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Why Users Drop Open Source Apps For Proprietary Alternatives
maximus1 writes "Hard as it may be to imagine, 'free' is not always the primary selling point to open source software. This article makes some interesting points about subtle ways Open Source projects might lose to the competition. Lack of features is a common answer you'd expect, but the author points out that complicated setup and configuration can be a real turn-off. Moreover, open source companies may not do enough to market major upgrades. If they did, they might lure back folks who tried and dumped the earlier, less polished version. This raises the question: what made you dump an open source app you were using? What could that project have done differently?"
On the verge of dumping firefox after years of use. 3.5.2 was horrible. 3.5.3 crashed within the first 5 minutes of use. The #1 reason I would dump any SW product is stability. If it can't perform its intended function without crashing then nothing else matters. Lets just hope I don't need to switch to Chrome to get this to post.
--- Liberty in our Lifetime
The biggest reason is the fact that there weren't expensive support contracts available for purchase. Employee turnover always exists and generally only one or maybe two people knew how to operate any particular system in the places where I have worked. Expensive support contracts allowed for someone else to do deal w/the turnover problem and kept it out of the hands of the on-site departments.
For me it really wasn't about the lack of features. It was more on how easy it was to use as program. You have Feature X,Y, and Z on there, but if I have to navigate Menus A, B, C, and D to find that feature then I will not use that program.
... is my key principle. I'm capable of RTM'ing and Googling to find answers, but especially as I get older, I don't have the time I used to. Just yesterday, I was struggling with an Open Source mail server. Having to read separate (and usually incomplete) (not to mention incomprehensible at times) documentation on each component, THEN figure out how it all played together ... just to be honest, I briefly (briefly!) considered telling Corporate that we needed to just bite the bullet and go with an Exchange Server with full support.
Fortunately, I got this one working (again), and it's holding for now. But my #1 complaint is the lack of clear, easy-to-follow documentation. I love F/OSS -- I run Suse at home, and I've fallen head-over-heels for VirtualBox -- but this is my biggest complaint. We have a lot of brilliant coders working in F/OSS. We need to attract some equally-brilliant technical writers to donate time to explain how the stuff works in the real world.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
I dumped openoffice (which I used for years on linux and windows) for Apple's iWork on my mac. Faster, cleaner, and produced cleaner documents... I have since purchased 2 versions ... 08 and 09...
For me I use Windows Media Center because its simple to setup. Simple for my family to use and for myself its simpler to find support for. I don't care to jump through hoops and have to jump through hoops to get a system configured, remote configured and if there is a issue while I am away finding someone who can support it is easier with windows..
I am sure some people won't agree with me but some people just don't want to worry about these things and just want it quick, easy and simple and feel more comfortable with windows than Linux.
http://www.itworld.com/print/77409
Fonts. The default fonts for OpenOffice look awful. With Pages (word processor on my Mac), my documents look beautiful with no fuss. I don't require a thousand different features, either.
Maybe I'm entirely different than most people. I used to use a bunch of propritary applications...Office, AIM, Yahoo, mIRC....I switched to the open-source alternatives and I never looked back. For me, it was being able to jump between Ubuntu and Windows while maintaining the same "feel" as the other apps. Market major upgrades are lame. How many times does someone make a major upgrade that's really just more annoying features....didn't AOL just "upgrade" ICQ to use the same rendering engine as AIM Triton...quite honestly, AIM Triton was enough to make me switch to Pidgin full time. Obviously the windows people will stick with the applications that they're used to.
Open source sounds good at first. It's really like one of those stories where someone sells their soul to the Devil in the end though.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Very few, if any, OEMs provide Linux drivers with their products. That left me scrambling to find drivers on the internet for some of my equipment. Some of my older stuff I was never able to get working. I'm not a kid anymore. I don't have the time to go on a scavenger hunt or learn how to build kernels. Don't get me wrong. I really appreciate the open source effort. I stuck with Ubuntu for two years. But I'm now back to proprietary software.
Why is it hard to imagine? People will pay money for something if it saves them time, or is simply more pleasant to use. It's software after all - free isn't the best drawcard if the software is crap to begin with, and goodness-knows there's a ton of crap open source software out there.
Second, at least with business programs, it's obvious that a programmer designed them them. GNUCash is the worst thing a business can use for their accounting software. They took a home checkbook program, added a couple of other accounts and considered it done. If you're running a business, just shell out the money for Quickbooks, MS Accounting, or Moneyworks.
Lastly, some development tools - yikes! Comparing gtk+ with Qt, Qt has wonderful documentation, the build environment was easy to set up and the integration with eclipse was great (I wish for a Netbeans integration one day but that was easy to set up too). It took me a few hours to get gtk+ build environment set up correctly where Netbeans could actually compile and link something. A make file would just be a nightmare!
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
As for the product our company is working on (A large scale telecom sytem) there are tedious procedures taking months for involving open source in the project. I believe the reason for this is that, if you use open source software, and the system crashes because of a bug in it, there is no-one to blame.
Of course, if a company would offer a product that is built on open source but taking all responsibility for support and stability, this would be as good as "closed source" software.
So companies are primarily looking for the cheapest alternative as usual, where the requirements are support, stability, etc. Pure open source cannot cope with these requirements so in itself it is useless.
Drives me nuts. Try each new version of Calc, no easy "fill down" & its back to Excel. Other than that I use open source apps whenever possible.
It seems the developers have no concern whatsoever to test their new user-interfaces with users who will actually use their software. This causes miscommunication between the developer and the user-base, in turn leading to an alienation of both groups. It is paramount to learn to speak the language of the user, or the boat we want to sail will never land on a coast.
Besides this, I find the lack of clear and uniform documentation a big mishap in modern linux systems.
So, my complaint list:
1. Lack of user-testing
2. Incomplete, incomprehensible, multi-format documentation.
3. Lack of quality control (eg. automated testing)
4. Unannounced drop of support on certain projects.
5. A plethora of linux distributions makes it difficult to choose.
6. Too many configuration formats.
7. The UNIX framework is not mature anymore and because of its design flaws, responds horribly to new demands.
8. Too many different programming languages make it difficult for new talent to drop in or to integrate different approaches.
9. KISS principle is broken too many times.
10. Featuritis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep)
This is a replacement signature.
The main reason I don't like the GIMP is that on OS X, it has a really horrible user interface.
I dumped GNOME for KDE because GNOME cannot line up the goddamn icons on its desktop to save its life.
Then I installed Firefox on KDE because Konqueror doesn't seem to have auto-scrolling, it crashes a lot (Most of the KDE 4.2 stuff crashes regularly, actually), and Ctrl-Enter opens a new tab, when I expect it to open a URL in the current tab.
The last time I dropped a FOSS application was because it had a security hole you could drive a truck through. I learned the hard way by being hacked. Suspecting this application, I spent a few hours crawling through the source and found it severely compromised. Fixing it would have taken way more time than it was worth given the readily available closed source alternatives.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
You know, there are times when one needs to use a non-open source application when an FOSS solution just does not work. For me, I needed a scanner solution that just worked and Viewsonic was the only thing that I could find that met my needs and worked reliable. Linux and Open Source means choices not religion.
I use Skype because it doesn't seem Jingle is ready on Jabber yet (what Google uses for Google Talk). I'll switch as soon as possible.
unrar-nonfree because the free version had trouble unpacking something, probably won't stop using this since unraring stuff on linux sucks enough as it is.
flashplugin-nonfree I have because I needed it for my bank (it's not as bad as it sounds, I don't need it for regular bank stuff, only to get a one time virtual card number so I can order stuff over the internet and decide the max amount they can charge).
EAC in Wine as it's the best cd ripper out there, though I wish it was free software and I'm hoping for a replacement.
That's pretty much it. I do run a few old games in Wine and DosBox every once in a while but nothing I couldn't be without. Just a bit of nostalgia.
