Converting Users to Open Source- Why Do You Care?

mack knife asks: "Here's a question for Slashdot readers: Why do you care what web browser/email client/etc people use? What do you care if Firefox catches on or not? Why do some people feel the need to convert others to their pet applications? Personally, I am a convert to Firefox/Thunderbird, but I understand that many users are happy with their Microsoft products; I'll mention what I use and why, but I won't harangue them on their apps' shortcomings, nor will I try to push an unfamiliar open source app on someone who is more comfortable with a 'mainstream' product. Some open-source proponents can be quite obnoxious about this, and I'm interested to hear why it is taken so seriously."

Comments

I care because...

[esconsult1]

Not only because its not Microsoft.

• Firefox -- remove the windows spyware problem. Extensions! Tabs
  
• Linux server -- better able to manage stuff
  
• Thunderbird/Evolution -- removes the email spam problem
  
• Openoffice - Adequate. Free.

Whichever way you look at it, it just makes sense for most individual users and some business users.

Putting all the above stuff together for the typical corp so that it can be locked down and administered properly is not up to par with similar Microsoft offerings (Exchange, Domain controller, Active Directory) though.

That's what Microsoft just works better in the corp environment at this time. And no matter what you say, its not easy to convince others otherwise right now.

Re:I care because...

[Fade_to_Blah]

I understand your reasoning for Firefox...but you are trying to convert people to Linux Server by saying "better able to manage stuff". And you want someone to switch top open office because its "Adequate"? These are not very compelling reasons for people to switch to open source applications.

Re:I care because...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is modded insightful? More like "-1, Missed the point". The question was "Why do you care what products other people using?", not "Why do you think these products are better?".

Re:I care because...

[John Harrison]

I have two reasons:

1 - People ask me all the time how to clean up their system. I tell them to switch to Linux or buy a Mac, knowing that they will do neither. I then tell them that they need to never use ie again and start using Firefox, and update it when the red arrow shows up. So in these cases I'm not telling them because I care, I am telling them because they cared enough to ask how to solve their problem.

2 - Network effects. The more people that are using a product, the better it is. Even if my mom and dad aren't going to hack on Firefox, their choice of browser will show up in the logs of the pages they visit. Smart webmasters will make sure their pages work well with popular browsers. It is to my advantage for the browser I use to be popular (assuming it is secure).

Re:I care because...

[CSMastermind]

Those are all good reasons I'm sure but there are some key points that you're missing. First of all Firefox doesn't have a spyware problem simply because it's not used by enough people. What I advocate is that people install firefox on their system because if IE fails them they have a backup. I know I've used it that way, and that's why I put it on all the computers I fix. I care because it will make life easier for them and I want to pass the word along.

Re:I care because...

[thparker]

I don't necessarily agree with all those reasons, but I definitely push Firefox and Thunderbird. I care because I'm the one my family/friends call when an Internet Explorer security hole destroys their PC, or when spyware grinds the thing to a halt.

Re:I care because...

[mopslik]

And you want someone to switch top open office because its "Adequate"? These are not very compelling reasons for people to switch to open source applications.

But the upcoming OpenOffice.org 2.0 will be more adequate than ever!

Ummm...

Re:I care because...

[nickfrommaryland]

What I've noticed is that the average computer user wants a turn-key solution. They also want a solution that they are familiar with. Look at how many people are running Windows 98 still...

Open source projects, let's take Firefox as an example, are wonderful for the people who use the features contained therein. I love tabbed browsing. I love the extensions. Firefox is a wonderful product all around, but I take advantage of what makes it great.

On the other hand, I know for a fact that my mother, a very average computer user, is not interested in these features. She wants to get her email, read her online newspaper, and could care less about anything else.

I've learned over the years in IT that it's very difficult to convince people to change what software they're using. My philosophy has always been to let people use what works for them. I haven't used an MS product on my computers at home for years now, only because I don't need to. I love my Apple/Linux network at home. My mother will never use anything else but MS. She can do what she needs to do with MS products. There's no point in getting her to change.

Just my $0.02.

Re:I care because...

[numbski]

But the upcoming OpenOffice.org 2.0 will be more adequate than ever!

That's right, because it just went out and bought a huge SUV to compensate for its indequacies...

Re:I care because...

[freedom_india]

Individually speaking O/S programs work well as long you don;t want to them to work together with a similar interface.

Integration is today's buzzword and need.

Uniformity in all programs is what caused MSFT Office to succeed beyond its dreams.

Corel Wordpefect Office, Lotus Suite, etc., could not succeed for two reasons:
a) They thought they knew how to design products better than their customers. Companies which think they know more than their customers become extinct very fast. Irrespective of what people might say, Microsoft actually listened to people while building new versions of Office. They cared and actually respected customers instead of deriding them with a "i know all" attitude.

b) Word works with Excel, which works with Powerpoint to MY advantage. Iam sure COM was the result of Bill gates shouting at his Uber army of geeks as to why he must keep retyping his letter in another Office program.

Implementing O/S programs may give a warm heart feeling that i have fought and won against the "evil" empire.

The fact is the "evil" empire was not built in a day, and it was NOT evil all along. Somewhere it continued to listen to customers and aimed to give them what they wanted, instead of pushing what MSFT thought they wanted.

Companies like Corel (wordperfect), Lotus (Suite) stopped listening to customer once they started believing in magazine articles that stated they had "won" the desktop war or Office war. They had a stable income line and stopped support or took a "Holier than thou" attitude.

No wonder Lotus and Corel are nowhere today (except for Notes, Corel Linux), while Microsoft continues to win with its Office suite.

Keep it Simple, Keep Listening to customers and Keep it wickedly fast.

I have run Office on systems ranging from 64MB to 1.2 GB RAM and i have always felt MSFT made best of system provided and actually was faster than O/S on same systems.

Re:I care because...

[Rei]

Here's more "selfish" reasons:

1) Microsoft's abuse of standards. Honestly, it's a bit frightening to think of Microsoft locking themselves a monopoly using DRM-encoded Word documents. Microsoft often seems to try to corrupt everything that they touch to try and make it something that only works with their own products.

2) Vendor support: the more people that use Linux, for example, the more effort hardware companies will put into Linux driver efforts. More games will come out for Linux, there will be less companies that refuse to take your support tickets ("Oh, you use a web browser in Linux to connect to our bank? Sorry, we don't support that..."), etc.

Re:I care because...

[Steve Franklin]

If more people use "your" product, there's more chance it will survive, more chance it will interoperate with other programs you own, more chance it will even operate at all with other programs, more chance it won't disappear leaving you high and dry with legacy software... In the specific case of Firefox, I have already noticed that my favorite genealogy site has modified their display to work better with Firefox thus making it unnecessary to open the same page in IE. This becomes a more and more probable outcome the wider Firefox is used. It also leads to closer adherance to web standards by the "big guys." In short, in the software world, there are players and there are nonplayers. You want the software you use to be a player simply because it's going to be more useful to use if it is. And the only way to help make your software a player is to flog it with everyone you meet. At least, that's how I see it.

Re:I care because...

[RexDart]

Why recommend open source? The same reason I recommend books, movies, CDs and bathroom cleaning products to my circle of influence: I use them, like the results and anticipate they also would realize some benefit.

Given that criterion, however, I find it hard to recommend ALL open source to ALL people, even myself ; given that different needs and ability levels will make some software/OS more appropriate than another to any given user.

Re:I care because...

[kihjin]

On top of this, the more people that make use of Alternatives gives an incentive for the Competition to attempt to improve their product.

In this case, Firefox is gaining ground on Internet Explorer because of the various features it has over the stale browser. If Firefox hadn't of come out so strongly, Microsoft probably have not had any real reason or desire to launch a better browser, and thus there wouldn't be as much "hype" about IE7.

I'm not holding my breath, or anything, of course.

Re:I care because...

[Skye16]

But that isn't an appropriate argument for the question at hand. The question is "why switch", which implies that you already HAVE MS Office. In which case "it is adequate" is about as useful a reason as "hobbits have hairy feet".

Re:I care because...

[advocate_one]

"# Openoffice - Adequate. Free."

Sadly, I have failed at getting OOo in use at work because it has a heck of a job with the templates we've got in use. Those templates use a heck of a lot of macros and also make heavy use of sections and numbering... needless to say, I would have to go to the trouble of re-doing every single template doc from scratch to be able to successfully use them with OOo... and all the hassle of getting the new versions past the Quality department as approved documents for our iso 9001 system... currently, when I try using the existing templates, I get a heck of a mess when it comes to the numbering of paras etc... and going back and forth between word and OOo is not fun...

Re:I care because...

[jacksonj04]

I call FUD on your argument.

Firefox doesn't have a spyware problem because it hasn't had enough market share to make it really worthwhile.

Remember when Firefox would block every pop-up and pop-under in sight? Now people have found ways round it because Firefox has a fair chunk of the browser market.

Build it and they will come.

(Disclaimer: I'm a FF user and love it, but playing devil's advocate with zealots is fun)

Re:I care because...

[turbidostato]

"Why do you care what products other people using?"

Because, sometimes, their choice indeed affects me. Let's go with the tipical car comparations: It could be said that whatever car other peoples drive its their bussiness so why should I care if, say, model X brakes are known to be faulty, after all is them who will kill themselves against a tree in a curve... except when they don't crash against a tree but against myself, of course!

I do use Debian GNU/Linux so malware doesn't affect me... except by the ton of spam and mail worms I recieve from windows zombies; except for latency on my Internet connection when malware activity arises; except that some destinations won't accept mail directly from my computer since so much windows-based malware has made them block residential or dynamic IP blocks...

On the other hand, I have to take care about what hardware I buy (PDA, scanner, video cards and the like) since lots of them are not properly supported for Linux, and most of the time it is the cheapest ones; more Linux users would mean easy access to more supported components/gadgets.

Finally, let's return to the car comparation: even if there were no choice for the other car to crash against me I am a sensible person anyway, so it's my pleasure to avoid their pain if I can help to.

This is all from my "Linux fan" point of view. Let's put now my "professional hat": I do consulting for a living for soho and soho-like companies (a department within a bigger corp, for instance), and my client-base depends greatly on my own reputation. Specially with Microsoft, but it is extensible to privative software in general, there is so much I can do when things go wrong, but no more. For those that use mainly Microsoft environment I am basically an expends issue: from time to time, no matter what, a virus at some box, or an antivirus which hangs a computer, or an Office component which go nuts... for too many of these problems, once you applied the recipies there's not too much you can say but "well, let's talk to Microsoft" (and I am still waiting for the first time for them to resolve me an issue) or "time to reinstall". Not to talk about when they ask me "can [new feature] be implemented", and I have to answer "errr... yes, it will be some [big money here]". You see, mainly they pay me for things to stay the way they were. No surprise they don't see me with nice eyes.

On the other hand, when I can deploy open source solutions, I am on the drive site; there can be problems, of course, but they are resolved -and quite fast most of the time, never to return. I know I even have access to the source code if nothing else will do (and I restorted to that option in some ocassions). When they ask me "Is X doable", I usually can aswer them "Yes, open source solution X will do, at my standard hour fees". These people, quite on the contrary to the others see me as the friend that make their systems grow with time being always better and better and when problems arise, the one that always come with the solution.

