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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...."
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.
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
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?
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
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/Embedded/sak/eval uation/compare/advantage.asp
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/
"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."
A blatant lie!. Netscape 3.0 was much better then IE 3.0. Nesscape 4.0 was better then IE 4.0. IE became usable by version 5 and it was integrated into the OS before that. By that time Netscape's air supply had been cut off and they could not afford to put too much money into further developing it.
War is necrophilia.
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
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.
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).
...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
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
Well, IE is technically not a browser at all. To call something a "web browser" it must at least adhere to RFC 2616. Well, MSIE does not. To quote the RFC:
Thus, a browser MUST adhere the Content-Type if it's given.
OK, now load IE and try to visit this site, or this site (warning: browser will crash). Note that the content type of these sites is text/plain and thus the text should simply be displayed on screen.
Therefore, IE6 is not a "web browser" and thus cannot be the "better" browser.
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
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!
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
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
It's amazing how religious "computer scientists" can be about technology.
Perhaps you would understand this better if you contemplated the fact that open source software follows the philosophies of science, while closed source software follows the philosophies of industry. Science is about gaining understand, improving humanity, and making things much better. Industry is about increasing profit. So why would it be a surprise that "computer scientists" show a great preference toward "science"?
What's most surprising is that we've managed to construct a society where there are a notable collection of people for whom individual profit is more important than improving humanity and making things better.
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.
Yea, I'm sticking with Mozilla too. But come, come. Netscape 6 is a rip of Mozilla? If it wasn't for the actions and funding from Netscape, Mozilla would not exist. Netscape using Mozilla for their next browser offering is how the system is supposed to work.
Granted - they began harvesting from the Mozilla orchard a bit early. The fruits are still a tad green for the public pallet. But that's their decission.
Meanwhile, Mozilla marches on. It gets better. And I gladly use it. And I thank Netscape for making it possible.
Could you clarify this point? Unless you've forgoten version numbers, I believe you're off. IE was built with code licensed from Spyglass (Mosaic). And, true to Microsoft form, it wasn't until IE3.x that they began to get it right and start gaining serious market share. And it was IE4 (and their introduction of the integrated browser) vs. Netscape4 (ie: Communicator - one had to go out of one's way to get just the browser) when it became clear Microsoft had gained the traction they needed and Netscape had began to stumble.
Perhapse it is IE4 that you're referring to?
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 felt the author was open and truthful about his biases, thereby increasing the credibility of the article. This was clearly a summary article written to encourage exploration of GNU/Linux, and as such did a fine job.
I believe it would be appropriate to compare this article with the myriad whitepapers offered by vendors in support of their own products. There's nothing wrong or bad about this, unless blatent lies are told. I don't believe Mr. Wheeler made any blatent lies in this document. It seems that Mr. Wheeler believes he can support every statement he wrote. If you believe he is lying and care enough to write a public comment denouncing his work, it would be appropriate and polite to challenge him directly. His email address is at the top of the article.
-Paul Komarek
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 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
A blatant lie!. Netscape 3.0 was much better then IE 3.0.
I agree. Netscape Communicator was Netscape 4.0. I was a die hard Netscape user until Communicator came out.
Nesscape 4.0 was better then IE 4.0.
Netscape was objectively slower. IE 4.0 was a bit buggy but a couple of point releases later it was easily as stable, if not more stable then Netscape. Netscape supported proprietary crap like the infamous LAYER tag, while IE supported the logical and W3C accepted "DHTML" standards. IE also had far better CSS support.
By that time Netscape's air supply had been cut off and they could not afford to put too much money into further developing it.
Yet, Opera, who's "air supply" is theoretically also cut off by MS's integration of the browser, is doing very well. It's faster then IE, it renders almost as well as IE, and is way more customizeable (pop-up stopper, more privacy settings, etc.). Sounds like they're innovating just fine.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
This is just a silly, nerdy, and short-sighted technicality. First, I'm comparing IE4.x, not 6. 6 is OK but I'm likeing Opera more and more each day. Second, an RFC is NOT a standard. Third, I could just restate and say IE4 is "better at web browsing" then Netscape Communicator - the same point is being made either way.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
I agree with most of your numebered points except for number 5.