If it's open source and *doesn't* have a GUI, it's probably fantastic. My email, programming, backups, version control etc. is all open source and I wouldn't have it any other way.
But as soon as you add a GUI and plug in a monitor, the quality drops away and things start to get iffy. What happened with KDE4, for example, was unacceptable. You can't just dump everything and expect users to accomodate that.
And stability. A lot of open source apps are fantastic but they have rough edges - little bugs and issues. The way media managers like Rhythmbox and Amarok handle an iPod, for example: sometimes I get weird errors about mounting the iPod, or it doesn't behave properly when there's no free space left, and other little issues. They may not be show stoppers, but they're enough to give you a bad impression. The quality just isn't quite there.
And you know what the worst part is? This isn't getting any better. Open source GUIs are about the same quality now as they were a decade ago. Sure they're more capable, but all the rough edges are still there and don't seem to be going away. I've been using desktop Linux since Redhat 5.2 and I can honestly say the standards and general incompleteness, relative to the competition, are about the same today as they were back then.
I still use Linux on my desktop but I'm tempted to buy a Mac next time and use it as a front-end, while keeping all the 'real' stuff on a Linux box. But I don't want to manage two computers if I can help it. Ho hum.
I've dumped proprietary applications for the same reasons people dump open source alternatives.
And there's also the price of a lot of proprietary applications, it's often not worth the improvements I gain.
I use outlook (through virtualbox) instead of Evolution to connect to the Exchange servers at my work. Its actually a huge pain, but MAPI support is seriously flawed.
One thing that devs could do though, which would help, is to try and have a quicker fix for major bugs. For example, in MAPI (and it might just be with the outdated Exchange servers my work uses) I was unable to reply to emails because evolution didn't parse the senders email correctly. There is a fix out there, upstream somewhere. Launchpad says the issue has been fixed. But I won't see updated package files until who knows when. I've tried recompiling from source, but thats a big challenge. Recompiling the most recent version of the MAPI plugin requires a lot of newer dev libraries across the board and I never was able to get it to work. I've also seen the patch code for the fix and its not complicated. So I guess I wish someone would implement it in an older version and make the packages available.
Chrome is also open source so by this logic it will very likely suffer the same fate and be dumped. Rather than go back to IE I have decided to retire.
Her lips were softer than a duck's bill, but her quacks
I used to work at a very large worldwide telecom provider. You know the name whether you are in the USA or Russia or India or Japan or 200 other countries.
When we needed a new tool, we would "ask around" with our existing vendors. These vendors would either recommend the top 3 very well known apps or quickly partner with an up-and-coming vendor or lastly, but only if there wasn't a way to make money, suggest some open source tool. OpenNMS could have been used internally, but there was too much money on the line, so we have a mix of commerial apps - Netcool being one of them.
Why? Sales calls. Software costs money even when it is free. Time, effort, maintenance and other FUD concerns. Unless the free version is basically bug free and has proven commercial support, we can't consider it. Further, we'll never consider it unless someone knocks on the right door at the right instance. The "support" costs are simply too difficult to overcome for completely free tools. Generally, we pay someone else to install these applications too, so expert installation and support are required. If there isn't a sale person selling all of this, we won't bother looking at it. We aren't in the software business - even though we invented UNIX. We aren't in the computer business, even though we run 60K+ servers.
We do use free software - lots of it, but only the extremely high profile projects make it into critical systems with internal support alone. Oddly, spending $500 on some small, never-heard-of-it-before tool was easier than using a FLOSS alternative because, if you paid for it, then it was assumed that support would be provided. In reality, that small company would usually be an ex-employee who retired, but left their software running. It was so poorly written that only that person could maintain it. At the first new feature request, the cost became $50K + 15%/yr support. A nice extra retirement income when added to the pension. Not bad for 5 days of work/yr.
I now work at a small company. We avoid commercial software beyond what we **must** have. Our production servers DO NOT RUN on Windows-whatever-the-name-is-today. We do have a few Windows development servers, but only because customers demand it.
The worst language ever invented for mass-production software. I want all the hours I lost waiting for the app to load, and waiting for a keypress to echo on the screen because the app likes to visit the swap file every fifteen seconds.
Many of the reasons leveled at open source can also be leveled at commercial software. I've seen more than my fair share of commercial applications that lack features, have critical bugs, and are definitely hard to use. While some of these problems may be surmounted by purchasing additional software or employing the services of a consultant, that is rarely an option for non-revenue generating organizations (never mind most individual users).
So why do people drop it? Lack of familiarity is one big reason. If you're a Linux user who does specialized stuff with your system, try figuring out how to do that stuff in Windows. Can't find it in the UI or configuration files? No problem. Just read the documentation. Wow. What language does Microsoft write their documentation in? While it may not be quite as bad as another language, the jargon of the Windows world is definitely different from the jargon of the Linux world. This adds time and frustration to the process of learning a new technology. So if you're familiar with Linux, you'll probably stick to Linux. If you're familiar with Windows, you'll probably stick to Windows. Feel free to substitute Linux with your favorite open source application and Windows with your favorite commercial application. By in large, this barrier will still exist.
If that issues exists for technical people, imagine how hard it is for non-technical people to deal with similar problems. A function that is found in a different place or that works in a slightly different manner will cause a neophyte OpenOffice.org user to throw up their arms in frustration, call the product shit, and head directly back to Word. Many people are completely unwilling to adapt to change in a domain that does not interest them. (I've talked to some of these people, and intellectually they realize that OpenOffice.org is just different and that it would serve all of their needs. But emotionally they view it as a vastly inferior product.)
Sometimes bundling is a reason for adopting commercial products. I'm not talking about the bundling of software that you see with commercial vendors (e.g. the various Adobe suites). Rather I'm talking about the resources that are bundled with that software. When you download the Gimp or Inkscape, you get just the Gimp or just Inkscape. When you buy something like the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite, you get fonts and clipart that you can use in your projects. When you buy the Microsoft Office Suite you get clipart and templates. Looking at my Linux setup, I have only one or two graphic fonts and no clipart to speak of. Even though I have the standard DTP and graphics software installed under it. Now I don't mind that. Actually I prefer it that way. Yet I can guarantee you that the run of the mill user will throw up their arms in frustration because they expect that stuff.
And the list could go on.
A lot of the issues with OSS are the result of engineers being totally in charge of the direction of a product. Engineers tend to assume everyone else has, or at least should have, the same level of knowledge that they do. They don't have issues with tracking down oddball dependencies or navigating through cryptic and often counter-intuitive config files, so why should anyone else?
Commercial software companies, on the other hand, have teams of people to counterbalance the engineers. Marketing people to research how people want to use the product. Usability experts to make sure the product is actually accessible to the majority of people. OSS, for most projects, don't really have that. Just engineers doing what they do best, but without anyone to bring them down into the real world a little.
Maybe you'd like proprietary software more if, like the author of TFA, you were paid to sell it. Read on page two where the author promotes DropBox over a free alternative, providing a referral link as she does so. If you look on the DropBox website, you will find an affiliate program paying out up to US$50 for each referred subscription.
If you aren't getting the same kind of coin, you aren't negotiating hard enough. Hint: know the selling points of the open source alternatives, and (obviously) arrange for a private after hours meeting with the sales guy, but without your colleagues.
Of course it's a myth. Dozens of established IT companies will sell you a support contract for any software you can come up with. "Employee turnover blah blah one person knew how to operate any particular system" is MBA-speak for "We only use software that any idiot off the street can use because we refuse to pay a dollar more than what the Fed prints and the banks give us to hand out to the wage slaves and maintain full employment".
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I thought I would try Ubuntu (Intrepid Ibex), again, out on my Dell Inspiron 640m. I got everything installed but the wireless wasn't working, so I plugged it into the lan and did some googling. I had to edit several config files and use some ndiswrapper. For someone who doesn't code and doesn't work in IT, it was a pain but whatever. I got it working.