Now, *I* am the one that makes things happen (so I take a merit that is not mine: obviously Wietse Venema merits much more than myself when I install Postfix and they have stable e-mail from that day on) in one case, but *I* am the one that fails too even when I say, "what do you want? Trying to correct a Windows 2000 problem is much alike to try to repair a car engine without the ability to open the hood, because in both cases I am the "human being" that they see around "doing things" and taking their money for that. So what should I do? It's funnier working with Linux and open source than with Windows and privative software, and my clients are more satisfied too, so no wonder I try to push open source on them!

Re:I care because...

[aklix]

Well it's adequate, we can push the masses to these products.

As most of you know, one of the big problems with Open Source software is the lack of compatibility. But if the majority of people are using Linux (or atleast a lot), then companies will start making software for it, and our penguin will be happy. However, without this compatibility, the internet may still go to the ruins with the viruses and spyware.

I guess overall, we want people to switch so that we play popular games on linux.

Re:I care because...

[alexhohio]

I think it is similar to vehicles in a lot of ways- Some people want a toyota- no style, but does what you need it to do most of the time. I prefer something different, something I can customize and add to (My 73 Camaro). Have you ever talked to a Chevy guy- I would never drive any truck but my Silverado. I think that is a lot like software- some of our loyalty comes from the heart, not the head necessarily.... There is something cool about Firefox, a certain cache (ha), and I am speaking aside from its features. It has a coolness quotient.

Re:I care because...

[at_slashdot]

The more people that are using a product, the better it is.

Yeah... take for example Windows... ah, wrong example.

Re:I care because...

[airrage]

Without being overly argumentative, your basic premise is that with OSS *you* can provide better service.

I think you missed the point of the article. The author asks why do you care? In your car comparision you are in business of computer technology, if someone brings in a car to your repair shop are you going to turn away work? Of course not.

I think the real question the author was asking is "Why should you care when the business doesn't?". The answer, quite reasonably, is that you shouldn't.

Just my opinion ...

Re:I care because...

[killjoe]

" What I've noticed is that the average computer user wants a turn-key solution."

That's funny what I have noticed is that the average computer user wants an open system and in fact will turn down an easier to use turnkey solution if they have an harder to use open system if it costs a little less.

Maybe it's because my perpective is longer then yours. I lived through the "golden years" of the computer revolution from the eighties, nineties and today.

Time after time I have seen more integrated, easier to use, turnkey systems fall by the wayside while systems that were perceived to be open and cheaper won. Here are some examles.

CP/M vs dozens of other long gone 8 bit computer makers.
Apple II vs Atari, TI, HP etc.
IBM pc vw Mac.
DOS vs OS/2
Windows vs MacOS
IBM PS2 vs Clones
Microchannel vs ISA
PC vs Amiga
Compuserve vs Internet.
AOL vs internet

The list goes on and on. If users truly prefered a cohesive, turn key, easy to use system we would all be griping about Apple instead of MS. In every single one of my examples the better, easier to use, more performant solution lost to a cheaper and more open one.

This dynamic is still going on today. Look at windows/PC vs the Mac. With a mac you get a compresensive turnkey system with windows you get to cobble together the software and hardware. But it's considered more open and costs less so voila, apple still can't gain significant traction into the PC market.

There is one more factor I should mention. Corporate adoption drives home adoption. If you are watching keep an eye out for corporate adoption of linux and other open source technologies. The minute you see corporations embracing linux on the desktop sell your MS stock.

Re:I care because...

[An ominous Cow art]

I consider IE to be simply the first stage of the Mozilla/FireFox installer, and thereafter used only for Windows Update, on my dwindling number of Windows machines.

Re:I care because...

[TopherC]

More reasons:

Standards: It's amazing how many people send around Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents. Why do they expect me to be able to read these? Do they expect me to cough up ~ $500 like they did (or didn't) for software I don't need other than to accomodate their whimsy? If they send me an OpenOffice document instead, there's no financial burden on me and it's an open standard which I am in some sense more entitled to use/interpret/read.

As for Firefox -- since this is now popular enough at my workplace, I basically don't need to test for compatability with IE (which is difficult to run in Linux), and I don't support it in my web projects. If it works in Firefox, Opera, and Konqueror (which almost tests Safari compatability), then it's good enough for me. I am also looking forward to more complete support for things like MathML, which will gradually make life much easier for me. As for IE support, I wish there was a web page that launches an ActiveX script that installs FireFox with little notification.

For an open-source project, the number of developers tends to increase with the number of users. I don't think it's a linear relationship, but it's certainly monotonic. And when talking about open-source, the distinction between developers and users gets wonderfully blurry.

Finally, I love the wide variety of open-source projects going on! I often find projects that are useful to me, and it seems like each year computing just becomes easier thanks to OSS. Better programming languages, more libraries, more complete hardware support, improved documentation, etc. The more people become aware of open source, the more they will get involved in it. This is of direct benefit to me, and everyone else too!

Re:I care because...

[phoenix_rizzen]

Uniformity in all programs is what caused MSFT Office to succeed beyond its dreams.

Oh, that's rich. Fire up a copy Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. Use Windows' nifty "tile windows" feature. Then compare the menu bar, menu layout, and toolbars in those 4 windows. Yeah, real consistent. If you think chaos is consistent.

Now fire up 4 different versions of Word. Notice how very little stayed the same in the interface across versions.

a) They thought they knew how to design products better than their customers. Companies which think they know more than their customers become extinct very fast. Irrespective of what people might say, Microsoft actually listened to people while building new versions of Office. They cared and actually respected customers instead of deriding them with a "i know all" attitude.

MS has not listened to their customers. Otherwise they would not be changing menu layouts and file formats with every single point release of Office. Adding features is one thing. Changing the placement of icons in the toolbar or items in the menus simply to make it seem new is quite another.

Until you can open a Word 2003 document in Word 97, you'll never be able to convince me that MS is listening to their customers. If Corel can figure out how to keep the exact same file format across 6 versions of WordPerfect (create a doc in WordPerfect 12, you can open it in WordPerfect 7 without losing formatting), then why can't MS? They've got how many more programmers and customers than Corel???

Keep it Simple, Keep Listening to customers and Keep it wickedly fast. I have run Office on systems ranging from 64MB to 1.2 GB RAM and i have always felt MSFT made best of system provided and actually was faster than O/S on same systems.

You obviously have not used any version of Office other than 95. Because trying to get Office 2002 or 2003 to work on anything less than a P3 1 GHz is not fun. While WordPerfect Office 12 runs quite nicely on my P2-333. Hell, the minimum system requirements for Office 2003 are simply mind boggling. If would really be nice if MS understood the phrase "keep it simple".

Re:I care because...

[CastrTroy]

try this for installing firefox on windows.
Go to command prompt and....

ftp ftp.mozilla.org
anonymous

cd pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases
cd 1.0.3
cd win32
cd en-US
get Firefox\ Setup\ 1.0.3.exe

There you go. Wasn't that easy? and all without using IE. :)

Interoperability

[bmw]

Why do we care? We care because what software other people use does indeed affect all of us. Not only do many of us work in the IT field and have to deal with all this poorly written software but it often makes things harder on everyone even if you don't have to deal with it directly. Take Internet Explorer for example... Thanks to things like broken CSS support web developers are forced to go to great trouble in order to create websites that display properly across different browsers and platforms. And what about the Word document format? Wouldn't it be nice if you weren't forced to use MS Office just to read the text file your coworker just sent you? You see... It's all about interoperability. All this technology is supposed to help us communicate, not lock us into one product or another.

In short: It isn't so much that we really care what software you use, it's that we care about your software playing nice with our software. If everyone in the world used software that supported truly open standards then we would all be more free to choose what software we want for ourselves.

Re:Interoperability

[Jeremy.DeGroot]

many of us work in the IT field I gained the title of "Head Browser Evangelist" in the university IT department where I am a part-time employee because I tried to switch every user I spoke with to Firefox. Why? Because I was sick and tired of taking spyware calls. Certianly when they called me about spyware, I told them to switch. But even if they were calling me on an unrelated problem, I asked them what they were running and if it was IE, I told them to switch. Was I being overly aggressive trying to get people to switch? Maybe. But my job is to make computing on campus the most pleasant experience it can be for our users, and this year we get about 1/6 the spyware calls we did last year. Also, everyone I converted prefers FireFox to IE. I've never heard of a switchback.

Re:Interoperability

[drmike0099]

Playing devil's advocate here a little bit, who in this scenario is actually causing the problems? Is it Joe User, who is simply using the same software that 95% of the other users are using, or is it Techie McSmarts who is using all this "fringe" software and causing a ruckus whenever the rest of the Joe's compatriots produce a file he can't read?

I actually agree with you completely, I'm just pointing out that to the user that's still using the old software, and who doesn't have a political or philosophical disagreement with that software, and who isn't techie enough to care about how "under the hood" their software is junk, your argument isn't really going to convince them of anything. They could care less if it was written by a pack of rabid monkeys intend on world domination, as long as they get to get their work done and in on time to their boss.

Now when the OS alternative actually solves problems for them that the proprietary one couldn't, then you can hook them. Linux crossed that threshold years ago on servers, but has not on the desktop. Firefox probably just crossed that threshold, and some other projects are about to cross that line, and when they do, people will use it.

Re:Interoperability

[milimetric]

"Not only do many of us work in the IT field and have to deal with all this poorly written software"

I agree. I personally love the extensibility, power, freedom, and dare I say beauty of open source software. I am a proud Firefox / Thunderbird / OpenOffice / Ubuntu user in the midst of a Microsoft shop.

However, Especially for those of us in the IT field, that "poorly written software" is crucial to our existence. Microsoft doesn't only make money for itself. It makes money for all the IT staffs of all the companies that use Microsoft products and for all the consultants that come in to help those IT staffs. If you count how many people that is, I'm sure you'll see that much depends on Microsoft, glistening in green cash and poor software as it is.

I love what you said in the end, and if I had my way, I would make the world like that. The question is, how would all the people I mentioned make money if everyone used open standards and interoperable products?

Re:Interoperability

[bmw]

who in this scenario is actually causing the problems? Is it Joe User, who is simply using the same software that 95% of the other users are using, or is it Techie McSmarts who is using all this "fringe" software and causing a ruckus whenever the rest of the Joe's compatriots produce a file he can't read?

It is neither person's fault. The blame lies with companies like Microsoft that refuse to play nice with the rest of the software world. There really is no reason that both types of users shouldn't be able to use their different software. This is the whole point behind having open standards; we all get to choose our own tools while still being able to communicate with each other.

I'm just pointing out that to the user that's still using the old software, and who doesn't have a political or philosophical disagreement with that software, and who isn't techie enough to care about how "under the hood" their software is junk, your argument isn't really going to convince them of anything.

My argument isn't intended to convince them of anything. If I had my way, they would still be able to use whatever software they find most comfortable. The point is to allow this freedom for _everyone_ including the minorities.

Re:Interoperability

[akadruid]

Exactly! plus I believe in following the law carefully, but I find it too complex and too expensive to use propriety software.

