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Open Source: Facts and Figures
Eloquence writes "Much of the debate about GNU/Linux and open source is dominated by rhetoric rather than facts. David Wheeler has just released a new version of his "paper" (which, at 440,000 characters, is more of an e-book now) 'Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!'. According to David, this paper 'examines market share, reliability, performance, scalability, security, and total cost of ownership. It also has sections on non-quantitative issues, unnecessary fears, OSS/FS on the desktop, usage reports, other sites providing related information, and ends with some conclusions.' May come in handy when talking to your boss about Linux."
why indeed. look at these numbers. i'll no doubt me modded down as a troll or something but when the linux community can make a powerful desktop thats not SLOWER than windows2k/xp then i will switch.
Windows XP: 233 MHZ 64MB min, 300 MHZ 128MB recommended
Xandros: PII 64MB min, 450 MHZ 128MB recomended
Mandrake: 64MB min, 128MB recommended
Fedora Core: PI 192MB min, 400 MHZ 256MB recommended
SUSE: 128MB min, 256MB recommended
Sun Java System: 266 MHZ 128MB min, 600 MHZ 256MB recommended
Turbolinux 10F: 1GHZ 512MB recommended
Linspire: 128MB min, 800 MHz 256MB recommended
I just started my business and my first service is an ecommerce service. Driven with BSD, python, webware, postgresql and such. if i had to pay for the tools, i probably wouldn't have thought of it since it all started out as fun, but since this is now going to make some money, I realize that I want these tools stable and for the long run. So as I develop my system, I am writing documentations, I am testing these free software, looking out for bugs and contributing code to them.
Isn't it funny, how you are writing java. If java was a closed source system and expensive, perhaps you would not be eating due to it. It's possible to eat and give code for free. My appreciation for the fine qualities of the tools I have used have further inspired me to contribute to the movement.
http://www.dwheeler.com.nyud.net:8090/oss_fs_why.h tml
I may be too late though, as I cannot get to it myself...
[Posted Anonymous Coward as to avoid Karma Whoring]
You had to post this just as I got mod points, and was going to start using them in this forum...:).
I find what you have to say very topical, because I was in talks earlier today with an MD who holds a chair at a west-coast University who is interested in contracting me out to write Open Source code based on my Open Source, pure-Java jSyncManager Project.
Oh the parallels :). This project is receiving some public funding, so the doctors and developers currently involved are striving to use as much OSS as possible, and to release their custom code pieces as Open Source software. They want to contract my services to help them integrate handheld systems into their groupware/messaging applications they're building.
As such, it looks like I'm about to start getting paid to write Open Source Java code for the medical field. Yay for me!
Yaz.
Google Cache: www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html+&hl=en
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:c8XPqYPcEggJ
Sig
What University is this? My experience working and attending several in the United States is that they are open source friendly. Based on my cursory understanding of the student's proposal, I would guess it was shot down more because it wasn't pertinent to computer science. Just a guess.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
Um, the debate is OS centric because that's the core of a computer system. Without it, the rest is pretty useless.
Realize that any current distro of any importance has fast GUI's (more than one of them, unlike Windows) and built in support for CD burning and DVD burning (unlike my Windows box at work that intermittently decides that it doesn't recognize CDRWs until I've rebooted twice).
You clearly haven't used linux in a few years if you thing that ugly fonts and hardware issues are still the norm.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
I don't think IBM and RedHat are really "hiding" anything, since it's well known by anyone likely to pay for such things that this is how they make money. With that point out of the way, all large systems cost money to support and integrate.
Doesn't matter how much you pay for closed-source software, if you're intending to use it in even a small enterprise, you'll be paying more money to integrate it. And the company that sells you the software is probably also selling you the services to make it work. This was true when I worked for PeopleSoft, and it was the standard for the entire industry. The open source model is no different in that regard, except that it's probably cheaper to customize and integrate open source, because (a) integration is very important in open source for reasons I don't think I need to discuss and (b) you have the source.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
My experience has been the opposite. I see MS courting several universities, especially those that output top level engineers. Carnegie Mellon and other top universities get a lot more money from Microsoft than the FSF. My school held MS recruitment events several times a year at which recruiters would give away Xboxes and Visual Studio which students then resold for hundreds of dollars. In addition to that, MS supplied VS.NET at very low rates to the CS department to ensure that the next generation of programmers is proficient at .Net but knows as little as possible about Linux.
Years ago (6 to 8 years) this was the prevailing attitude, even in big research Univerities. Its not just MS that spreads FUD. I find lots of Unix people spread FUD about Linux, too. Some because they are just repeating what they heard, and others because they are afraid their 10+ years of Sun experiance is slowly going down the drain.
Think Deeply.
How many companies today are deciding between Linux and Windows NT?
Most of them. Windows NT is a product line that includes the following products:
Windows NT 1.0-4.0
Windows 2000
Windows XP
Windows 2003 Server
Asking that question is like saying most companies are looking at using RHEL, and then saying "How many companies today are deciding between Windows and Red Hat Linux?", as if "Red Hat Linux" did not apply to their new RHEL product...
Currently it would be very difficult to develop for the .NET platform using any reasonably priced packages. Reasonably priced compared to the amount of money you would like to make, that is.
.NET software is free. I can't think of a much more reasonable price.
.NET SDK, although I could be using Mono on Linux if I preferred, along with the sharpdevelop IDE, which I think may be Windows specific.)
Huh? Everything you need to develop
(I'm using the MS