A couple days later, Ubuntu tells me I have auto-updated to install, so I say okay. It hoses the wireless. I go through the same procedure again and get it working. A couple weeks later, the same thing.
I've told this story before and got all kinds of apologist telling me various reasons why it happened. The fact is, I don't care what the reasons are. I went back to windows.
Gone!
Rhythmbox and Amarok may not be good iPod managers, but it isn't their fault that managing an iPod is shitastic.
I mean, dragging files to the player, why would anyone ever want to do something so obscure, lets use a proprietary database and make sure to try and encrypt it.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I've lost count of the number of "casual" graphics designers to whom I have introduced to open source tools... they want to "do stuff," either within a web site or with their photos, but the name brand graphics tools are too expensive, so... they'll try anything, even something with a name as ridiculous and off-putting as "The Gimp." Then, once they become proficient, once they start to understand "layers" and "filters" and the like, they understand the required reading a bit better, and wonder what they are missing with the Adobe software. Well, they don't wonder, it's very clear: all the web and design magazines each month provide specialized step-by-step tutorials on how to do neat stuff with the popular tools, and never once mention open source beyond the "Annual Condescension" summary article about the "other" tools. These people take a stroll down the aisles at B&N and see tome after tome designed to help the Adobe user, and maybe -- in a particularly well-stocked store -- a copy of "Beginning GIMP, which just sounds icky. I've seen the same scenario play out with Audacity and Pro Tools: people learn how to edit with free Audacity, and then when they become savvy enough to realize what they are missing with the proprietary stuff -- either in the form of missing features or widespread community and commercial support -- they step up.
The pro creative tools have great "wannabe" appeal: working with Adobe and Pro Tools, the amateur wannabe artists feel like they're "more connected" to that professional world to which they aspire. Using the free open source tools just underscores -- in their mind -- that they are second tier. This is not to say that the open source tools are second-rate technically, just that -- in the eyes of the latte-infused graphics and sound editor pretenders -- they may not be quite as "fashionable."
Actually, every software is free to normal users!
Either you download and crack it yourself, or you have a friend who does it for yo.
That is the main point free software hasn't taken off, and everybody knows it.
I mean, when instead of Gimp, you can get this: http://btjunkie.org/search?q=adobe%20master
Then who cares about Gimp?
And instead of OpenOffice, you get this: http://btjunkie.org/search?q=microsoft+office
I mean, it's obvious.
Oh, and under Linux, the culture is quite different. :)
1. Because not everything runs fine under Wine.
2. The abilities to combine Linux tools into scripts and a mesh, glued together with bash.
Which I absolutely love. I could never go back. I'm officially spoiled.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Surely the first reason is because it's their choice and they can do what they like?
I can get people agreeing wholeheartedly with me about the state of proprietary software and how having OS code is helpful in a lot of circumstances etc.etc. but at the end of the day it's up to them if they want to use it. Some, well-rounded, individuals try out OS code on my recommendation. It doesn't mean they have to USE it but it's only sensible that they *try* it.
Anyone who thinks that having an OS equivalent of *any* piece of software is the end of the matter is sadly disillusioned. I do heavily use OS software, but I also heavily use "freeware" and even pay for my games and some other apps on a personal basis. In work? There are OS-only servers running lots of stuff, a lot of OS software on the servers/clients and a lot of freeware too. But the clients run Windows because the software we use runs on Windows and there are no serious alternatives for the main software in my industry (education - and trust me, we use precisely one app that is open source on the client-desktop, and that's TuxPaint for the very-little-un's - even that has it's problems, which I have reported and had some of them fixed).
The point of FOSS is NOT to take over the world and make everyone use it... that would actually be counter-productive to its intentions and would only form the next big monopoly, albeit a "free" one. The point of FOSS is to provide the *choice*. And each time some FOSS advocate says that I can't (or even "shouldn't", but that's less critical) use proprietary software or even freeware, they make me stop listening to them. FOSS saves me money. It saves me time and hassle. It allows me to customise things I would never be able to normally. It allows me to benefit from coder's skills from the world over and not have to recreate smaller apps from scratch. I *do* look forward to the day when I have so MUCH choice that all of my programs and operating systems are OS ones. But that means having several apps of each type and allowing me to *choose* - not telling me that KDE is the only way forward, or that every cd-burning app is going to merge into one.
Software *is* like evolution - Diversity and choice benefit the end user, even if millions of years down the line. And those who crow loudly in the morning but won't let anyone in their nest will eventually die out by those who quietly chirp and build fabulous nests that they allow any female into in order to show how good a builder they are. But it will take years. And the whole *POINT*, the whole impetus, the reason I *use* FOSS is because it gives me a choice when I would otherwise have been forced to use an horrendous piece of software. But my main browser is still Opera, because it does things that I'm prepared to sacrifice access to the source code for. That's not a permanent position and should Firefox, etc. catch up then I will seriously consider a switch - after all, it's my *choice* of browser, not some blind fanaticism.
On the sliding scale, FOSS is better than freeware is better than shareware is better than wholly proprietary. But it's *one* factor and I will slide up and down that scale in order to find my own personal sweet spot. That only occasionally entirely rests inside the FOSS category.
I don't there's one reason to switch that fits all situations. For me, there's different reasons for wanting to switch away from FOSS, or not use it in the first place. For example: 1. Firefox -- Stability: horrendous on a Mac, and the memory leaks. Bloat: awfulbar and other "features" that should be addins. There appears to be very little understanding in Mozilla about what users needs are. 2. GIMP -- Features: is nowhere near up to professional standards. 3. VLC -- User Experience: fantastic engine -- but horrific interface, and arrogant unhelpful developers. (I switched to Mplayer and never looked back) 4. Open Office -- Pretty much all of the above. 5. Joomla -- Ridiculously complex, documentation is gawdawful. And that for modules is often worse and invariably written in English by those whose command of the language is very tentative. 6. Celtx -- Usability. Has better features than Final Draft, however the need to be online to save as a pdf renders it pretty much worthless.
Open Source is a lot better from when I first started looking into it 15 years ago but I still occasionally get hit by cultural attitudes of some of the software developers. To be fair, I understand that a lot of the projects are volunteer run and small scale, maybe one or two people hitting way above their weight and competing with large commercial corporations, but the documentation can be sparse. There's still an emphasis on getting software out rather than communicating what it does or how to help people to use it in some cases. More friendly introductions and more explicit guidance would be useful.
I think there are still a lot of elitist attitudes in the open source movement, with people "points scoring" - trying to prove they are more elite, more expert, and more competent than others and basing their sense of worth on proving they are better than others. Some of this filters into support forums where innocent questions from beginners can be savagely put down ("if you don't know how to do this, get lost newbie!").
The open source movement has come on a long way but could go a lot further in taking advantage of the large number of people who philosophically wish to support open source / FOSS/FLOSS whatever you want to call it but are not technical experts. Think of the large number of people who will pay extra to buy free range eggs / fairtrade food: they don't want to become small holding farmers themselves and look after chickens in their own back yard but they'll pay extra for food sources they believe in and fight furiously for it to be promoted as an alternative to be used in schools and government workplaces. Maybe think how the open source movement could learn lessons from this?
I use pylab and scipy as a replacement for Matlab. But it's really frustrating because sometimes you do an update and everything can bust because this or that lib won't compile with your current compiler or this or that dependency is not available or it wont work with X or aqua term or whatever.
To give an example, none of the scientific programs I wrote to display my graphs work any more because none of the 3D graphics in pylab work anymore. instead you can use Mayavi (much better but more difficult), but to do an install of that cleanly is a nightmare. So you switch to the Enthought distro with all that built in. But then the ENthought distro doesn't have a fortran compiler so all the scientific add ons that depend on that or use F2PY are busted. And so on. Sure you can if you try get it all to work, but your old programs seldom work anymore.
Continuity is a huge headache with open source. If your time is worth anything then even something as overpriced as matlab starts to be attractive.