Much more importantly though, I don't feel safe using products such as IE, and I fear for the safety my family and friends on the internet. I gave my fiance a computer for christmas - I built it myself and installed Fedora Core 2 for her; she's very happy with it, and I am relaxed since she has a reliable, secure computer.

Plus a lot of F/L/OS software is just better than the alternatives - Apache and Firefox are just better, and gaim, openoffice and gimp are better value for money than trillian, ms office and photoshop.

So if anyone wants a checklist:

- Safety
- Compatability
- Quality
- Price

Re:Interoperability

[bmw]

The question is, how would all the people I mentioned make money if everyone used open standards and interoperable products?

Using open standards would not change this. What will change is the number of choices that we have to get a particular task done as well as the number of choices for jobs themselves. Technology jobs are not going to decline. We just might start seeing more opportunities working with a wider variety of software. It would be a big win for everyone. Also, if Microsoft all of a sudden started to use open standards people would not stop using their software. If anything it would probably be just the opposite.

Re:Interoperability

[einhverfr]

The question is, how would all the people I mentioned make money if everyone used open standards and interoperable products?

Call me crazy but I think that if companies found that IT spending paid off more (because it meant actually getting something accomplished rather than spending all this time for maintenance of poorly written software) that they might pay more for it.

IT budgets aren't that flexible. People will find ways to spend the money that will help their business. If you are not spending all your resources fixing problems, this may mean that you may get paid to do something productive ;-)

Also less money on licensing fees may mean more IT jobs in-house....

Re:Interoperability

[WNight]

Just as frequently, those users can't share data with each other and are trying to figure out why. Linux tools can easily render Microsoft formats and if they're not perfect, geeks don't care. The problem is when someone tries to use OfficeXP and find that it has a bug that means you can't use Office97 to open half of its documents, despite saving them in '97' format. For example. That problem I remember being a fairly easy hotfix, but the type of problem just keeps happening.

Open formats are mandatory, anything else means that you don't own your data.

I do it for the ladies

[HMA2000]

Nothing says Romeo like a guy who knows the ins and outs of an open source email program. Line forms to the left ladies.

Re:I do it for the ladies

[winkydink]

Cue "Sound of Crickets Chirping".

Re:I do it for the ladies

[FidelCatsro]

Yes the ladies are always PINEing over me , It's as if i were a THUNDERBIRD or perhaps its just something to do with the EVOLOUTION of the species

Re:I do it for the ladies

[Anonymous Coward]

Except I can't get a sound driver working with this seven year old computer.

Cue the sound of a 60mm fan.

Re:I do it for the ladies

[Anonymous Coward]

Even with those clever puns, your Outlook doesn't look too good...

That's easy

[kmartshopper]

The more people we convert, the more support for our projects and the better they will become sooner.

Why do people try to get other people on their side in an argument instead of just arguing alone?

Re:That's easy

[cpuh0g]

"converting" people to your pet OS religion does not translate into faster results for Open Source projects. The sad fact is that the majority of OS projects don't ever make it to version 1.0 because they are not well supported by a competent (key word: "competent") group of engineers who have the time and interest to keep pushing it forward.

Mozilla/Firefox is successful because they actually had some financial backing to PAY a staff to keep things running (in addition to a really smart group of core developers). Many other OS projects are not so lucky, which leads to far too many incomplete, half-ass projects.

Re:That's easy

[shashi]

The more people we convert, the more support for our projects and the better they will become sooner.

Exactly... we are the 'marketing team' of OpenSource. While Microsoft spends billions of dollars on advertising, OSS gets billions of people like us to spread it by web sites, forums, and word-of-mouth. When you're working for free, it's difficult to come up with the cash for a Super Bowl spot. Thus, OSS is reliant on its users to be its marketers and advertisers.

Re:That's easy

[Cat_Byte]

Many other OS projects are not so lucky, which leads to far too many incomplete, half-ass projects.

My project is a one-man-when-I-have-time project. It's more like quarter-ass.

Re:That's easy

[Dan Ost]

Your mother will help increase the number of Firefox hits on the websites that
she visits. This will encourage web developers to make certain that their
sites are compatable with Firefox. Therefore, just by using Firefox when
she browses, your mother helps improve the browsing experience for all Firefox
users.

It's a subtle effect, but a very real one.

Open Source shouldn't be sole criterion

[yagu]

I don't recommend Open Source software unless I think it's good software. That said, Open Source has an impressive track record for quality software when compared head to head with commercial software. (I couldn't IMAGINE using any of the standalone IM clients when I look at what gaim offers both in functionality and in ease of use.)

Especially in the last few years Open Source software has made great strides (Firefox, OpenOffice, Gimp, Gaim). Still, while I'm a great fan and advocate of linux, I keep my Open Source recommendations safely in the Windows realm... not what I'd like, but people are definitely reluctant to learn a new "system", and I do enough support without having to be the ONLY linux person they know to go to. (While I still have to field LOTS of Windows questions from friends and family, at least they have other people they go to when they can't find me.)

But, finally, in the Windows world there are many great Open Source options and I've found people quite receptive. For example, again and again I get thanks from converted Firefox users -- which is nice (though I cringe at the thought of Microsoft finally responding with IE7 and features stolen to match Firefox).

Bottom line: having learned from experience I only recommend Open Source alternatives when I'm completely confident the alternative will be:

• easy to use.
• 99% otherly world compatible.
• free.
• fast.
• reliable.

  • For myself, I try to use Open Source alternatives whenever possible, but for the unwashed masses the above criteria apply.

Re:Open Source shouldn't be sole criterion

[yagu]

Pretty much exactly my point. Technology is what I do for a living, so not only do I "do" linux even when it pisses me off, I consider it part of my job, even when I'm not on the clock. I do think today linux is close to being a viable candidate for more savvy and adventurous users. Certainly it is more stable (for me) and offers myriad options. Most Windows users don't want that (options) but I've found once users have gotten in deep enough with linux (at least above their balls) they readily take the plunge and even enjoy their new world.

A reasonable compromise is to offer to set up someone with a dual boot machine and show them how to boot to whatever system is NOT the default. Then let them play with linux at their leisure.

(For those who don't realize the progress linux has made, understand that when I was "your age", I had to install linux by hand with more than 70 floppy disks! And it took hours! (And, I had to do it barefoot, in the snow, and uphill!))

Re:Open Source shouldn't be sole criterion

[2short]

"Open Source has an impressive track record for quality software"

I'd say Open Source has an impressive track record for powerful software, and an abysmal one for polished software. I use and like a lot of OSS, including the stuff you mention, but seldom recommend it to non-geeks. I like power, they demand polish.

For example, I really like Gaim (on Windows), and as one of the most polished Open Source programs I've used, it's an exception, I do reccomend it to non-geeks. Yet even it is not as polished as it should be. To wit, my pet peeve: How bloody hard would it be to support Control-C for Copy? Drives me up the wall. hit copy, go to other app, hit paste, what the hell is that?, oh right, Gaim. go back, right-click... It wouldn't bug me so much, except that control-C is so universally supported in Windows. I can't remember the last program other than gaim that didn't do it. It's a reflex action; I just think "copy" and my hand does it. OK, calming down now.

Actually, I don't care.

[winkydink]

When people ask me for professional advice, I recommend that they use the right tool for the right job. In some cases, for some people, that's Open Source and in other cases, it isn't.

Re:Actually, I don't care.

[Da_Biz]

I agree. I won't repeat the many good reasons why FireFox is an excellent solution, but would also remind people that open-source software must be easy to use and implement for adoption.

This may seem like a hackneyed point, but it really is quite true. I would have great confidence sending most anyone to the Firefox website to obtain and install FireFox. And, extending FireFox with plug-ins is relatively trivial.

I would not, however, feel so good about sending the general public over to SourceForge. Too confusing for most, I think. Open-source zealots forget this all too often. If you're designing a website to implement open-source to tech-savvy people, SourceForge is great. The real question is: would you send your grandmother there?

Re:Actually, I don't care.

[Wingie]

Brilliantly said. Not to start a flame war, but there are many fields in which open source software simply may not be able to do the job. For example, if a user asks for "a web browser that has less spyware", I recommend Firefox. If a user wants to automate the editing a bunch of photographs or slides, I recommend Photoshop. As much as I love the GIMP, I don't really find it as useful as Photoshop in some areas. Also, another factor I have to consider is that since I'm working in an academic enviornment, it's much easier to say "here's how you use this piece of software that's installed on our lab computers because though we spend a crapload of money on it Adobe supports it and helps us if the massive imaging of the software onto our network of computers fail" than "okay, let me misuse my admin priviliges and install an open source alternative for you". Though there has been a movement (mainly from students) to get at least open source browsers such as Firefox installed in place of Netscape.

Umm.. duh.

[faedle]

It's simple.

Because Microsoft's E-mail client and web browser are unsafe and insecure products. People using software with default security profiles that ensure arbitrary code does not run is in everybody's best interest.

Re:Umm.. duh.

[faedle]

Because once they connect to the Internet with an exploited system, it becomes everybody's problem.

Much like, when somebody drives with an automobile that is a gross polluter, everybody has to breathe the air that is tainted with their car's smog. Cumulatively, this adds up to a real problem in a hurry.

Re:Umm.. duh.

[Anonymous Custard]

Because Microsoft's E-mail client and web browser are unsafe and insecure products. People using software with default security profiles that ensure arbitrary code does not run is in everybody's best interest.

Especially when these people are your friends and family, and you do not want to see them get hurt by a virus or identiy scam.

Re:Umm.. duh.

[hawkstone]

> Because once they connect to the Internet with an exploited system, it becomes everybody's problem.

I'll second that, and go one further. As the person my family and friends beg for help when their Windows systems have been crippled by spyware, as soon as I'm done cleaning up (or re-installing), I always install Firefox and suggest they use it. I warn them that they might come across some pages that do not work correctly in Firefox, but I also remind them that there are some pages IE was not displaying correctly either, and suggest the effort and frustration saved by using Firefox most of the time would be worth it.

It's a 30 years old problem actually.

[Quebec]

If you go back to the mid-70's at the time of the Altair, you'll find the
Homebrew club, people that got together for fun but also for finding
solutions to many problems the early PC had.

They were a bunch of hippies of the 70's, sharing everything, every ideas,
every solutions, every new concept together. It was so creative, so
powerful that it generated one of the biggest industry on the planet.

When enough problems were solved this way some (especially one that called all
the others "thieves") stopped sharing and start keeping for themselves. They
started companies and thrived on them.

Today those same guys are still ruling the business, they keep so much a big
share of the market that it is indecent. They use strategies so cruel and
inhuman to keep this share and they leave crumbles for the rest of the world.

Open Source brings us back to that sharing, we go back to that very
innovative time where so much new is invented and shared.

So for me it's not so much important to be comfortable with one browser or
another but it is important to contribute to the knowledge of mankind and
to promote the use of open source solution and to discourage the use of
closed source ones. It's a simple formula:

Open Source solution = Can be a good solution.
Closed Source Solution = Cannot be a good solution.

Bring back the sharing of ideas and stop contributing to the technologies lockdown of the shrews.

Re:It's a 30 years old problem actually.

