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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."
this seems like something that needs the "validation" of print. It would make for a very informative read, clear up a lot of misconceptions, and not suffer from the "I read it on the internet" stigma. People are more likely to believe something if it doesn't glow when they read it.
More like War and Peace... :p
To describe why we don't need a lot of rhetoric to support linux.
I know "irony" isn't the correct word to use, but I don't feel like thinking of the right one.
To summarize: Some blowhard likes linux and wont shut up about it
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I dont need 440,000 words, and neither do most others. I use Linux because it makes me feel happy. And I feel like I'm in control.
That said, kudos to the wordy crowd too.
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
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
Cant help but notice that usability and features aren't listed. There's a reason I still use Photoshop. Its features and ease of use make it worth the price.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I work in a small medical device company writing java, and I could not imagine them using my software for free -- I need to eat too.
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
The article referenced does a fair job of displaying the info used. References are linked to, explanations are provided (I.e. the difference between "all sites polled" and "inactive vs active" sites when talking about market share). All in all, an article that raises many good points. Useful, from my perspective.
"Work is the curse of the drinking class" Oscar Wilde
You'll have rhetoric as long as you allow people to make sense out of facts... For example, the same fact (let's say, "source code available to the world") can be interpreted two ways: "More secure because it has been scrutinized by all sorts of people" and "Less secure because it can be scrutinized by every possible hacker."
What follows is the rhetoric...
I've developed both.
I'm not a disciple of either.
They both have their place.
As a wise man once said, can't we all just get along?
I can't even imagine where the web would be today without Perl, PHP and Python. Perl and Python are excellent CGI languages and PHP 5.0/5.1 is a great substitute for commercial products like ASP.NET in many cases. Small businesses and home users simply don't need all of the wiz bang features of something like ASP/JSP. OSS has definitely stepped in to provide a lot of power to the little guys who want it. Now Mono is rapidly becoming a viable alternative to Microsoft's .NET and Tomcat has been for a long time a very solid basis for J2EE web projects.
But perhaps the best thing about OSS is that it has helped to return a bit of an "ownership society" to software development. The GPL despite its problems says that it doesn't apply to you if you are just a regular user who isn't going to modify the code and redistribute the changed binaries. For all intents and purposes, you "own" that code until you do something public with it that takes commercial advantage of it without meeting the GPL's requirements. That's a hell of a lot more property rights-centered than a typical industry EULA.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
This is true. If it doesn't come in an overpriced management tome or as a summary in some slick corporate rag, not only will the PHBs not believe it, they probably will not even read it.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
a huge "paper" full of anything besides pr0n isn't going to be fun.
This P.I.G. will walk on the water, This P.I.G. will walk on the sea, This P.I.G. will walk whereever he wants.
The thing that gets me is how open-source vs closed-source debate is always OS-centric. True, you have Microsoft on one end and Linux OS family is one of the most succcessful open source products, but what's wrong with promoting open-source product on top of Windows platform?
OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox and many other products off the SourceForge.net have a Windows binary available for download. Windows itself provides great hardware support with almost anything imaginable out there, and has nice OS-level features like fast GUIs and built-in support for burning CDs and what not.
If you look at a Linux box and a Windows box, the price difference from the vendor is generally $50-60. If you use the computer for 5 years, the cost of Windows is $10-12 a year. What's the incentive to go "free" and deal with ugly fonts, hardware issues and other problems related to Linux nowadays?
Moreover, promoting open source on Windows nowadays would set the ground for switch to Linux in the future. Guess what - the aforementioned OO, Mozilla and other apps work exactly the same way either with Linux or Windows. Thus a switch to Linux later on would not require such huge re-education costs, since the user lives in app world, not in OS world, and doesn't care whether it's kernel32.dll or kernel.org latest version, that's running on his machine.
Numbers exchanged among people are also rhetoric, though clever. Quantative selections and qualitative exaggerations are equally misleading. Debate, as opposed to argument (or mere contradiction, or being hit on the head), requires consensus on facts, or at least values and rationale in evaluating statements. Marketers don't care about consensus, and most purchasers/consumers have a catch-22 with consensus before decision. What really counts is results. Especially because the cost of the switch itself, between any platforms, is so high, only when the benefit of one over the other is easily demonstrable will enough people be convinced to matter.
--
make install -not war
There would be no comments here, if we all R'd TFA. Too much reading for my small brain.
Google Cache: www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html+&hl=en
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:c8XPqYPcEggJ
Sig
I work for a company whose business is not software. We need a webserver, operating system, database, etc.
Sometimes, what comes in an open source package doesn't meet our needs, so I fix it. Sometimes I think others might want the same changes, so I submit them (like when I changed the behaviour of a device driver to be more configurable). Sometimes I don't think others would want the same changes, so I don't submit them (like when I made dbmmanage able to be called from a shell script).
I get paid to solve my boss' technology problems. OSS is the most flexible way to do that.
