of all, the author is not even hesitant at recognizing that, in all reality, proprietary software very well may be going extinct, BUT that it doesn't mean the software industry is going to die with it.
Any of you tech industry folks, listen up: your bosses need to read this article ASAP.
1995? I still had hair in 1995. What the hell does evidence from 1995 or 1999, for that matter, have to do with the experience today? Isn't that what our industry is all about, rapid adaptation to evolving requirements? I sure feel good that in 1995/1999 open source software was great but I would feel much better if multiprocessor LINUX systems ran native threads reliably so I didn't have to use Solaris.
This is an interesting read (albeit too long) but it's ignoring the old axiom "show, don't tell." This article is almost nothing but telling. When open source software can be used to show people what can be done, what can be achieved, how work can get done, how it can save them money and time, then it will really take off. You can bang people over the head with all the factual and anecdoctal tidbits about why open source is preferable, but until you can demonstrate how it's comparable (or better), it won't mean a thing to the average user out there.
This is just the humble opinion of an outsider. I'm not a particularly ardent supporter of either open source or commercial software (although I understand enough to side mostly with the open source side of the issue.) However, I freely admit to being one of those "whatever works" types, and I'll bet most people out there are like me in that regard. For open source to really grab attention, it has to be demonstrated with real applications on real machines in real situations, not praised ad nauseum in yet another advocacy piece.
--Rick
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Why would you pay salaries to deploy anti-virus software that you didn't buy?
One can just see what happens when bigotry mixes with stupidity - this guy.
One can just see what happens when someone with a 1st grade reading comprehension level posts on slashdot - your post.
I have almost finished traslation of Mr. Wheeler's document to Czech.
Can we get an "AMEN!"? >;)
Becuase of course
http://Lenny.com
4 great justice!