[Neil Blender]

Open Source solution = Can be a good solution.
Closed Source Solution = Cannot be a good solution.

You have the "I don't own a TV so you shouldn't either" or "I am a vegan and you should be too" type of attitude this guy is talking about.

Re:It's a 30 years old problem actually.

[DogDude]

They were a bunch of hippies of the 70's, sharing everything, every ideas, every solutions, every new concept together. It was so creative, so powerful that it generated one of the biggest industry on the planet.

That's nice and all, but you're missing the part of history in which PC's became ubiquitous because of companies like Microsoft and Intel.

Re:It's a 30 years old problem actually.

[cpuh0g]

Open Source solution = Can be a good solution.
Closed Source Solution = Cannot be a good solution.

Brilliant reasoning.

All of these closed source companies making software out there are producing bad solutions? That is patently ridiculous. Blind zealotry, as illustrated in myopic statements like that, are not helping promote your position in any way.

To assume that companies like Microsoft, Sun, Adobe, Oracle, SAP (all "closed-source") are not producing ANY good solutions is retarded.

This sort of inane "spread the love, give away your work for free, and make the world a better place" is so unrealistic it is laughable. What color is the sky in your world?

I like making money. It helps feed my family, among other useful things. I have no problems at all taking money in exchange for writing software. We live in a capitalistic society. Money is exchanged for goods and services. That is how life works. If I have a kick ass idea, do you think my first thought is "hmmm, I should give this away and get good Karma!" or "Hey, cool, I could sell this and make a million bucks!". Hmmm, lets see.... Karma.. or .. A Million Dollars? I'll take the $$ every time. Screw Karma, I need to live in the real world.

Re:It's a 30 years old problem actually.

[greenlead]

It would help if you understood grammar and spelling as well.

Re:It's a 30 years old problem actually.

[shaitand]

"Money is exchanged for goods and services. That is how life works. If I have a kick ass idea, do you think my first thought is "hmmm, I should give this away and get good Karma!" or "Hey, cool, I could sell this and make a million bucks!". Hmmm, lets see.... Karma.. or .. A Million Dollars? I'll take the $$ every time. Screw Karma, I need to live in the real world."

Services are rendered, goods are exchanged. Software is copied. Therein lies the difference. In order to give something away you have to lose whatever that item is. Remember, the meaning of life is not "get as much as possible, enjoy as much as possible, and do as little as possible", it is to further the SPECIES. You further the species by contributing to it.

Re:It's a 30 years old problem actually.

[Call Me Black Cloud]

However, it does not further the species if I live in my parents' basement. I've found getting paid to write software is a nice way to make a living.

It's not an either/or proposition. It's possible to write software for profit and contribute to open source software.

Re:It's a 30 years old problem actually.

[rzebram]

Okay, I'll bite...

1) Says who?
Logic, do you need to know who said it in order to think about it more, or can you just accept it as a different viewpoint? What's the purpose of every other species on this planet? That's right, to evolve and reproduce, that's it. So at the base level, our purpose here is to further our species through evolution and to reproduce. Humans have vastly overcomplicated lives and created all of their own problems through things like wealth and reputation.

2) How is writing code furthering the species?
Okay, think about it.. What runs on the computers on the space shuttles and probes? What runs on the computers at nuclear power stations? That's right, software! Now think of all the programs you use on a daily basis. Without them, you'd have to do everything by hand, which would take a huge chunk of time away from you actually doing something useful for the species/yourself/your family. Think about everything that you take for granted, it'll make your arguments better.

3) thinking along this logic, what race of the species will survive: the one sharing its work with others or the one making $$$?
Unfortunately, there is no way to determine this, because humans are such idiots anyway that we even bother to pose this question. Why shouldn't every race survive? Everyone has something to contribute, humans are just assholes when it comes to accepting that we should all be united, so we don't allow it to happen. We created money, why do we need to base everything on it? I don't think "hey, I should clean up this piece of trash because somebody might see and give me a million dollars," I think "hey, I should clean up this trash because it helps out everybody." Take a moment and stop being so self-centric and realize that without everybody else you wouldn't be around, so show a little respect.

Though I do respect your opinion, I fail to see any logic in your reasoning.

Re:It's a 30 years old problem actually.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Services are rendered, goods are exchanged. Software is copied. Therein lies the difference. In order to give something away you have to lose whatever that item is. Remember, the meaning of life is not "get as much as possible, enjoy as much as possible, and do as little as possible", it is to further the SPECIES. You further the species by contributing to it."

You obviously work at 7-11. I write code for money. I don't sell my software, but I sell my ability to write software. A company is paying me to do this... so I do. The meaning of life is different for each person. My method of making money might not be the same thing I do to further our species.

Go work at a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen for a few days. Volunteer to teach. Help people that way. Don't sit in your tower and think your latest function for your FTP client is saving humanity.

Re:It's a 30 years old problem actually.

[Reservoir Penguin]

How about I dont kill people so you shouldn't either. We strongly believe that enslaved software is one of the most horrible and morally repugnant things in the world. There is room for ethics and morality in software engineering, something that enslaves you cannot be the best tool for the job.

Various reasons...

[Pantero Blanco]

Some do it for moral reasons (they believe X company 's practices are immoral or, in some cases, that proprietary software itself is), some do it for an ego trip, and some are just pained by seeing what they regard as inefficiency.

I generally do it for a mix of the three.

For the most part...

[Formz]

I don't care. I just hate Microsoft.

Re:For the most part...

[NanoGator]

"I don't care. I just hate Microsoft."

Troll? "Funny" was a better moderation. Heck, I would have modded it Insightful.

Everybody here's acting like their intentions are pure, but there are a LOT of posts here touting OSS as a form of middle finger in the direction of Redmond. I'm not saying their hatred of MS isn't justified, but it is tainting their judgement.

It helps me, too!

[TildeMan]

If I get everyone in the world to switch from MSIE to Firefox, then web developers will stop developing webpages for MSIE and only make ones that work (and work well) in Firefox. Similarly, if everyone uses OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Word, I'll stop getting documents via email that break in my word processor.

(And then there's all that other stuff about improving the products I use more as a result of a broader user base.)

Re:It helps me, too!

[Anonymous Coward]

A complete switch to Firefox/ OpenOffice wouldn't be good either. It just transfers the control from one company to another.

We have standards, we just need people to respect them and use them. This won't happen most of the time. Software engineers are always looking for a better way to make things, and if the standard restricts them they will ignore the standards.

For what its worth, I think our focus should be on more flexable standards, and corner the market with standards, not specific products. How? Beats me, I'm just the monkey that writes the code.

Why I care:

[Enigma_Man]

I care because I like to support who I see as "the good guy" (or at least the better guy) by using their software. IMO, open-source is just a better idea, and helping it become popular is a good thing.

Also, it's usually free.

-Jesse

Simply economics

[ucblockhead]

The more people that use something, the more support for it there will be, so the more features, bug-fixing, plugins and updates there will be.

Plus, as a working programmer, I'd much rather work on a sane system like a Unix variant than the damn Windows API I am forced to deal with. The more popular Linux (and/or OS/X) becomes, the more likely I can get a job doing so.

In other words, simple self-interest.

Re:Simply economics

[Spy der Mann]

Another idea regarding economics:

The time (time = money) spent by a couple of guys in open source might as well be the equivalent of the price paid for commercial software.

But since they already got their software running, it's not a waste, but an investment. Sure, they might have bought the expensive solution - but here's where things get interesting: They not only GET their investment back, but thousands or millions of people get the benefit.

In other words, Open Source is creating riches. For the masses. Just because the riches aren't in dollars (but in software) doesn't mean they don't exist. In fact, these riches save time (time = money).

Which leads us back to the beginning: The more free time, the more of it people can invest into OSS. It's a virtuous circle.

Why I take it seriously:

[KodaK]

I'm interested to hear why it is taken so seriously.

Because I'm the one that has to clean up the mess that's been made, and I'm lazy.

My reasons

[Schmots]

I don't try to push anything on anyone. But I do alwasy try to suggest an opensource app. Most developers of open source apps(at least the ones I know) do there work for free and just like to see that people use it. And some apps are just downright great programs. I won't belittle someone for using a closed source program. In fact I advicate a few. But I also always suggest that they try out firefox if for no other reason than the better virus protection it will give them with out IE's holes.

Spyware

[Jeff85]

In the long run, friends of mine using Internet Explorer affects me in the sense that I'll have to be the one to clean the spyware off their computer and repair whatever damage it caused. Apathy is a problem with software just as it is with politics. People accept what they are given

Multiplicity

[WatertonMan]

I think the main reason is competition. When only one browser controls most of the market then new features (and bug fixes) dry up. More importantly people like choice. I hate IE, although I don't think it deserves the vitriol it sometimes get. But for a long time many sites didn't work well with my alternative browsers. (Firefox at work, Safari at home) But those other browsers having more marketshare then more people will pay attention to testing their sites better so that I can use my browser.

But I fully admit to not understanding the "hate Microsoft at any price." I think there is just a drive among some people to hate the leader. In computing that's been Microsoft. In MP3 players it's now Apple, and you hear a lot of that there. People ought just be able to pick the solution they like. So long as that's possible, who cares?

Have you...

[numbski]

Have you ever spent 6 hours or more removing spyware from a Windows computer?

Ever done it multiple times in one week?

I describe the above as a 'repetitive stress injury on the brain'.

Sure, the time's billable, but still. I hate MS as much as the next guy, but when it comes right down to it, I recommend more useable solutions, and useability includes not being infected to the gills.

By the way, nice troll for clickthroughs. Amazon would be impressed. :P

Spam

[ucblockhead]

Helps with spam? Yes. "removes the email spam problem"? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA!

Freedom baby, yeah

[Squiggle]

Fundamentally, free (libre) software is a civil rights issue that grows in importance as our dependence on software tools grows.

Friends Tech Support Friends

[plehmuffin]

When you've spent 4 hours trying to clean a friends computer 'cuz IE infected it with viruses, then you'll care that they use firefox

A few reasons...

[rootedgimp]

I've been a pc tech for too many years now :/ can't seem to get my foot in the door to a decent IT job / NOC even with certs, anyway here is my opinion:

I see around 50-70 spyware -infested- computers per
month, and though at first I did install all the good free apps that helped prevent spyware before it installed itself, it really killed return business (like the people that would go pr0n browsing the day they got their computer back, and we'd see it back in the shop after the weekend). so my boss made me stop installing the good shit (firefox/spybot/hijackthis/cwshredder/etc). anyway I think that as long as most apps are released mainly for MS OS's the problem will never be solved. and i doubt we will be seeing a huge shift toward linux (thank god) or unix anytime soon.

for the most part I don't care what people use, and with the morons that come in here that call their computers a 'modem', im kinda glad MS is around. imagine explaning editing a Makefile to an applebees manager. anyway, my -2cents. (matches my karma, eh?)

I don't.

[k98sven]

I do some free software development, and to be honest, I don't care much.

Having 10,000 or 10 'ordinary' users makes very little difference to my projects, if those users are not contributing code or at least bug reports. On the contrary, they might beg for support or make nagging requests for features.

Now I do try to give support to an extent (just being a nice person), but hey, I can't teach the whole world the basics of computers, can I?

