Slashdot Mirror
Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist?
morrison asks: "In recent years, the Open-Source movement has increased dramatically. Harnessing the power of thousands of developers and testers has proven successful, to varying degrees, in developing operating systems, graphics applications, and web tools, including Linux, POV-Ray, Blender, Gimp, and Apache. In a SIGGRAPH 2005 discussion panel, the questions will be raised as to whether the open-source model is relevant and useful to the graphics community. Does the model of proprietary application research, development, and usage serve the industry better? Or will commercial facilities continue to primarily choose off-the-shelf solutions? Can all models work together? As a large portion of the Slashdot and Open Source community will be at SIGGRAPH, I'd really like to hear some moderated arguments beforehand before stepping up to the microphone."
I've sent this this URL to several "not very technical" people (a bunch of biologists), even sometimes forgetting to tell them that that they should install the GTK+2 package first, then "The GIMP for Windows" one. I doubt you'd think of yourself as "not very technical", but just in case you are, I'm pointing this out specifically for your benefit . The "not terribly technical" people that I forgot to mention this to, and that tried to install only "The Gimp for Windows" got a reletively nice dialog box telling them to go back and also install GTK+2, which 100% of them managed to do completely on their own!!! (and none of them complained about it being a "pain in ass")