(the problem with matlab's pricing is that while it's not so absurd for single seats if it makes you more productive, once you have a large group then everyone needs a copy to be interactive even if they seldom use it: then it becomes prohibitively expensive.)
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It comes down to one thing, price. The more someone paid for something, the less likely they are to admit that it doesn't work as they would like. Most of the time people didn't pay anything for any Open Source Software that they have, therefore when they get frustrated they drop it. On the other hand if someone paid over $100 for software, they are much more likely to stick with it and work through the frustration.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
This is what you expected: Not-supported hardware, for which there is an experimental driver at best, to magically work.
Now, here is a dose of reality: Not-supported hardware, for which there is an experimental driver at best, does not work smoothly or reliably. This is true regardless of what OS or kernel you use, and Linux is no exception.
Ndiswrapper is a temporary solution that injects Windows drivers into the Linux kernel; would you expect a Linux driver to work smoothly under Windows? Why do people think that Linux is magically going to do things that they would never expect Windows or Mac OS to do?
For everyone who is complaining about hardware that does not have a Linux driver: I created a few pieces of hardware as an undergrad (engineering projects), and only write Linux drivers for them. Please, plug them into your Windows or Mac OS machine, and see how well they work. If it mysteriously "just works," I will personally write drivers for your wireless card.
Palm trees and 8
1.) An awful lot of open source applications exists which generally work fine, but to install them, you first have to install other software. A new version of this library and that library, a different, sometimes even an older version of m4 and autoconf, whatever. Then you have to fix a few bugs in configure scripts, makefiles, and maybe even in the code itself before the beast will compile. Most people will walk away from that because a) they do not have that amount of time and b) they are users, not developers.
2.) The only constant is change. KDE 4 anybody? Open source projects enjoy to completely throw away what they have, and instead start again from scratch. Writing completely new code is so much more fun than maintaining old code somebody else wrote. Thus, even if some open source software is perfect for you, chances are next year's version won't be. Somebody will have reinvented the wheel, and it now has hexagonal shape. I have perfectly fine script code that once in a while breaks on a slightly newer linux because somebody decided to remove or rename documented options of basic OS command line utilities.
3.) Poor documentation. Documentation that is out of date. Documentation that is very incomplete. Documentation that is in a non-searchable format. Documentation that does not detail how to troubleshoot the beast if it fails.
Windows also enables IPv6 by default. For any well written app, one of two things should happen in the face of IPv6 if an IPv4 identity also exists:
-The app hasn't gone to the new IPv6 capable APIs, in which case, it will only work on IPv4
-The app has used the new APIs, and used them correctly such that it is agnostic as to whether IPv6 or IPv4.
I've never seen a problem like you describe, so I would be interesting if you have a link to a discussion on it so I could understand how the software messed up here.
Incidentally, I agree that VNC is tortuously slow. That's why I use NX. My gripe there is that FreeNX has not been a solid, quality project, but I'm hoping that Google's attention in 'NeatX' will turn that around.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Even though the documentation for proprietary software can be crap, it is usually light years ahead of what you get for most Freeware/Open Source/Hippieware/Whatever programs.
I hate it when I install something and I get a window with three greyed out menus. Somehow I am supposed to magically know to go edit ~/.korgodi/pyconfig/menus/anabling.cfg to turn them on. And when I look for documentation about this or even a damn README, I get a link to a forum where everyone is too busy arguing the philosophy of tabs vs. spaces for indentation to tell me anything.
I hate writing up the documentation as much as anyone, but your project is not ready to be released until you can give the user a document telling them how to use the stupid thing.
I'll give you a real-time example. I am going to attempt to find the format for conditional execution in gmake. I don't do development on this machine normally, so some fumbling will be necessary.
Step 1: 'man gmake':
What do you mean there's no gmake? I installed the dev package.
Step 2: search for where gmake is.
Let's check synaptic to see where they put it. No gmake in there.
Oh, they called it just plain 'make' in Ubuntu. Of course.
Step 3: 'man make':
Blah blah blah . . . purpose of make . . . startup options . . . damn there are a lot of them . . . THAT'S ALL?!!! . . . Wait, there was a SEE ALSO back there.
See Also The Gnu Make Manual. Oh, of course, I have one of those with me at all times. WHERE IS IT!
Step 4: Google
Type in 'The Gnu Make Manual'. There it is. Ah yes, a webpage with a format circa 1994. ^F conditional . . . See Conditionals. At least it's a link. Reading . . . I had wondered what the definition of the word 'conditional' was. Show me the stupid syntax.
Blah blah blah, examples that no one will ever use . . . oh wait, for once the examples are relatively useful. Okay, that should get me started.
So, that wasn't too bad as was as documentation searches go. But I still had to resort to Google. WRITE THE DAMN MANUAL AND INCLUDE IT. If I type 'progname -h' give me something useful. Put something in the Help menu. No, I don't care what programs you compiled it with.
I almost always use open source software. However, I'll switch from one project (or product) to another generally based on two things:
1. Bug fixes
2. Ease of use
I'm willing to jump through a few hoops and fix things myself, but if the developers aren't willing to fix the bugs in their software, I'll go elsewhere. It's amazing how many open source projects (and some closed source ones) refuse to fix bugs in their code. So many bug reports get automatically marked "willnotfix" it's very discouraging.
Back in the Firefox 1.0 days I tried it and immediately dumped it for Opera, because it was terribly slow, used lots of memory, was slow to start and lacked lots of features that every other major browser had (you could have them through extensions though, which made it even slower and buggier; it just kept crashing). It just sucked. 1.5 was no better. 2.0 was the first that I could accepted as secondary browser. Firefox 3.0 replaced the position of my major browser, making opera my secondary one. 3.5 is great and I started to recommend it to other people.
And Opera is the only closed-source software I ever used regularly on my computer. So it's rare that I think commercial software is better than open source alternatives.
iPod has 80% of the market because actually managing an iPod is far easier than "dragging files to the player". The consumer rips a CD or buys a song download, and the next time they connect their iPod to their computer, they'll find the new track(s) will appear on their iPod. No manual management required.
Obviously that ideal level on "no management needed" requires that the iPod is large enough to hold every song the user has on their computer. But for 99% of people, that is true. The rest need to make some decisions about what kind of music they want to carry. But even then, it can be management free after those decisions are made.
Back to the slashdot topic - one of the reasons for the failure of Linux to appeal to ordinary people is the lack of understanding that people want their computers to make things easier. They don't want to dick around micromanaging their systems.
This may be more of a legal issue; Microsoft and Apple both have multiple patents on font rendering. It may be the case that the OpenOffice.org developers actually wrote code to render fonts properly, but had to deliberately disable it in order to comply with patents. I vaguely recall this happening at least once in another project that involved font rendering.
Palm trees and 8
Being free, in cost or in development model, is of little interest to me when I chooise software. I want the best software I can afford, and I can afford more than no cost.
Here's a short list:
1. Lack of attention to interface and usability design. This is not "eye candy". Consider: People think Photoshop is easier to use than Gimp. What does that tell you? (Responses that trash Photoshop users illustrate the problem.)
2. I get the impression that, apart from the corporate funded biggies, many open source projects are staffed by one or two people. That's not confidence-insipiring when I'm looking for software to use for years in the future.
3. Rushed updates often made to conform to an established schedule. If an update needs more time, don't release it.
4. Lack of innovation. Software innovation is really, really hard and no one does it well. However, open source software, more or less by intent, produces many slightly varied iterations of the same code. I.e., forks.
5. Hostile attitude to customers: One of the touted benefits of open source software is access online to developers and other cognoscenti for tech support. Although I suspect it happens with less frequency these days, too many open source users are met with hostile "code it yourself" or "I'm not interested in that..." responses when they ask for help with a problem. Online support forums should not run bugtracking software.That's a developer-only tool.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
It happens on a lot of levels and with lots of software. It is IMO one of the key issues which might hinder OSS to be adopted in a more professional way. Do note that I'm not stating that this is the case for each and every open source application out there, but there are a lot..