There's nothing wrong with someone asking for a feature either, but if you get 200 emails asking for a feature, you're just annoying me and wasting time I could've spent implementing it.

So there are upsides and downsides to popularity.

Apart from that; I expect people to use whatever is the best tool for the job. It might be free software, but it might not be either. I'm not on any personal crusade to save the world or crush Microsoft.

But hey, that's just me.

Duh!

[NanoGator]

"Converting Users to Open Source- Why Do You Care?"

Because I want to look good in my fellow Slashdotter's eyes.

Weird, I was just thinking about this...

[Saint Aardvark]

Honestly? It's like I've got religion (which is hilarious, since I'm a completely aspiritual atheist).

There are very good reasons for people to use Free software, no matter who we're talking about: adherence to standards, the ability of the community to improve the software (and vouch for its security), knowing that it won't just disappear because a company goes out of business, or become obnoxious because of a licensing change. You know the arguments as well as anyone here, I suppose.

But my zeal is harder to explain. Those are important things to me, but I really feel sometimes like I've got religion. It's great: black-and-white boundaries (well, sort of), good guys (Saint Linus, Saint RMS) and bad (Bill Gates, SCO), a nice sense of everything-has-been-building-up-to-THIS-MINUTE!, apocalypse (in the original sense of the word: a revealing that behind the petty, mundane battles of day-to-day life are huge, cosmic battles between Good and Evil)...everything a closet drama queen could want. (I'm serious about that; anyone who likes Sisters of Mercy songs for the lyrics would looooooove discussing Free Software.)

I try to keep it in check; I'm a sysadmin, and in my job it's most important to make sure people can do their job. But it pains me -- O! How it pains me! -- to see the growing number of Windows desktops here, and it's not just because I miss a decent command line.

Re:Well

[foxfyre]

Um yeah, so Jesus himself was a self-important asshole according to your logic. Get over yourself.

It's not that it's "Open Source"...

[Jooly Rodney]

It's that it doesn't suck. First of all, the parent post is a complete troll. But it's not, first and foremost, that FireFox is Free Software that makes me "harangue" my family members to use it -- although that kind of is the reason: The FOSS development process and licensing paradigm has, in this case and many others, produced a piece of software that minimizes end-user hassle to a much greater extent than the proprietary offerings of vendors who claim to be driven by the needs of their customers. And when you're in a position in which you face spending literal hours of your personal time overhauling a machine that's become bogged down in software that not only is non-Free but makes everyone's life more difficult because the company that makes it just Doesn't Get It, then it's worth it to put the screws to people to get them to use something else.

Open Source depends on users....

[friedmud]

One of the reasons open source has become what it has is because of users. Users are an integral part of any open source project... without them the project will remain buggy and stove-piped.... with them bugs will be found and features will be added.

I am constantly trying to move friends and family to open source products... not only for their benifit but also for the benefit of the projects themselves. Whether or not this is "the right thing to do" is up for grabs... but it makes me happy to see my wife using Firefox and (on the odd occasion that it crashes) clicking the "Submit" button on the crash reporting screen. That is enough reason for me to evangelize.

Friedmud

Re:"Text"

[bmw]

Not to mention that openoffice and wordperfect and abiword can open word docs......

With a little luck, yes... Things have been improving in this area lately but I might point out that often times even Microsoft can't properly support all their different versions of the .doc format. It really is a bad situation.

Several reasons

[peacefinder]

It really depends on the scenario. My default position is that I don't really care. Exceptions to that include:

Epidemic control - I want people to use more secure software on network connected machines for the same reason that I support mass immunization programs. Such steps reduce the number of vectors and, therefore, the rate at which harmful data can spread.

Support - I'm a geek, and my friends know it. they call me for help. I urge them to use free software (or Macs) to cut down on the number of support calls I get. (Or at least to make the support calls a bit more interesting.)

Politics of Open Societies - I want all information produced by my tax dollars to be made publically available. (I'm willing to accept some reasonalble limits on militarily and diplomatically sensitive data, but eventually everything should come into the public domain... even if it's 100 years later.) When it does, that data should be in formats that are not proprietary.

Because i read slashdot

[McGiraf]

im a OSS zelotte naw becuz I waz brained washed by two mush reding off slashdot comments. ( some peeple says its afected my gramar to.)

We are the front lines in informal tech support

[DeadSea]

Many of us are also the first tech support contact for many of our family and friends. It is super frustrating to get problem reports for things like:

• My computer too slow! (because of all the spyware)
• Can't I get rid of all these popups???
• I keep getting this blue screen

I don't have any of these problems on linux/firefox. Its hard for me to figure out what is wrong with software that I don't use and don't care about. Usually my solution is to upgrade them to the stuff I'm using.

--
Currency Exchange Calculator

Pragmatism

[QuasiEvil]

I'm not a rabid open source proponent - I'm actually rather pragmatic about it. I'll use what gets the job done for the right price, and what gives me the power to do what I need to do. I admire RMS's goal of freedom, but I acknowledge that part of a user's freedom is being able to selectively trade those freedoms for what they perceive as a worthwhile exchange. Sometimes closed source, commercial software allows me to do the job faster/easier/better.

Simple fact: My parents have managed to pick up spyware and an email worm or two using Outlook/IE. I installed Firefox and Eudora (running in lite/free-as-in-beer edition) on their machine, and in the last two years they haven't had a problem, and claim that both are "easier to use" than their previous counterparts. One is open source, the other closed source but still free-as-in-beer. Since then, they've been more productive and have had exactly no spyware/worm/virus problems.

Would I switch them to OO? Not likely, even I can't make it do some of the things I want, and the training to convert them from MSO to OO would outweigh the gain (none?).

In a business environment, though, I will often advocate using open source. I'm a firm proponent in not relying on vendors, but being able to open up the code when something goes wrong and fix it quickly. I've just seem too many cases where my own company was worried about having a vendor to blame rather than concentrating on making things work.

Altruism and idealism

[phoenix321]

The same reason people bring gifts on chrismas day, give a dollar to a begging homeless, help other vehicle drivers if their car is stuck in the snow and whatever else I can imagine. And why people try to convince others of their religion, political opinion - sharing of ideals. People want to bring others the same good things they experienced and that's one reason. Some open source projects are head and shoulders above their commercial counterparts, especially the Gecko-based browsers come to mind, but also the VideoLAN client and some more. I just feel pity for people I know and value if they creep around the web with their default installed IE, fighting popups and blinking banners, always in danger of malware and security holes while navigating with clumsily with one window to Google and back.

As a more savvy user, I just have and urge and a duty to help people I know and like. And as most friends, even the most technically unsavvy, ignorant and technologically careless people use their Mozilla or Firefox and *never* switch back and even install that thing on their own on the next machine or at the office, I feel I helped them. Most are thankful the popups are gone, the tabbed browsing is easy, Google is fast to reach and their computer breaks down less often - I don't have that much support issues for my friends, there's less malware to bust and less systems to reinstall for them. And to be honest, it was quite a burden sometimes when another PC was infected *again* and they'd called me in panic to make that thing usable *again*.

And then, it's ideological. Fight monopolies, for the betterment of society as a whole and my own cheaper and better software environment in the future. And then you see people thanking you for showing them alternatives. Not all people are happy using an infringed copy of Office XP and even less are ready to shell out 300 bucks for a legal one. So give them OpenOffice, they are happy, society is a small bit better and it doesn't cost more than a few cents.

So in short: I've seen my friends and colleagues quite happy with their Mozilla enough times to know I've got to convert some more to that browser. And I know exactly the internet and document world would look like hell and be useless when open standards and free-as-in-speech software weren't there. I hate it when people are exploited or hindered and that's why I try to make open and free standard software popular among my friends and relatives.

Because of the Vandalism Out There

[fergj]

The sooner we can retire those millions of boxes that spread the malware via broken applications, the safer we all will be. It's the same reason the public health authorities want to do something about open sewers: they host very efficient disease vectors.

Because a lot of people make anti-Linux content

[pyite69]

For example, shockwave. Active X. Microsoft's Outlook used to default to a RTF attachment standard which Netscape couldn't read.

MS Access files are useless. As are Photoshop files. Quicktime & Windows Media videos are often not usable.

People need to design their documents and content in a way that they can be used on any computer.

Why I Push OSS Applications

[Anonymous Coward]

The largest reason I push open source applications like Mozilla, Samba and Apache in my group (B2B and B2B sales for a major toy company) is that they perform better than the Microsoft equivalents, they're less costly to deploy and they result in fewer support requests sent to myself.

I can't count the number of times I've had people claim that Internet Explorer is reporting a server error. IE reports all problems as "server errors", not just upon receiving a HTTP response code of 500. As a result, I have to stop what I'm doing and look into the issue which is usually due to a timed out request or a DNS lookup failur, not a problem with the HTTP server.

Productivity, Interoperability, and Funding

[JCallery]

I've been one of two people in an office who didn't have computers down due to a virus simply because we were using Mozilla's Messenger and Thunderbird. When asked how we weren't stricken, we praised the email clients. Watching everyone else standing around waiting for someone to come out and fix the problem made me appreciate the productivity side.

I've recently helped a few people obtain new computers. MS Office Small Business (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook) adds $279 to a computer that costs less than $400 without it. I've been able to introduce OpenOffice.org to these people because it makes financial sense, and because it is interoperable with documents created on or transferred to their MS Office systems on the job.

I currently work for a US government agency that is dealing with layoffs and cutting of entire areas of research due to funding. Idealistically, I like to think that a shift to more free/open source solutions would allow us to shift the money that goes to new software and maintenance licenses would free up funds to keep the intellectual resources we have, or at the very least allow those of us left to have more funds available to attempt to carry out out research. I try not to be a zealot, but whenever I hear complaints about proprietary software or formats or when it comes time that we are looking to renew maintenance licenses or get new software, I make sure to point out that there are other solutions available, and that I have been using them since I started.

One shouldn't be obnoxious about these things. As these products improve over time, and as we are able to point out sensible adoption strategies for them at the right time, I think the shift will occur naturally. I've noticed more and more coworkers using the software or coming to ask me questions about it over the last 6 months or so, and those I've gotten to use OpenOffice.org on their new computers have been ecstatic. Switching to new software without a directly observable financial or productivity gain can be hard to sell. Deciding to spend the time to learn a few small changes in office software instead of doubling the price of a new computer is easy.

Freedom

[aconbere]

The reasons are the same as why we might be interested in removing dictators from power, in maintaining human rights and in the developement and protection of democracy. That is... freedom.

While I take issues with some of the ways some countries have decided to "protect democracy" I also take issues with the way some people have decided to "spread opensource". That is, Zeolots of any nature are to be discouraged.

I don't think people should be yelled at shouted out or otherwise badgered about their choices of software. I do however think that there is a lack of education about opensource alternatives, and a great deal of FUD (dis/mis information) that's spread out and about and that fighting that is important.

But how do we fight FUD? but through the continuing open of discource between people about the alternatives and the freedoms (and the consequences of that freedom) that are available to them.

--Anders

converting people to emacs

[DrKludge]

I've never had a problem with spyware/adware/malware running emacs. If only people would listen to me .... sheesh.

