Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Explaining Open Source Software

Posted by michael on from the score-5,-informative dept.

scubacuda writes "Mark Webbink, Red Hat's general counsel, has written an informative article explaining free and open source software. Geared towards attorneys, he explains the various licenses and addresses several myths about OSS." One to bookmark.

1 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. Non-technical explanation? by heironymouscoward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about an explanation that works for suits?

    Something like this:

    - Open source and free software is like disk space. You used to pay $1000 for 1GB, today you get 1Gb for $1.

    - This is possible because the Internet has made communications so cheap that the traditional huge costs of making software - design, management and infrastructure - have been largely eliminated.

    - "Closed software" businesses like Microsoft would very much like you to continue paying 1970's prices for software.

    - But the fact is that your competitors are benefiting from high-quality free packages like OpenOffice, Apache, PHP, Linux, and MySQL.

    - You should really be switching your IT budgets from paying for software licenses to paying for support and custom development: this is the best way to keep an edge in the market.

    Every dollar spent on buying overblown commercial software that has a free equivalent is a dollar wasted. Are you sure you want to waste your money?

    --
    Ceci n'est pas une signature