I've experienced this same kind of situation myself.. I'm a fan of the Java language and utilize this both professionally and as a hobby. Do note that I'm not a full time programmer. I've started out with NetBeans version 4.1 and basically kept following the developments around the IDE, now a full platform. The somewhat counter part of NetBeans, Sun Studio, offered support for UML diagrams. And it didn't took the NB developers too long to port UML support into NetBeans. And I can tell from personal experience that they did a really nice job. It wasn't perfect, it was still rough on the edges so to speak, with a few bugs here and there. But as long as you were familiar with the product you could do a lot. And the same applied to NetBeans.
Now all went relatively well until version 6 of NetBeans was released. That version became quite controversial even though I'll be the first to admit that they have done a really fine job. They basically rewrote the entire thing in order to clean out the code. As a semi-professional developer I can recognize and admire the technical impact this must have had. Don't get me wrong here. But as an end user I was appalled to see that several big and important features were gone all of a sudden. No more support for Bean Patterns (an option which made it easier to add or remove fields from a JavaBean), no longer would it offer an overview for JavaDoc (a separate window which would immediately show you what methods and fields you commented, which ones weren't consistent with the actual method or field and which still needed to be commented), and so on.
SO although it also offered a lot of new features (more modular support, support for other languages, etc) one of the primary basics was slightly crippled. Naturally all of this was fixed eventually, right now I'm also a very happy NetBeans 6.7.1 user and it does everything I need. Everything but one thing...
With the full code rewrite many modules also needed to change in order to be compliant with the new standards. Many succeeded, and many didn't. One of those was the UML plugin. Ironically enough for me it was NetBeans / Studio One which somewhat aroused my interest for UML diagrams. And when NetBeans 6.5 got released it was this particular feature which got totally crippled. It was hardly possible to create any decent diagrams, and to make matters worse the plugin now suddenly stopped supporting some (for me) important diagram types (like deployment, sequence, object). And so I eventually stuck to NetBeans 6.1 because I really needed UML support.
Until I suddenly noticed an article on the UML plugin webpage which mentioned Visual Paradigm. Its a company which developes UML modelling software, and one of their key products is the so called Smart Development Environment. And in my opinion its brilliant! Commercial, but brilliant.
This is a plugin which can embed itself in all of the major (Java) IDE's currently available; From Microsofts Visual Studio .NET to IntelliJ IDEA right to Eclipse and naturally NetBeans. Although they do offer a free community license (free of charge with a few limitations when it comes to p
Distro maintainers have a habit of either not clearly stating where documentation is installed (/usr/share/doc? /usr/local/share/doc? /usr/doc? Maybe somewhere else entirely?) or not bothering to install documentation at all. Either way, they must be instructed to clean up their act, because even experienced users and developers need documentation.
Palm trees and 8
There are several reasons why I've chosen proprietary in the past over open source. There are reasons why I'm running Mac OS X instead of Linux, and why I use the Gimp instead of Photoshop.
First, the price of the software has something to do with it. I can't see spending $100 or more on a piece of software unless it's the OS itself. This is a what I do when I'm not at work, not a paying job. So, if it's a question between a free Gimp, where things are often hard to do, some features are missing, etc. and hundreds for Photoshop, there is no question. I go with free because proprietary isn't affordable.
But, if it's the choice of a sub-$100 program and open source, there are several factors:
1. Does the software have the features I'm looking for RIGHT NOW?
I'm not talking about developers talking about adding the features. I'm not talking about poorly implemented features that they promise to get working well in the future. Can the software do what I want it to do right now? If the proprietary version I'm trying to communicate with is using a protocol and your software is using an outdated/works sometimes or with interaction on their behalf protocol....are you really an option?
2. How does the software LOOK?
Sit down and look at open source vs. proprietary solutions sometimes. Open source software often looks like a flashback to the 80s, while the proprietary is clean, crisp and beautiful. Fonts and UI add to your everyday enjoyment.
3. How easy is it to use vs. proprietary?
I don't want to learn a special scripting language to use a piece of software. I don't want to go through 10 steps to accomplish what I can in one with the proprietary solution. I don't want to have to google and then edit text files to accomplish what reading a prompt and clicking or checkmarking cïan do in a proprietary solution.
These things are all worth money to me. As long as they are, there will be cases where I chose proprietary over open source. I'm not a long bearded, hawaiian shirt wearing activist screaming "Free as in beer". I'm a person who uses his computer to do things and enjoy himself. The easier it is to do those things and the more pleasurable the experience, the more I enjoy myself.
Iceweasel was too slow in opening directory for file saving. Opera was faster, though even it gags at my 16k+ files directory. Same thing for other operations. Iceweasel crashed way too often.
I left Ubuntu due to the reasons mentioned in the article. Clumsy very hard to configure at times. LackI left Ubuntu due to the reasons mentioned in the article. Clumsy very hard to configure at times. Lack of functions. Troubles troubles and more troubles. I spent countless of hours troubleshooting and yet more problems occurred continuously. of functions. Troubles troubles and more troubles. I spent countless of hours troubleshooting and yet more problems occurred continuously.
I'm selling software. I've got users specifically buying my solution because they want support and not a "go fix that yourself" attitude.
It's the same reason Fortune 500 companies are more likely to buy commercialy supported Linux distro than Slackware: support.
But, yup, as TFA states, crazy installation procedure (ever tried to force your users install Python to get app XYZ working?) are also part of the reason my one-click software is selling so well.
You misunderstand, my problem is not that it works well, my problem is that it is the only way it works.
Say I happen to be at someone else's computer, they don't have iTunes installed, but I want to grab a couple of songs. Well, I'm up shit river, because the iPod won't work without it's damn database. And they really didn't need to use an obscure custom format, and attempt to protect it. Go ahead and defend that part of it.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I'm only speaking for myself here, but one of the major reasons that I stick with non-free alternatives is the lack of polish. By that I don't really mean that some icon is one pixel off, but rather that OS software in very many cases seem to exist in some not-quite-finished developer snapshot state. Take Inkscape, for example. It is up to version 0.48. Zero point forty-eight - and that's quite accurate, because I wouldn't give it a 1.0 number.
I think that the above is related to the OS development model - release early, release often. Unfortunately that method is incompatible with the "release late, release it right" model. (Please, if anyone reading this runs on the "release early, release it right model" - how's Snow White doing nowadays? You can ask her next time you see her since you're obviously living in some kind of fairy tale.)
It is also incredibly unsexy work to make something polished. Often it requires major restructuring, something OS is very bad at - while OS works great when there are a multitude of small, easy-to-grasp work units, it is worse at tasks that require a deep understanding of the subject and a major reworking.
Despite my complaints above, what I do think OS is excellent at is providing a basic computer system. To think that one can get a netbook for $200 or so and be able to email, browse the web and write documents is just fantastic. With MIT having open courseware, Open Source has truly lowered the barriers for anyone to educate themselves and participate in culture, science and politics.
Now, what to do with Open Source? Well, I think a lot of it comes down to the stated goals of a project. If the purpose of the project is to experiment - say so and don't give people the expectation of production grade software. If the purpose is to provide a commercial grade application - don't let it become a playground of endless rewrites: polish it and release it. Get the thing to a state where you can put a 1.0 label on it and stand up for it - otherwise you're just playing around.
The problem with open source is the dependency chain becomes brutal. So you turn to a package manager like Yum or Fink to handle all the self consistency and installs, not to mention the updates.
Then sometime later you want to update python from 2.4 to 2.5. you do the update and it updates all these dependencies as well. And suddenly you find that Gimp or gnuplot or something else you need is busted because say they all depend on some Latex for symbolic fonts and there's an incompatibility.
These package manager while saving you a lot of time on the initial install also couple all your apps together in unneccessary ways, so that updating one can break another. Or worse maybe it won't let you update at all.