What they said

[sremick]

Because:

- Standards. I want a web/internet where you aren't forced to use one specific browser on one specific OS. I want to be able to access the web from my PDA, cell phone, etc. Neither runs an OS that can run IE (nor does my desktop). By increasing the number of people using a non-IE browser we are forcing websites back into the original spirit of the internet: standards and interoperability.

- Cost. Most open-source projects are free and this value is a good-thing to the end-user, who can then spend that money on more-important things. If they WANT to blow tons of money certainly that's their option, but most people feel up against the wall and with no choice but to shell out the $100s for MS Office just so they can write the occasional letter/paper.

- Security. Open-source projects such as Firefox lack the inherantly-insecure technologies of many closed source equivalents (such as IE and ActiveX) because the open-source projects are aimed at and empower the END USER, while all too often the closed-source projects are vehicles for revenue, empowering the corporations and hearding end-users into whatever direction earns the supplying company the most profit. ActiveX is not for end-user best-interest... it is a mechanism that gives WEBSITES (aka companies who are customers of MS who pay MS big $$$) more control over end-user computers, wrapped-up in the sheep's clothing of being some sort of "benefit" to the end-user. In many cases, IE is nothing more than a ad-pumping machine.

- Support and general well-being. The more people using safe, reliable software that doesn't trash their system (due to bugs or being susceptible to viruses, spyware, adware, etc) the more happy computer users there will be. I'd rather earn consulting dollars showing someone how to do cool and useful things in OpenOffice than cleaning spyware off their computer for the umpteenth time.

Because Tech Support is sick of this crap

[Jerim]

I have worked tech support for a few years now while I attend school. Having been on the wrong side of too many "My computer crashed and what do you mean you can't fix it sight unseen over the phone for free?" conversations, I can easily answer why some people are adamant about switching.

Simply because we are tired of hearing about all the problems people have out of something. We have suggested to our customers for a long time that they switch to various applications. Why do we suggest Firefox? Because people who use Firefox don't call every week when it is jampacked full of spyware to the point where they can't get anyway. We only get those calls from IE uses. Why do we suggest Mac or Linux? Because those users don't call every week with another computer crash. Why do we suggest any switch? Because the switch will make our problems less.

You may be happy with what you have, and in that case carry on. But for those who call every day with some sort of problem, please switch.

License keys are a PITA; vendors kill software

[emil]

Properly typing in a 50+ character alphanumeric key is stressful. Managing a collection of dozens or hundreds of these keys is also very stressful. With BSD/GPL software, I can throw the keys away.

I have lots of Oracle 7/8 databases. Oracle would like me to upgrade right now (and send them a big check). If I was on an old release of Postgres or MySQL, I would have the option of contracting out maintenance of the code to a 3rd party. I have no options for code updates to Oracle 7 (apart from writing a potentially much bigger check to Oracle).

For these reasons (and others), I'm beginning to believe that friends don't let friends use proprietary software.

Re:License keys are a PITA; vendors kill software

[ahodgson]

Most of the time, it's up to you to stumbled into bugs and then figure out the best solution

Name one bug you were the first to find in either MySQL or PostGreSQL.

I have never ever found a problem that a minute with Google didn't explain and show a workaround or solution.

Re:License keys are a PITA; vendors kill software

[einhverfr]

The flip side of this argument is when you've a problem with one of your Oracle databases, you can always call up Oracle and complain.

Right. One cannot get support from MySQL AB or PostgreSQL Inc? Oh wait.....

Moreover, the fact that there is a new version, means bugs are actively being addressed and closed out. Many times, it's bugs you may not have hit yet, but someone else in the community has, and it's being addressed. With Postgres or MYSQL, it's not the same story. Most of the time, it's up to you to stumbled into bugs and then figure out the best solution.

Ok, I have had no experience of note with MySQL since I switched to PostgreSQL, and I was not happy with MySQL at the time (it is improving though).

However, I would suggest that you look at the archives of the pgsql-bugs list. Often times when a bug is reported, it is fixed in CVS within hours. And every time I have run into a bug in PostgreSQL it has been fixed in a later version. The last time this happened was with the multiple statements in a rule bug in 7.4.3....

Note that this is not the same thing as design limitations (such as requirements to vacuum the database) but these are being worked on too. Just not with the same speed because the solutions are more complex.

Not to mention the code quality of Oracle (even version 7/8) is way better than either Postgres or MYSQL.

Hmmm.... I have not seen Oracle's code. Have you? And you said you weren't a programmer.... I guess we can chalk this up to FUD.

IMHO, the later two databases aren't in the same league as Oracle anyway.

Ok. This is the only statement where you actually have a point. For a 100TB database, Oracle and DB2 offer much better parallelization capabilities than any open source database which is mature and on the market at the moment (with the possible exception of backplane but I don't know much about this product). There are a few other capabilities that Oracle has (RAC, etc.) which are still beyond what open source databases can reliably do without jeopardizing your data. So yes, they are in different leagues.

But if you don't need RAC, and you don't have a multi-TB database, PostgreSQL is probably as good a choice as any.

Re:License keys are a PITA; vendors kill software

[joshmccormack]

What's worst of all in the database situation is when companies spend the mucho dinero for something like Oracle, and then don't use what they're paying for, out of fear that they'll lock themselves in with proprietary features.

If you're using Oracle and you're not using stored procedures, PL/SQL, replication, load balancing, etc. you're just spending way too much cash when you could be using something cheap or free with the same capabilities.

Not to say you can't do fancy, proprietary things with Postgres, but if you're trying to be agnostic, might as well not pay extra.

Feel free to extrapolate this gripe to the use of Excel when a free alternative would work, or Photoshop when The Gimp would work, etc.

It's about FREEDOM

[TheCeltic]

Personally, I DON'T care what someone else uses for an OS or an Office Suite or Web-Browser.. I do care if they "standardize" me out of my choices though!

Currently, too many people are Lemmings and just follow what they are told. However, if they see that other options exist (and many of them are BETTER), then they will be happier.

Of course, if we just sit back, Microsoft WILL continue to push it's products down the Lemmings throats (via Monopoly, Advertising and whatever other technique is needed). If one company "wins", then capitalism, freedom, competition and innovation lose. When was the last time Microsoft came up with a technology of it's own? (Microsoft Bob!?)

Because I'm my family and friends "Computer Guy"

[9mind]

When people call you up asking you to fix what is wrong, after you have just finished a hectic 8-hour shift... You tend to want them to use stuff that'll make both of your lives easier.

When it's better

[tedrlord]

I only really care to convert people to open source products when they're the best choice. Firefox is obvious because IE is terrible. Whenever people come to me with a computer problem, it usually somehow connects to IE. Maybe Microsoft will make a good browser in IE 7, I don't know. I'll try it when it's ready.

As for other programs, it really depends on the person and the needs. If they can't afford Microsoft Office, I recommend OpenOffice, but I warn that there are still a few compatibility problems. I tell people that Gimp is pretty cool, nowhere near Photoshop, but about seven hundred dollars less. I mainly recommend it for people that haven't gotten around to pirating Photoshop yet.

Then, of course, there's Linux. I love Linux and have a pretty awesome setup here at home. When people see it, a lot of them end up wanting to switch. Most of the time, I tell them not to. The thing I love about Linux is how you can get into the guts of the system to configure, troubleshoot, or build on it yourself. That's also why it's not so good for most people. I love being able to dig through text files to tune it just right, or add the right code to make it do something really obscure. It's really awkward when a non-techie ends up having to do the same. For instance, I just set up Debian on my new computer and gdm isn't coming up. I don't care, I just disable gdm anyway. I'll jigger around with XF86Config later on, but X isn't a big priority for me. The normal user, when thrown back to a text console, would have no idea what to do. If they want to learn, I'd be glad to help, but I know a lot of people that don't want to spend hours editing text files and reading through man pages to be able to use their computer.

The main point is, as far as day-to-day usability is concerned, proprietary software is often still way past open source. I'm not bashing it. It's made for different purposes. But the complexity and adaptability I'm so fond of will likely keep it from being embraced by the population at large.

This is easy.. Money

[LloydSeve]

Most open source software is free. Not all, but most.

To use a program, like OpenOffice versus Microsoft Office, OpenOffice is sooo much cheaper.

I use open source programs for that purpose alone. If I can afford it, I buy commercial, as it's generally a lot nicer and most widely accepted. At home I have Microsoft Office only because I could afford it, but my family generally uses OpenOffice on the other systems..

to teach them

[matt me]

most internet explorers think that blue E on their desktop is the 'internet'. they think the words 'internet' and 'web' describe the same thing - hence "i'm playing hl2 over the web" or "the internet is broken". as i said in another post to use techonology without an understanding of it is dangerous.

but more importantly than this, learning to use an alternative piece of software is like learning a second language. it helps you with the first, and it helps you with others. wizards with microsoft word get stumped when faced even with an older version, let alone koffice. if you learn to use openoffice on windows, you'll be able to pick up the next office suite you try quicker.

i never understood english grammar, until i learnt some french grammar - now i can use qui/que corrently in french i can use who/whom in english. now i'm familiar with fc3, i can get by in other linux distros.

freedom is important

[foreboy]

I feel for RMS sometimes, he's been trying to get this message out for 25 years. I think it's important to understand, even if you dont agree with him, that the freedom to make a program do what you want is more important than how well it does it. It happens that open source and free software has created quality because of the nature of the process, but I would still rather use open source even if it's more cumbersome to do so precisely because it's there for me to examine, understand, learn, or modify as I see fit. Non programmers too benefit from this freedom, since they can request features. Anyone out there ever successfully got Microsoft to include a feature they needed?

What an interestingly one-sided view.

[jbn-o]

Throughout the question, we can see that letting people do things which can be shown to be unethical, costly, and dismissive of freedoms we ought to cherish (such as freedom of speech) are considered "harangu[ing]" or "obnoxious", and yet nothing proprietors do is framed in that way.

I hope this doesn't mean that it's okay for them to deny me the freedom to share and modify. I hope this isn't yet another attempt to frame the debate so that the onus of responsibility is on me to justify myself without requiring business to justify treating me this way. Sharing and modifying is how computing worked since long before the free software community began, proprietary software is actually rather new, but that zeitgeist has been lost in large part. If it weren't for the free software community, we wouldn't have wonderful things like GNU/Linux systems.

I don't teach people about open source because that movement was built to cater primarily to business, and I'm interested in speaking to all computer users, not just businesses. I teach people about software freedom and related matters on my radio talk show (Digital Citizen, every other Wednesday on WEFT 90.1 FM from 8-10p) and I take calls. If you're in the Champaign, IL area then, I invite you to tune in and join the discussion. I don't think of open source as an enemy, I think of open source as a newer spin-off that loses a great deal of power in its argument by dropping any talk about freedom. One practical freedom that movement doesn't push for is private derivatives (making a copy of a program's source code, changing it to meet one's needs, and using it privately without telling anyone else it exists), something I've used a lot to solve my own computing problems.

