No Respect for Windows Open Source

man_of_mr_e writes "Shaun Walker, one of the founding developers of the DotNetNuke Portal/CMS has written an interesting piece about Open Source software on the Windows platform. "It's hard being an open source project on the Microsoft platform. Because no matter how hard you try to exemplify true open source ideals, you will not get any respect from the non-Microsoft community." He also says "There are Open Source zealots who believe that unless an application is part of a stack which includes 100% Open Source services and components, that it can not claim to be Open Source. [...] But does this "stack" argument actually make any sense?""

Comments

Re:On the contrary

[The_Dougster]

I personally use almost 100% open source stuff on my windows machines, but thats because of the following:

• I'm already a long time Linux user
• For me, its a productivity boost to use familiar apps
• I'm not trying to convince somebody else to use it.
• I'd rather spend my extra money on other things.

I routinely install Cygwin, OpenOffice, Dia, Python, Ghostscript, GIMP, and several other lesser apps on my own personal windows machines. Aside from games and CAD, I can get a pretty complete system using free software.

It is true though that for some unknown reason, corporate IT people won't even consider an open source app most of the time. Why businesses continue to hire these wastrels is beyond me though. Companies will throw millions of dollars into crappy proprietary software, then cut jobs when the red ink starts appearing.