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

Because it's better

[magicslax]

Good to see stuff we've known / suspected for some time backed up by real data....

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.

Free as in pirated?

[AndrewCox]

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?

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.

Why Use Free/Open Source Software?

[DanThe1Man]

Why Use Free/Open Source Software?

Um, I don't know, maybe because it dosn't cost anything?

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

[JimDabell]

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.

I'm not vbscript's biggest fan (I assume you are talking about vbscript, since asp is language independent, and so doesn't control things like return values). However, it's trivial to return a value from a function, just assign the value to the function name, i.e.:

function foo(bar)
foo = bar * 2
end function

response.write("10 x 2 = " & foo(10))

OK, so it's not exactly the clearest syntax, but it gets the job done. Error messages, on the other hand, also drive me nuts, since half the time, it reports the line number of the error as being '?', or in a completely different file to where the problem is.

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

Finally!

[Boiling_point_]

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!

And just for comparison ...

[__aasfhc1949]

Here's a link to a microsoft.com article on why the Windows 2000 Server is better than Linux:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/Embedded/sak/eval uation/compare/advantage.asp

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

Re:The article is missinformed.

[epsalon]

IE is a better browser?!

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:

7.2.1 Type
[snip]
Any HTTP/1.1 message containing an entity-body SHOULD include a Content-Type header field defining the media type of that body. If and only if the media type is not given by a Content-Type field, the recipient MAY attempt to guess the media type via inspection of its content and/or the name extension(s) of the URI used to identify the resource. [snipped]

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.

Re:The article is missinformed.

[burtonator]

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

Peace!

Kevin

Why?

[4444444]

Becuase of course