I do this work for my radio show because I take threats including DRM, software patents, and so-called "trusted computing" (which the FSF refers to as "treacherous computing") seriously. The mainstream media never discusses these issues from the user's point of view, if they discuss them at all. Their focus invariably encourages the user to take the business perspective and ignore what these ideas mean for them. I think these topics deserve serious inquiry and challenge. Software freedom addresses these issues head-on and provides a viable path for us to be able to compete on the quality of the good or service provided, respecting the idea that what separates us from a dog-eat-dog jungle is working together and helping each other when we need help.

I disagree

[einhverfr]

I usually am more diplomatic than the OP here.

I usually charge them by the hour and when they ask what can be done, talk to them about alternatives. More to the point, I explain *why* Windows is so vulnerable. Then I let them make up their mind. Remember, they are paying me by the hour.

There are a few times I will go out of my way to switch people to Firefox, OpenOffice, or Linux. These usually exist when it is the cheapest way to solve their immediate problem. Usually with Firefox, it is because IE is broken due to some spyware and I can't find another way to fix it. Usually with the other two, it is when the alternative is buying a new copy of Office and/or Windows.

My customers who run Linux are almost entirely of the non-tech-savvy types anyway, and generally they are happy with their software. This is because say what you will about intuitive interfaces (meaning interfaces one is used to), but Linux is a whole lot more *predictable* than Windows. Explaining this whole "root" thing is not hard. "This is a multi-user system, designed so that several people can use it at once without accessing eachother's data. Root is the account for the administrator who can override system settings." Yes, most people can understand this.

"Why won't Microsoft Office install?" Because if you read the box, it requires Windows. If you really need Microsoft Office, it is still less expensive to buy crossover office or Win4Lin than a copy of Windows. And one can even try with WINE.

Now, there are a few things that Linux currently cannot do that Windows can. These include installing things like Bonzi Buddy, Gator, and other cool freeware tools which come bundled with spyware, as well as some online gaming programs, etc. However, for people who want to use their computers to actually be productive, it is far better than Windows.

Re:I disagree

[ColMustard]

Now, there are a few things that Linux currently cannot do that Windows can. These include installing things like Bonzi Buddy, Gator, and other cool freeware tools which come bundled with spyware, as well as some online gaming programs, etc. However, for people who want to use their computers to actually be productive, it is far better than Windows.

Actually, there are many good, real examples of things that you can do on Windows that you can't on Linux. First of all, running any native win32 binary is going to work better in Windows (as opposed to Wine). I would argue that having to crap around with Wine to run a certain Windows program decreases productivity, if it will even work at all. Second, there is no Photoshop and for most professionals Gimp is not an acceptable alternative. A great number of professional tools can be inserted in the previous sentence, if you aren't a graphic artist.

Also, your view of spyware is skewed. It isn't a "Windows" problem, it's an "Internet Explorer" problem. I built a Windows 2000 machine for my brother. The first thing I did was install Firefox (and he doesn't use Outlook). My brother is a typical "stupid" user and he hasn't had even one virus or any spyware at all. The only thing I've had to help him with is installing some HP drivers--and anyone who has had to do that will certainly understand.

Personally, I predominantly use Mac OS X with some Linux on the side whenever I happen to need Linux (pretty rare). I installed Windows 2000 on my brothers computer because I knew he'd be playing a lot of games, and quite frankly, I knew it would be harder for him to mess up his computer than if I installed a Linux distro. Personally, I prefer Linux over Windows, but I don't think we need to force people to conform when what they are already used to seem to work pretty good for them.

Re:Easy.

[jd]

I also recommend a model where you assume that some percentage of the end user desktops are hostile.

Well, what do you expect if they're using Windows? :)

Many reasons

[blakestah]

I get people to use Firefox. It is usually faster and always more secure than what they use by default.

I encourage people to use something other than Outlook for the same reason.

For the rest, its less consistent. I got my cubicle neighbor doing documents in laTeX when Word kept choking over and over and over. Curiously, that's when I started using TeX as well.

For the OS kernel, I don't encourage people to change. However, I think it is self-evident that a much better kernel comes from open source development. I enter in as evidence Windows, linux kernel, and Mac's Darwin kernel. The open source kernels just catch more bugs and are easier to develop over. Here's an example.

I was developing a text editor (customizing, really) on linux. I also used DEC workstations, so I ported it to work there too. There was a problem with the POSIX function glob. It worked fine under linux. I downloaded the glibc code to look at it. Very straightforward. Then on Digital Unix it failed. I asked Dec for help. I sent them the code, explained it failed. No feedback. They coulda cared less if glob worked or not.

It was actually trickier. I later discovered glob calls ksh to execute under Digital Unix. It actually forks a process to do a glob. Ksh would either work on not depending on whether it thought it was calling glob from an interactive process.

So I talked to Dec again. Again, they coulda cared less. And, without having the underlying source code, I couldn't send them a patch - stuck with a broken system. So, I re-wrote the function glob so it would work under Digital Unix instead of using the POSIX library call.

You know, this happens all the time programming to closed systems. Little intricacies about what makes the system functions work or not are locked up, and the company could care less about your needs as a programmer. You learn to simply program around those OS and library bugs.

In an open source system, you learn to report them to the code owner and/or fix them.

I prefer the latter enormously, and it is my main reason for preferring open source systems for programming.

it's like smoking

[spasm]

it's like smoking tobacco - on the face of it, your right to fuck your lungs is entirely your business. your right to fuck your internet experience by using crap like IE and Outlook is also entirely your business.

however, when i have to pick up the bill (increased taxes (in countries with universal healthcare) and/or increased insurance premiums (in the US and other third world countries)); when i have to come home from a bar reeking of smoke; or when my aunt dies of lung cancer after a lifetime not smoking but working in the casino industry, i start to see your 'private behavior' as impinging on me, and take an interest in limiting where and how you smoke, as well as how much of the resulting mess you pay for.

likewise, when my network access goes to shit because the latest melissa virus is chewing half the worl's bandwidth; whe i keep having to fend off relatives begging me to come and de-infest their windows boxes; when the 'network and IT support' indirect charge on the grants my (all linux/mac) department receives in effect subsidizes the high-support requirements of the other, windows-running departments at my research institute, i start to give a shit what other people have running on their boxes, and take an interest in sandboxing your shitboxes off frm my network, and in making sure you bear the full financial costs of your stupid IT decisions.

Speaking as an open-source agnostic...

[CDarklock]

Once, Nasrudin was presiding over a court case. "First," he said, "I will hear the plaintiff."

The open-source plaintiff stepped forward and said, "You cannot trust a heartless and soulless corporation to care about your needs!"

"I believe you are right!" cried Nasrudin.

The closed source defendant objected, "You haven't heard our side of the story yet!"

Nasrudin nodded. "Then let us now hear the defendant."

The defendant stepped forward and said, "You cannot trust strangers to help and support you out of the goodness of their hearts!"

"I believe you are right!" cried Nasrudin.

The bailiff coughed, and said "Your honor... we can't decide the case if they are BOTH right."

"I believe you are right!" cried Nasrudin.

Actually, I have been using Oo.org ...

[PaulBu]

... though I (obviously) have MS Office on my (company) computer, and for a good reason: it is cross-platform!

When the bulk of your "data" gets generated while running EDA software on remote Solaris cluster it is convenient to have an office tool to put together an IOC/presentation/whatener right there and then. After this I can continue to edit it on the Windows side, maybe off-line, WITH THE SAME PROGRAM!

YMMV

Paul B.

Most respondents seem to be dodging the question

[93 Escort Wagon]

It's interesting that most of the points people are making here, while valid, do not address the "open source" part of this question at all. "Standards-based" is not synonymous with "open source". Safari and Opera are two very good browsers - both are being developed to conform to W3C standards, but neither is open source to my knowledge.

The question that people seem to be responding to here is "why I recommend non-Microsoft software solutions".

Me? I prefer (and recommend) the best tool for the job, whether it's open source or not. I love Firefox, but I also love Photoshop. My OS is OS X because "it just works" for me better than desktop Linux ever did - although both of them helped me to be more productive than when I was a Windows user.

OCD

[armentage]

1) They care because they suffer from some form of obsessive compulsive disorder.

2) Self-validation by projecting themselves into the apps (if you think Firefox is good, you think I'm good too.)

Open Formats

[nileshbansal]

All I care about is myself. And I want to use software I like. If everyone uses MS Office, I am forced to use their dc/xls/ppt file formats. If eveyone else is using Windows I will have to deal with wmv files. Many properitory plugins are not available on platform I want to use (because of small user base). As 90% people use IE website will refuse to work with browser I use. I dont care what other people use. I just want everyone to follow (open) standards. If MS Office supports open document format, IE is standards compliant and wmv is replaced by ogg I dont care.

Re:Open Formats

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, then open source software better play nice with the commercial software, too. If I open a doc file in openoffice, I don't want to be told that I'm losing data if I save it as a doc file once again. Who the hell would want to save a document opened in a non-native format in the native format? I could see MS throwing their weight around and having their software say stuff like that, but you should avoid it when you have 1% of the market share (if that).

The problem comes down to the fact that you lose flexibility with open file formats in complex applications. If MS decides to implement foo and OO doesn't, then a user wants to use foo in their document, it's not going to work right in OO. You either have to build lowest common denominator applications or deviate from the standards. We're not talking about music or video here which doesn't have a great deal of metadata; we are talking about complete typesetting information being embedded as part of a file format in the case of Word, for example.

When it comes down to it, standards are downright boring and they can't cover everything that might be useful. They also force everyone to change at more or less the same rate. This is fine for open source developers who can focus on refinement, but it just doesn't work for the marketing department of almost any company. The very nature of standards means that software features would be the same across the board.

Yes, it sucks that MS users can get locked in. Yes, it sucks that open source developers can get locked out. However, having one party like MS in control of their own internal standards gives them the ability to subvert the slow pace of open standards and develop new functionality. On one hand, if users aren't willing to sacrifice features that cannot be implemented using open standards, they deserve to be locked in. On the other hand, if they are willing to sacrifice features for the promise of interoperability, then the progress of information technology is effectively being slowed.

Interoperability and open standards are great for certain applications such as audio and video as I mentioned earlier. They are also critical for providing low-level network functionality. If TCP/IP was proprietary, the consequences would be more dire than if a few documents didn't come out right because someone wanted to use a proprietary feature of their word processing software. As with most things in IT and in the real world in general, you need to consider which fights are worthwhile and what the right tool (proprietary interfaces or open standards) for the job is. I suspect that computing would be rather boring if everyone religiously followed open standards.

Re:Open Formats

[LuYu]

All I care about is myself. And I want to use software I like. If everyone uses MS Office, I am forced to use their dc/xls/ppt file formats. If eveyone else is using Windows I will have to deal with wmv files. Many properitory plugins are not available on platform I want to use (because of small user base). As 90% people use IE website will refuse to work with browser I use. I dont care what other people use. I just want everyone to follow (open) standards. If MS Office supports open document format, IE is standards compliant and wmv is replaced by ogg I dont care.

Well put. This brings up both of two points for me. The two points are freedom and the usefulness of my OS. The second is really related to the first in an indirect way, so I suppose freedom is really my goal.

