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Open Source: Facts and Figures

Posted by Hemos on from the learning-more-about-it dept.

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."

5 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. why indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

    1. Re:why indeed by BoomerSooner · · Score: 4, Informative

      Why?

      You can get a 2.4GHz machine for $350 Dell

      Who cares if it runs on 1997 hardware? I want it to run well on todays hardware.

  2. Re:Open source is great and all... by Yaztromo · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. /.'ed by HavokDevNull · · Score: 3, Informative

    Google Cache
    http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:c8XPqYPcEggJ: www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html+&hl=en

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    Sig
  4. Re:At the end of the day... by ragnar · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

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    -- Solaris Central - http://w