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.
Netscape (which I used since 2.x) was free for educational and non commercial use. I personally did not know any (small) bussiness that paid for Netscape either. It came on most everyone's machines and/or you could just download it for free off of ftp.netscape.com. You might call this piracy, but I don't think people honestly understood that it wasn't a free browser. If this was their major revenue stream, they had a very poor business model and/or execution of said model. Finally, why isn't Opera dead? Netscape had 90%+ of the marketshare, Opera had zero, so Opera has an uphill battle, yet they are doing better then Netscape. Maybe because it's a better browser?
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
I think you misunderstood me. I'm talking about how people can be so unobjectively anti-MS (or pro-GPL). Personally, I like Open Source. I love what Apple has done. 2 years ago you could ask me and I would have said that I hated Apple - their hardware, and their software, and their fruityness! But, they've changed and made some awesome technology. So now I'm looking for a cheap G3 ~400 (got one?) to put OS X on. The author of the article was making unfounded statements like the GPL zealot he is. I think myself and many others that question the GPL would have taken the rest of his article much more seriously if it wasn't for this - that's all I'm trying to say.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
I think his point is correct, but for the wrong reason. As you say, Netscape never made a lot of money from the browser. Generally regular people were free to use it, but a buisness was expected to pay for it (like about $30 - not bad compared to MS office). Netscape mainly made money from Netscape Enterprise Server, although most people were only aware that Netscape corp made a browser. I think the publicity of Netscape losing the browser wars caused many to lose faith in Netscape as a company in general. The other MAJOR loss of revenue came indirectly due to the loss of marketsare - by means of the default homepage. Most people don't change (or don't even know how) their default homepage. For netscape this meant a lot in ad revenue, etc. Many have argued that AOL mainly bought Netscape for the portal Netscape.com.
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.
Opera is not "doing well" they are tiny company making a tiny amount of money. I agree that it's a far superior piece of software then IE (but then again so is Mozilla) but just because opera is surviving as a business does not mean they are "doing well". How much money did they make last year? Where does that put them in the fortune 500? They probably made less money then my local locally owned supermarket did.
War is necrophilia.
That's not the point. Relative to Netscape, they have done a lot better. This is because they have made a better product. Also, as much as I like Opera, I still prefer the way IE renders pages overall (esp. how it handles CSS). My main contention is that if Netscape had a decent product that there would be better competition. Now that MS is forced to allow OEM's to put alternative browsers (and other programs) on the desktop, hopefully Opera will do even better. So yes, MS's monopoly is a factor, I'm just saying that Netscape sucked and it would have died one way or another, while superior products ARE surviving in the current marketplace.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Becuase of course
http://Lenny.com
4 great justice!
"Relative to Netscape, they have done a lot better."
The things people say on slashdot really amaze me sometimes. Nestcape got bought by the one of the biggest media companies in the world for a gob of money. Their shareholders made a lot of money, their employees are now working for AOL/TW and you think opera did better then them? What criterea are you using to make such a statement?
As for NS the product there was no point in making it better. As soon as MS bundled it with windows the game was over. The folks at NS realized this and started marketing server side stuff and then MS started bundling IIS. Anytime netscape started marketing a product MS made sure they offered a competing one for free and forced all windows users to install it. In the end all they had left was the portal and AOL bought that. They did the best they could under the circumstances. Nobody can survive when a monopoly started giving away competing products. The people at opera had nothing to lose the people at netscape were beholden to their shareholders to spend all their efforts trying to find something to sell that MS wasn't. It's a completely different scenario. It would have been criminal for the CEO of netscape to continue to spend money developing netscape. In the end their revenues would have dropped to where opera is today (pretty damned close to zero) and netscape stock would have been worthless. The shareholders deserved better and as it turned out they got better.
War is necrophilia.