You fools! That's exactly what they expect! You can't fight the system playing by their rules! It should end with a tangent. Or an introduction. They'll never see that coming!
You damned fools, you've played right into their hands! We're doomed, doomed, doomed ...
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
I'll openly admit I didn't RTEFA. Still, through "critical skim" (a frequent management trick), this doesn't seem to be very persuasive.
GNU/Linux is the #1 server OS on the public Internet (counting by domain name), according to a 1999 survey of primarily European and educational sites
Interesting -- using a survey prior to the release of Windows 2000, XP, or 2003 server as the basis for trends today. Reading the article critically (as the hypothetical "boss" would), those numbers aren't as significant as the state of the world today. I may be completely ignorant to research turnaround, but doesn't it seem more recent data would be more relevant?
Consider this one as well:
GNU/Linux is more reliable than Windows NT, according to a 10-month ZDnet experiment
How many companies today are deciding between Linux and Windows NT?
Clearly there are reasons today that companies / governments / users are seriously considering OSS. However, to try to convince through comparison with 5 year old OS is probably not very effective.
"The phishing threats and the growing professional chorus of disapproval for Internet Explorer provide Windows users with very good reasons to turn elsewhere, even if only temporarily. But [OSS/FS] Firefox is so good that many will want to stay with it. And once they have tasted the power and freedom of open source, maybe they will be tempted to try 'just one more program'."
Sounds like a commercial for potato chips. However, I'll admit that I can't download just one OSS/FS product.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
I recently upgraded my cell phone to a Nokia 6620. This rather amazing phone has several hundred dollars of commercial software "bundled" with it. Each one has a trial one time use, then a need to pay a license fee, which can be $15 to 20 dollars or more. This market [micro applications on mobile and wireless devices] is growing very rapidly. For example, many companies now are discovering that almost 1/2 of their *entire* data communications, networking, and telephone budget is going into mobile and wireless. My question is what is the status of open software development for these new platforms? There surely is a great deal of money to be saved.
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.
Client demands Linux
No commercial OS alternative
Even if we have the chance to use it, the requirement is that we do not actually deliver Linux with our code (the customer must obtain the Linux OS themselves and provide a clause to protect the project should actual IP issues arise). Again, this is a legal department requirement. Guess this will provide some additional level of protection.
No one seriously belives that there are "legal issues surrounding IP claims in Linux"
As much as users would like to believe no IP issues exist, in the legal world this issue hasn't been completely resolved. We all await a final decision on this.
Just an FYI, the company I work for does not have a problem with Open Source or Open Standards. In fact we support both (my group has some level of involvement in the Open Geospatial Consortium actually).
As a small business owner these types of studies are interesting, but a write up on the use of open source (like OpenOffice) really drives home the strength of open source.
If true, you need to get better lawyers. The fact that party A has filed a suit against party B does not automatically mean that you are at risk, even if you use the product in question. Do your lawyers tell you to turn off all your lights when someone sues the a utility company somewhere? Do they tell you to stop eating fast food any time someone sues McDonalds?
More to the point, do they tell you to stop using MS Windows everytime someone sues Microsoft?
I didn't think so.
*laugh* That's right out of the astro-turfer's handbook.First of all, there's no "we" here--unless you happen to be an editor or a king of something.
Secondly, my argument about the implausibilty of SCO's case holding water had nothing to do with what "we" want or don't want. They have been ordered by a federal judge to produce evidence to back up their claims (evidence that they stated publicly that they had over a year ago). They have failed to produce even one single example of their copyrights being violated by linux, dispite the fact that they have had several years and many millions of dollars to search for one. It isn't a matter of what "we want to be true" it is a matter of drawing reasonable conclusions from facts that are part of the public record.
Nice dodge. Let me say it more plainly: if you are going to worry about nebulous hypothetical infringements of IP in using linux, why aren't you worried about the same in MS Windows? Espeially since Microsoft has a track record (again, publicly available information) of misappropriating other people's IP?Conversly, if you aren't worried about it with MS Windows, why should you worry about it with linux?
Again with the astroturfing.- It isn't about the cost of the OS; go buy Red Hat Enterprise retail for each system for all I care
- If you are really getting on the order of $200,000 per PC, even with custom software (sorry "wrapper code"), your margins are quite a bit better than the industry average.
- Closed source vendors (e.g. Microsoft) do not offer indemnification in any case (read the EULA some time).
- If your legal department has decided that it's better to get locked in to a pig-in-the-poke operating system from a company that is routinely convicted of criminal misconduct rather than use one of the many alternatives because evidently groundless claims have been made against them by a company that is funded by the vendor of the pig-in-the-poke, for the reasons you have given, they are idiots.
- I note that it is hard for an idiot to get through law school, let alone get and hold a position of responsibility in a multi-billion dollar corporation.
My conclusion:You're an astroturfer, and not a particularly clever one at that.
-- MarkusQ