One would prefer in many cases decoupling of applications or even standalone applications. When you update an app the worst that happens then is that just that app breaks. Plus it's trivial to roll back to the old self contained app.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
For many FOSS applications the UI isn't nearly as polished as the commercial alternatives. This might be partially because UI designers want to get paid for the work (perhaps not a dedicated to the free community as sofware developers). The commercial alernatives invest in easy-to-use (watered down) configuration utilities that make it easy to set up. Contrast apache (perhaps the best of the FOSS) with IIS. Apache is in many ways a much better program, but the configuration is via a really obscure configuration file--and if you do something wrong you've broken it. ISS has a slick UI with nice dropdowns and checkboxes. MS spent as much effort on the UI as they did on the actual product. This is very different than FOSS.
Secondly, the documentation is typically better on commercial software than FOSS (there are some expections, mostly badly documented commercial software rather than well documented FOSS). Again, writers, proofreaders and editors want to get paid for their work.
I the long run there are probably only a score or so of free software applilications that are substainable. With the exception of these star applications (apache, linux, etc.) the real reason for using FOSS is that it's free. For example, if both MS Office and OO were both free, which would people choose? If they were both $99 (the home/student price of Office) which would they choose. Mostly free software is exploiting programs to give their work away for free--designers, editors and proofreaders don't fall for it.
We were doing a project in LabVIEW. National Instruments has drivers for all of their hardware for Linux (well, Suse and Red Hat), but the person who specced out the cards for our project bought them from just about everyone under the sun, completely oblivious to the driver issue (I'm not his fan.)
So now we're stuck with XP...
It was the constant crashing, the buggy feeling, So many problems with the drivers I really don't want to think about it. To get the computer to behave somewhat like I wanted I had to install extra software that were even more buggy with lots of annoying pop-ups. It felt very amateurish and slow, very very slow. So finally I decided to dump that crap Windows and install Slackware.
In the beginning it was a challenge, there was no gui and i didn't know any commands at all. "dir","c:", "help" all failed. I started typing random things and pressing buttons. "" was a great accident, there was a list of commands! I tried them all, started from the top. It was hard and frustrating but in the same time rewarding and exciting, uncharted territory! I had had enough of Windows so going back was not an option, at least not then. I have since tried Windows on a couple of occasions and it is like it always was. Even a clean installations is on its knees when you do just one or tho things at the same time. The gui is cluttered and the command line is horrible. That is just besides the lousy security and persistent buggyness. It feels so good it is physical to sit down in front of my Gentoo box, I'm in control again!
That was you meant, right?
At the risk of burning karma and being modded Troll by the FSF fanboys, one of the obvious answers is: Because the proprietary solution might be better (either in general or just for that person/company's situation).
OSS does not instantly make a project better than its proprietary alternatives. OpenOffice is alright, but I still use (and pay for) MS Office simply because I feel it is a better product (again, my opinion, YMMV). Having said that, I do use GIMP over Photoshop but that's mostly because Photoshop is so ridiculously overpriced. If it dropped to a reasonable price I might buy it.
No, I am not a Microsoft fanboy, and yes, I do use Linux (for my HTPC and fileserver, at least).
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
But there has to be a happy medium on the endusermarketingdevelopment gap. I've seen way too many cases where users really know what they want, it gets filtered through marketing that doesn't fundamentally feel the problem directly or even understand the field that well distill it into marketing points for development to fulfill, and development writing to these points and the user ending up with a mess.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Ubuntu looks and feels an amazing os, however something as simple as dvd movie playback among other things, is really hard to understand for first time users. I get the philosophy about using third party software or drives but when is referring about common tools like flash for example, is just a hassle because the os forces open source alternatives first and then you realize it doesn't work correctly, install another one AND you have to authorize the os to install community supported applications (I still get puzzled at this because I though that most open source was community supported), then discover it doesn't work in all websites, so you have to install the ACTUAL adobe flash and, again authorize your os to install non open source applications and making it look like a million little developers are staring at you like a traitor to the community. I feel that Ubuntu is ready for mass installation for a bank for example, where you don't want your employees to mess around in the web and other fun activities and just take calls from customers. I also tried to install ubuntu server and I'm one of the few selected that can't make the keyboard to work during install, a common problem it seems by reading the forums, I've got so fed up so I just gave up. I'm not giving up on Linux because I like the ideal of the open source community and I'll try another distro when I learn more about it. Ubuntu seemed an easy and accessible way to get into Linux but in the end it didn't deliver what it promised. If you really have to know that much about an OS to be able to use it, using ubuntu seems redundant. I rather be one of those cool and hip guys that says "Look ma, no UI" than just have the nagware working correctly half of the time.
That entirely depends upon the ipod in question. The older and simpler models will act as a standard USB device, the touch however, does not. Apple went out of their way to make communications proprietary, thus forcing just about everyone to use itunes. Fortunately some determined people try to work on fudgy solutions, but as Palm have discovered, Apple will try to break them with every update.
The fact is, in any product, people jump ship to 'something else'. They may jump from OSS to commercial, from commercial to commercial, from commercial to OSS, or OSS to OSS. The OSS aspect of it is a feature for some, but its the total featureset that gets compared. Sometimes, something is just better than something else. An anecdote about some hobbyists 30 minute hack behaving more poorly than a commercial product with man-years of polish behind it is about as useful as comparing some untalented developers get-rich-quick startup software hammered out in a rush for venture capital against a venerable project like Apache.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I use open source software when it is superior or equal to the closed source offering. Some open source software is great (Firefox, Notepad++, VLC), some decent, and some not so good. I'll use an example: I use Firefox because it's superior to Internet Explorer. However, is Firefox "superior" to Opera? No. If need be, I would switch to Opera in a blink of an eye. I care about the quality of the software more than the license of the software (well, within reason, of course).
It really depends on the apps in question:
Browser: I use Firefox for the features (i.e. plugins), but the stability leaves something to be desired.
IM: Pidgin on Windows, mainly for the features (multi-protocol), price (free) and simplicity. I'd use Adium instead if there were a Windows version.
Office apps: Vastly prefer MS Office 2003 (Word/Excel) to OpenOffice. Mainly due to features (compatibility) and performance (OO is bloated and slow).
Picture management: Picasa. Free, has the features I want, stable, good performance.
PDF reader: Foxit. Adobe Acrobat Reader is bloated and slow.
OS: Windows XP. Runs the apps I want, is free (to me), minimal hassle. Performance and stability aren't measurably worse than Linux/OSX. Lacks features, but not ones that are especially important to me.
Having used the various components of M$ Office and Open Office, I have to say that given the choice I'll still go back to the M$ versions (I'm an avid Ubuntu user). Open Office's presentation software lacks the simplicity of use of Powerpoint; a similar situation exists with the respective spreadsheets. The features I like to use do not exist in Open Office, or they're hard to find/use. As someone who has to put together presentations quickly often, having easy-to-use software is a must.
I had hoped to use Ubuntu on my netbook. Installed it, loved it .. but I couldn't get my wifi to work with it. I tried a number of things, but while it recognized my Atheros AR5007EG Wireless Network Adaptor, I couldn't seem to get it to turn the device on. Apparently this is because Atheros chooses not to make a driver available, or has made a flawed driver available. Since I use my netbook primarily for online activity, that was the deal breaker for me. Otherwise, I liked Ubuntu and would have preferred to use it. I should check again to see if a working driver has since become available.
I have said this before on slash, and get slapped down each time. I will give it another go.
Now, I have never gone back to closed source commercial software for one of these open source project train wrecks, but I can see a major reason a company might. Specifically, open source project management issues. Their decisions can be very erratic and unstable. Projects implode with political infighting, good coders come and go, too many inexperienced newbies in power positions, organization can be good one month and bad the next, and so on. This makes it impossible for companies to do long-term planning around key pieces of software or stacks, if they can not even be sure what is going in to the next piece of software, when it is really going to be released, and if they project is even going to exist down the road.