RMS is right. Proprietary software hurts everyone, purist or not. It enables DRM. It allows for draconian EULAs (think MS's clause that states that you cannot use MSWord to create documents critical of MS). It allows for software that cannot be controlled by its owner (the owner being the owner of the computer, not the "owner" of some abstract "intellectual property" rights). It creates corporations that lobby for things like software patents in Europe. If this did not affect me, I would not care.

As the parent said, as well, these engineered incompatibilities of MS's "embrace, extend, and extinguish" policy make my life difficult. If I want to create a website with transparent PNGs, I just have to accept that IE will not be able to handle it (and 90% of the users on the Web will not see it as intended). I even had to have a friend help with a hack to display transparent PNGs one time (the effect of the site was still ruined because IE cannot properly handle fixed background images).

The other is driver software. If Linux or MacOS or BSD or whatever had more users, there would be more hardware drivers available. If those drivers were open source, the hardware they interface with would be available to everyone. Open source drivers are quickly ported to many platforms. I am sick of having to search for hardware before I buy it just because MS has a monopoly. I actually got laughed at once because I asked if I could buy a laptop without Windows on it. I did not even ask to have another OS, I just did not want Windows. If I want to buy a laptop in any store, I am forced to pay MS. Caveat emptor. This sort of thing is so anti-free-market, I do not know where to begin.

MS wants to tell me how I am going to use my computer. They want to log my files. They want to "authorize" software I put on my computer. The only way I can avoid that is to use another OS. The only way another OS will be usable is for the userbase to be large enough that hardware will be supported by that OS.

Freedom is why I want more people to use Free Software. I did not ask for my freedom to depend on other people. It just does. If you do not believe that, think of the phrase "majority rules". When a large enough group of people decides that Free Software is a good thing, I will be safe(r) from the MSs and Adobes of the world who would keep information from me -- keep me ignorant, in effect -- to further their monetary goals.

Most FOSS zealots hate businesses

[c0d3h4x0r]

This particular Ask Slashdot has a dumbfoundingly obvious answer: most FOSS zealots try to convert users to FOSS software because they gut-wrenchingly hate and fundamentally mistrust businesses and want to do everything they can to stick it to businesses where it hurts.

On the other hand, most users don't care whether software is free (as in liberty) or not because they just copy whatever they want anyway, legally or not. Most users don't care whether software is open-source or not because most users are not programmers and have no interest in or need for source code. And most existing FOSS software today is more difficult to install/configure/maintain/use than commercial offerings.

So from the user's point of view, there's only one motivation to switch to FOSS software, and that's to get their obnoxious FOSS-touting acquaintances to shut the hell up. And as statistics suggest, this isn't enough of a reason to convince your average user to switch.

That is, unless you are a particularly hairy and foul-smelling breed of FOSS zealot and your victim is a reasonably good-looking young woman who would much prefer suffering through a difficult computing experience for the rest of her life over actually tolerating your incessant geek whining for yet another day.

Because I'm their default support guy

[Phil Karn]

Why do I care what software my friends and relatives run on their computers? Simple -- I always seem to be the one they call for help. If they're running Linux or Mac OS X, the two systems I use, it's usually easy for me to help, often by remotely logging into the machine in question. And I rarely get calls in the first place, because those two systems generally "just work".

But if they're running Windows, I tell them they're on their own. First of all, a typical Windows machine has far more than its share of major problems. Worms, viruses and spyware are almost entirely Windows afflictions, and most people just won't pay attention to my repeated lectures on proper network hygiene until it's too late.

Second, I find it quite painful to debug a Windows machine even when it's in front of me. Time really starts to drag after the first ten or twenty reboots. Trying to do it over the phone from thousands of miles away, unable to see the screen or type some complicated command without having to spell it out verbally several times, is just beyond my patience. VNC is sometimes useful, but it's painfully slow even over cable modems or DSL, and you still need local human intervention whenever a reboot is needed -- which is all too frequent with Windows.

Sure thing

[Safety Cap]

~ if they became mainstream, people would find ways to get spyware on it.

That's why the mainstream web server, Apache (in use by 3x as many shops as all the others combined), has far fewer unpatched and less-severe vulnerabilities than the next closest competitor.

Popularity is not a function of hackability. Being poorly written and stupidly integrated into the low rings of the OS is.

Re:Sure thing

[jc42]

now put apache in the hands of people who know nothing about computers...

That's exactly what Apple does. When you fire up a new Mac, one of the things it asks you is whether you want a web server. If you click "Yes", it sets up an apache server on the machine. You have a "Sites" directory that is your web directory. You move files into that directory (or subdirectories). They're on the Web, at least if your machine is on the Web. If not, it's still a live web site which you can test locally to your heart's desire. When you have it like you want it, you can copy the whole thing to a machine that is on the Web.

I have a Powerbook on which I do this, though my actual Web sites are on linux and FreeBSD boxes. It works fine, and there's no history of novices' machines (or mine ;-) being pwned via their web server.

(There is a serious problem with running rsync between OSX and other unixoid systems. But that's a different issue, not related to security.)

Of course, you can still endanger your machine by installing CGI programs that violate security. But your typical Joe Sixpack isn't gonna do that. Programmers will, but they're not "people who know nothing about computers".

No, apache is the poster boy for debunking the claim that being a market leader automatically makes you a hacker/cracker target. Apache has nearly 70% of the web-server market now, but it isn't a security threat. Your CGI programs may be, but apache isn't.

You'll have to find a better excuse for why IE is such a security danger. The real reason is that it's written to be insecure, and MS has no motive to fix its problems. After all, it's the market leader, so people must like it the way it is. Why change something that's so popular?

Self-interest

[paj1234]

Example 1: One of my customers relies on a web site hosted by Positive Internet (www.positiveinternet.com). Last weekend, Positive got DDOSed. I had to explain to my customer that the problem is made possible by all the compromised PCs out there - and Microsoft isn't going to do much to fix it until 2007 at the earliest.

Example 2: Another of my customers was using a Debian based PC that I made for them, until they asked me to fit a cheap Vivitar digital camera to it. Which doesn't work, because the camera doesn't properly support USB Mass Storage. Goodbye, Linux. Hello, Windows 98.

Conclusion: I hope that popular open source will help people keep control of their computers. I also hope it will help manufacturers stop producing broken hardware.

Seconded

[leonbrooks]

Besides which, I get to charge more.

How does this work?

If things break half as often because of what I've done, I do half as much work, I can charge half as much again for my work and the customer spends 25% less on me than on a competitor advocating less, um, safe software. The customer's machinery also works more reliably, so they get more work done and live in less fear of stuff vanishing from under their hands.

IRL, I "visit" a typical Linux server (I do mostly servers) by remote control about twice a year and in person about once a year on average. OTOH I will typically need to visit an MS-Windows server in person about every two months (some better, some much worse). This makes the billable-time ratio about 3:1. "Aaak!" the traditionalist says, "you have 1/3 of the income!" Not so. I am able to support 3x as many clients, charge 50% more for my time, and yet provide double the value.

Workstation differences are even more pronounced, since users have a far greater ability to break things on MS-Windows, which synergises very effectively with MS-Windows' ability to spontaneously break itself.

Parable of the school teacher

[Hairy1]

Janet was a school teacher. Like many teachers she didn't decide on her profession based on the financial rewards. Money was tight at the best of times.

Janet buys a computer for herself, but doesn't buy a copy of Office. Later she finds out that Wordpad isn't really what she needs in a word processor. She visits one of the local appliance shops which also sell PC software.

Discussing the situation with the sales person she finds she will be paying $200 for a copy of Office. Now $200 is much better than the full price only because she can get the academic pricing, but it is still $200 she can ill afford.

Just then a young man comes up to her and asks her what she needs the word processor for. Does it need to run Macro's etc. She answers that it will be used for writing letters, looking at the childrens homework etc. The young man then suggests that she take a look at OpenOffice, which can be purchased at another store thats only a few minutes walk away.

Intrigued she walks down to the store and buys a copy of OpenOffice for $10. Getting home she pops the CD into the computer and with littlw effort has OpenOffice up and running. How, she wonders, can such excellent software ge so cheap. She begins tgo read the front cover describing that OpenOffice is open source, and what open source means.

Three months later the entire school has changed to OpenOffice, as the idea of freedom that Janet brought to the school caught like wildfire with the teachers that saw the quality of open source. Janet was now used Linux at home, but her journey into open source was just beginning.

Lots of reasons to care

[ShannaraFan]

Let's see, where to start...

1. About a year ago, my boss was looking at options for bug tracking/issue tracking software. Knowing I could save the company some money, and implement a great product, I recommended Bugzilla. I even installed it and let other people in I.T. take it for a spin. Mr. Boss didn't even LOOK at it, and we ended up spending $15K on a commercial product that uses an ActiveX control as a front-end, forcing us (i.e. ME) to use Internet Explorer. Choice between an excellent, free, browser-based product that we could modify to suit our needs, or a commercial, closed, platform-specific and expensive product - we go with the expensive product.

2. A few months ago, we as a group decided that we needed a better way to centralize documentation and information, some way to make it easy for us and our users to find and maintain documentation. Perfect use for a wiki! I installed and configured TWiki, showed a few people how to use it, and we started populating it. Everybody loved it! Two weeks ago, Mr. Boss announces that we're installing Sharepoint and migrating all of our documentation there. Reason? He saw it used at a Great Plains conference that he attended. The wiki is running on a retired 350Mhz desktop machine, serving content to approximately 40 users. Think Sharepoint will run on such a machine?

3. In response to our users' increasing complaints about SPAM, we decided that we needed to implement a server-based filtering mechanism. My recommendation - stick a Linux box in front of Exchange, running Exim, Spamassassin, and ClamAV, the same combination that makes me very happy at home. Nope, we spent money on a commercial content filter (can't remember the product name). Our email admin is adding FROM addresses to the blacklist on that thing every day. Explaining that this is an exercise in futility, because FROM addresses are forged and random, passes cleanly above his head, and he merrily continues adding addresses to the blacklist.

It just goes on and on and on. The mentality that money must be spent to solve these problems astounds me.

Why do I care? I care because I have to work with these products as part of my job. I care because I see it as useless spending on the part of my employer. I care because these products are NOT the best solution to the problem, but we're happy to throw money away on them. It is EXTREMELY frustrating to sit back and watch, but trying to argue the point gets you labelled a zealot.

AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!

Competition & Security for all

[dpudenz]

Competition & Security for all

By encouraging users to use other products such as Linux, MAC, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, etc. we force software companies and projects to increase stability, performance, and features.

If more users used products other then Microsoft's then they would in turn need to better their offerings. As they increase their products features, performance, and stability users will depend that alternatives to Microsoft's products also increase. Competition is a good thing and healthy competition leads to advances for all of us.

Users who do not use Microsoft products are less likely to experience viruses as most of these are written for the masses (i.e. Windows, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Office).

Viruses are easily propagated today as once a security hole is found the majority of users have this same security hole. By reducing the number of users that use Microsoft only products we reduce the number of identical security holes. This decreases virus propagation which reduces traffic on the Internet.

We can not move everyone off of Microsoft products nor should we as this will just move the problems from one platform to another ore one application to another. However if we encourage users to look at options they have and in doing so we convert a percentage of them to other products everyone will see the benefit of better products and less virus propagation.

Just my two cents....