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No Competition Between Open and Closed Source?
techie writes "MadPenguin.org is highlighting the lack of competition between open and closed source applications. The author writes, 'Is there really the level of competition in the open source world that we see in the closed source world? This is something that has been stuck in my mind lately as I have been told so many times by closed source developers that by opening the code you are creating your own competition. Today, I'm here to explore this theory and hopefully prove why it's false.'"
What a great article. Maybe one day someone will write a relevant one about how and why GNOME and KDE compete, for example, and why. I'll be looking forward to that one.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Have you ever chosen between using Apache and IIS?
Have you ever chosen between using MySQL and DB2?
Have you ever chosen between using OpenOffice and MS Office?
Have you ever chosen between using PHP and Active Server Pages?
(IANAL)
Apparently from adclick revenue. They get money from google when you use the google search bar next to the url bar.
Find free books.
Better to know the bias than have no clue what their bias is. Everyone is biased, might as well know up front what theirs is.
Do the new versions of IE have tabs?
Yes they do, they must care about the competition then.
Ummmm, Apache vs. IIS? Is this a trick question or something?
Service and support: the best and worst I've gotten were on commercial products; the free software I've used has tended to have good support, and you can buy service and support for free software. With proprietary software, either you can get support from the vendor, or you can't get support. Moreover, an organization selling support for free software needs to do a good job to stay in business, unlike normal commercial customer support, which is usually considered a cost center by the software vendor.
Legal responsibility: to the best of my knowledge, all software is equal here, in that nobody will accept legal responsibility. If you think any commercial vendor accepts responsibility, you've never read an EULA. The most I've seen one of those accept responsibility for is that there is, in fact, enclosed media, and the floppy or CD-ROM or whatever will remain such for sixty or ninety days.
Software has its own characteristics, and there are good reasons not to accept legal responsibility when distributing it. They apply both to free software and proprietary software.
Unfortunately, I don't know of any software where the creating company is liable for its effects. This means that this is a false comparison. One could just as well claim that unicorns are more suitable than horses for commercial purposes.
I don't know about every piece of software in the Universe, so if somebody could point me to a piece of software that is sold normally (as opposed to requiring a written and signed contract for distribution) that accepts responsibility for any problems, I'd be very interested.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
2 l8
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Talking about the Church of Emacs, Richard Stallman was asked whether it was a sin to use vi.
No, it's a penance