I have at least a dozen instances of this in my own business, that has cost me thousands of dollars in retooling my shop and it is a fairly small shop. Now, I have stuck to open source, moving to other projects and alternatives, but it has not been pleasant. I can see how other companies might move to a proprietary solution that will be guaranteed for X number of years and clear upgrade paths.
So the problem is not the quality of the code produced by open source. I believe it is still a superior way of producing software. I believe the problem is with easily being able to determine the health of an open source project.
The open source community needs not only quality assurance system for software, but quality assurance system for project organization. Easy quick reference of just how well run any particular project is, and the project that they depend on, all the way up the food chain.
Living in Chile
The voice of Asterisk sounds like a snotty bitch (sorry, Allison).
The voice of Cisco Call Manager is professional, refined, smooth, and pleasant.
The big cheese at my employer decided against Asterisk for this reason alone.
It's simple - if a proprietary package will save me an hour of time in the next year, it's worth $100. That's a pretty small amount of time. Sure I could use gimp to resize my images for my reports, but I found a $30, closed source program to do it in the explorer interface, on everything in the folder, with a custom save-to folder, and it remembers the last resize. That means it takes me about 12-15 seconds to resize 30-40 images to just he right size to drop into my editor.
Sure, I could do it one by one - or even write a batch script - but it would take close to a minute in the best scenerio. I write 50-60 reports a year, so $30 is a bargain.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Mod parent down as offtopic, and then mod this up as funny, so that people with re-parented replies see it attached to something completely unrelated and have their heads explode trying to figure out why on earth they should mod down a perfectly good post !
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Because firefox is buggy pile of crap. Where all of the major usability bugs I've cared about[1][2][3][4][5] were left open for 6 years before I finally discovered opera. Trying to look into the code myself to see whether I could fix anything, and I think I came to the conclusion none of the bugs had been fixed because it's unmaintainable crap.
Don't write shit code, people.
[1] Mozilla started out life on unix. And then forgot its roots, and now everything is click-to-focus running on Windows[TM], obviously.
[2] some homespun database that wrote the entire database out to file every single time a line was added or deleted (I verifed this with strace)? Ie, n**2 purging of the entire history cache? Does sqlite suck any less yet?
[3] A 2MB animated gif could cause an OOM after trying to chew through a GB of memory? WTF? Why on earth would you want to allocate a pixmap for every single freaking frame of a movie?
[4] Memory leaks everywhere else.
[5] Ah crap, I've supressed the memory of the rest of them.
That is an issue between good programs and poor programs. Take Firefox and OpenOffice, they win on every occasion, because they are good. And they are open source. Some other programs appear to be bad, so they lose. Period. The seeming significance of "openness" of the source comes just from your preference. You like open source so it's interesting for you to see how OS products fare. If you take some firm CrappySoft Inc, and take the survey of their products you will probably see that their bad products get dumped in favor of better competing products and vise versa.
For me, the main reason that commercial products often (not always) trump open source products is simple: the commercial products are designed with the end user in mind and are generally easier and more elegant to use. Open source products are often designed by "hardcore geeks" (air quoting to denote that's not intended as an insult - just to give a sense of what I mean). They are often more concerned with getting the guts of a program working correctly which often results in a well-made program but, because use is a tertiary concern, in most cases, it lacks an ease of use that most users (well, me, in this case) seek.
Think of how often we've seen someone ask a question about how to do "this" or "that" with some linux distro and the resulting answer is very complex and requires an above-average level of computer comfort? The answer may be easy for someone who knows what they're doing and the answer may achieve exactly what the person wants. Heck, the answer may unlock even more potential beyond what the person expected. But, that ease of use is lacking.
Once the open source community makes a strong effort to focus on the end user's experience with the program - when they start to think more like Apple, in a way - I think they will find more people becoming comfortable with and sticking with open source options. Until then, people will drift back to the programs that are easy to use, even if they are somewhat technologically inferior.
Not as in "time is money" -- though that certainly comes into play at work -- but just in the sense that my time is valuable to me. If I can, for the price of a few hours' wages, buy a piece of software that does what I need with a minimum of fuss, I'll take that over many more hours spent fixing a brittle makefile, compiling, configuring, and figuring out by trial and error how the program works in the absence of decent (or any) documentation. When the free alternative is actually well-designed and polished and works out of the metaphorical box, I always prefer FOSS. But when the free alternative is not only not as good as the commercial program, but also not good enough, I'll pay for the commercial program and get on with my life.
Mind you, I'm a professional software engineer. I can get around technical obstacles that non-technical users can't, and I actually enjoy computers for their own sake. That said, I also enjoy being able to do certain things with computers beyond fiddling with them, and while I'd like to be able to use FOSS for everything, it's either not possible or not worth the grief in every case. Ergo, I use Firefox and OpenOffice over MSIE and MS Office, but I also use Photoshop over GIMP and CorelDraw and Illustrator over Inkscape. (In fairness, I should say that I do look forward to Inkscape's further development; I've given up on GIMP ever being more than a poor copy of Photoshop 4.)
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I switched to Chrome from Firefox because 3.5 was much slower in comparison. Sites like Slashdot would pause for 20 seconds while the js loaded, where as with Chrome it was almost instantaneously. I am using the dev version of Chrome, so I get extensions, plugins, and bookmark sync (though bookmark sync hasn't showed up in the Linux port yet).
The Firefox guys need to get it together, and clean up their code. Until then, more people are going to migrate away from Firefox. I wouldn't say Firefox is the new IE, though it is not as standard supporting as Chrome, and Safari (WebKit based browsers), but it is starting to look that way...
Things I am still using for more or far less obvious reasons:
This list is by no means comprehensive.
Bug reports are answered in several ways:
There are a few exceptions, but that's my general experience.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
Another reason is that commercial software's development may be influenced by monetary incentive in a predictable manner. Unless you have the capacity to develop or find developers who would, open source software development is limited to the whims of the developer community. With commercial software, you know there's a company who'll take your money in exchange for fixes. With OSS, you can ask nicely, make suggestions (and sometimes even be laughed at or ridiculed for your requirements), but there's no guaranteed way to get a fix or a custom patch.
I remember wanting to be able to scroll through tabs in mozilla (it wasn't even firefox, then) using the mouse's scrollwheel and that request was marked WONTFIX. We needed to be able to do something unique with Oracle BRM (then Portal Infranet) and the company gave us the patches and apps we needed. No fuss, no muss, but we did have to pay.
I haven't actually dumped an open source application in favour of a proprietary alternative because it was difficult to install. I could, however, completely understand why some users after attempting to install and configure open source applications would make the move. The installation and initial configuration experience is the first impression and is important to get right. It is the first impression the software gives as to how good/usable/stable it really is. How can you get feedback regarding other aspects of the software if they can't get past step one?
How can you possibly know that?
Open source projects really only succeed when they're being babied by a company.
Two I can think of off the top of my head are Chrome, and Virtualbox. They are absurdly simple, easy to use and easy to set up/configure. And they have innovative features that nobody else has.
I bet you pidgin guys still dont even have working video/voice chat, or reliable file transfer yet (on the windows client). That stuff was working out of the box in Digsby. And very well, too.
Absolutely, if it saves me time and allows me to do what I want with my time, then I am absolutely going to use iTunes and an iPod. The integration of iTunes and iPod and all the free DRM-less (podcasts, iTunes U etc etc ... )content on iTunes is fantastic.
It's the same reason I drop most types of applications, proprietary or not.
As an example, I'm currently trying to get an application moved to PostgreSQL. Now, I'm not exactly a database guru, so I'm expecting to hit a few rough spots as I would with any database.
First I figured I'd install it on Ubuntu (not a Linux-guru either). Add through Synaptic, but which of the four score PostgreSQL hits should I install? Well, fuck it, I've space and time, install all of them.
So ... now I have it running, but I'm unable to connect to the damn thing. Kind of strange, so I look through the documentation. Ah, needs a user "postgres". Fair enough. Add that, now I can connect with the client from localhost. Time to change pg_hba.conf. Thankfully I installed PGAdmin along with Postgres, but does that know where the conf-files are?
Nope. I have to find them on my own. Ah, /etc/bin/postgres/8.x/bin. Excelent. Ahh, I don't have permissions. Close the open file dialog, and chmod. Wait, probably works if I run PGAdmin with sudo. In Windows I'd expect to right click and 'run as'. Not so in Ubuntu - can only affect where the icon is shown. Hrmm ... terminal, sudo pgadmin. Edit pg_hba.conf. Wtf, the program doesn't remember the last directory I was in. Well, that might be because I didn't open the file. Find the file, open it, edit it, save it. Open again - back to the default directory. Okay, that pisses me off. Maybe it's an option in preferences or something. Nope, not at all. Same with the other conf-files. Damn program always defaults to ~. That's just stupid.
Wait ... where the hell are the changes I made? I added three ip-address that needed access. Maybe sudo didn't work like I expected and I don't have the proper permissions anyway. Sudo 666 on the conf-file, done. Edit the file, save it, reopen. Still no changes shown. What the hell? Cat the file. That's odd, all my changes are in there, and I can't really see any difference between the lines I added through PGAdmin and the ones that are there already.
Okay, this is probably something odd in Linux that I'm just not used to. Install Postgres on Windows instead. Interesting, this installer explicitly mentions the extra user account and gives me the option of creating it during the installation. Plus point for usability. Even mentions that I'm using a weak password, and warns against reusing the Windows user password for the superuser password for the database. Extra plus point. Oh, and PGAdmin now remembers what directory I found the conf-files in. Still doesn't save changes for pg_hba.conf (which I had to find through Windows search - really bad usability point). Check permissions on the file - I have full permissions. Hrmm. Check with Notepad++. Nothing saved in the file. Add an empty line, save file - "file is in use". Ahhh .... a silently discarded error in PGAdmin. I thought that was one of the biggest detractors from databases like MySQL? Discarding errors silently is REALLY bad. Especially those kinds of errors.
Now, getting an ODBC driver for Postgres installed on Windows is an entirely different can of worms that I'll refrain from ranting on about.
You what to know what would remove almost *all* of the driver problems literally overnight? Make it trivial to visit "nvidia.com", download a blob, type "./setup.pl" and have it install a binary driver. You know, kind of like how Windows or (I assume) OSX does it.
I *dont* blame the vendors for the lack of drivers on linux. I fully blame the kernel developers for their dogmatic refusal to stabalize the driver framework so it allows binary drivers. By "stabalize" I mean create a driver architecture that works across an entire swath of kernel versions. Most vendor supplied drivers seem have this need to be compiled first and thus require the kernel source before they work. That is bullshit. They should just sit around as a blob and work.
But alas, *that* dream will never happen because of some on the fringes of the open source movement close their ears and scream "not pure! not our fault! not pure!". Which is a shame because that single feature would instantly increase linux driver support hundreds of times over.
It *is not* the fault of hardware vendors. It *is* the fault of the kernel--more lightly, it *is the philosophy and culture of linux* that is what holds it back.
I was selling MS software and services a few years ago. What really hurt Open Software was:
- lack of marketing. there's very little communication even targeted at techs, and 0 targeted at decision makers / purse string holders.
- lack of references. this may have changed, but many projects only had a handful of true entreprise-scale users;
- product immaturity. ergonomics (both user and admin), documentation, sometimes even reliability could be often iffy.
- training and consulting were less widely available than for MS/Oracle... products
The actual license cost is often negligible for a complete project, once you factor in training, implementation, maintenance...
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
There is no reason for iPods to fail to play songs that are not in the database.
It might make sense to blare a warning that such songs are not 'managed' or that the more advanced features of the player won't use those songs, but it makes sense for it to at least be possible to play anything that happens to be on the disk.
So the issue I have isn't that iTunes makes it easy, it is that there is no other way to copy a song over. There is a difference.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I think they all are bad. I finally got to the place where I could tolerate Money but now they are discontinuing it! Back to that foul Quicken.
I even tried quick books (lots of $) and it wouldn't even talk to my bank!
I've only seen three real reasons to abandon using an open source solution, and not one of them is a universal flaw in open source as a model, movement or distribution strategy:
* Lower support requirements / cost of ownership - Ultimately some proprietary software deliver lower costs and make processes more efficient by lowering costs and disruptions in operations. In a lot of cases, disruptions or maintenance costs are can be so much more costly than the cost of migrating that buying new software is dwarfed by the loss caused by the existing package.
* Features - It's the Photoshop vs. Gimp thing. Package A does whet B doesn't.
* Compatibility with other systems - Sometimes, integration is critical, and no open solution exists to connect to a proprietary software package.
This whole argument is kind of silly - the same issues listed above are the same for moving from one proprietary package to another. Really, open source (remember, open source != free software) is simply a check box (and an important one) in a feature matrix, and the decision really is one software package versus another.
-- $G
You're right, if we change the meaning of "vendor lock-in", then vendor lock-in is possible with Free Software!
But with the generally accepted one, no, it's not.
When people get too dogmatic about things for political reasons, real-world usability suffers.
Apple created an identity for its users; as a result, in the 1980s you had Mac users telling Amiga users that Macs were faster -- when an Amiga could emulate a Macintosh faster than the original.
Open source has the same identity crisis. We think it's the right thing to do, so we overlook a myriad of small problems and when someone refuses to use it, write them off -- "he's an MSFT fanboy, or just too lazy."
I'll use a test case: OpenOffice. In addition to requiring a bulky Java install, and being crash-prone, it also had very flawed .doc file handling; yet for those of us in offices, .doc file handling is an essential feature.
I recommended it to a number of clients until the error reports came back. Send a file that doesn't display correctly to a half-dozen people and you've quickly eaten up the time value of Microsoft Office ($300).
Open Source works best with products that are like UNIX: designed for a small, clear-cut, low features set job that is not going to require frequent updates. I don't think it works well for software with huge feature sets designed for professional applications, and that's why so far, that market sector is dominated by closed-source alternatives.
Commence downmodding!
Futurist Traditionalism
I think there's a very common and flawed misunderstanding of how open source software works. Open source projects usually don't care about the absolute number of users. Most users are simply consumers, who wouldn't contribute anything back to the project. The only reason they would try it is because it is free (as in beer), and if it doesn't work for them, they will switch to whatever works, even proprietary, if it works better for them. But what's the benefit from having these users? Proprietary software caters to them, because they are paying consumers, so the company, that made the software makes money. However, open source projects don't make money from users, who download the software for free. They benefit from users, who contribute back bug reports and patches. These are people, who know that using open source software is not about being just a consumer for a (better) product, but it's about being part of it - by submitting bug reports and patches, you know that bugs will be fixed and you can shape the direction in which the projects goes. If there's disagreement between you and the other developers, you are free to fork the project - take all the source, make your changes to it and distribute it on your own website. If your version is better, it will gather more contributors and may become more popular than the original version. So, an open source project needs contributors to survive - they are much more important that ordinary users. You can have maybe as much as 0.1% of users, who contribute, compared to the sheer number of users, who use a proprietary equivalent to your application and still your project can continue to develop and improve. So, it's not all about market share, it's about educating your users and teaching them how to get involved in the project.
First off, it implies that users know the difference. 99% of the times they don't. To some users "copy right' material is same as GPL.
Even veals have more autonomy!
I hope to god you are trolling.
"Excellent texinfo" my ass. Info sucks buddy. It sucks as a documentation format. The reader sucks. The arrogant way the GNU foundation spews "Man is obsolete, use our info docs" all over their crap.
Info was the second to the last straw that broke the camels back for me. FreeBSD and all BSD's in general have excelent documentation that is versioned right along with the rest of the utilities. All of it written into man pages, as god intended.
You want to know why linux has such shitty, fragmented docs? Blame the GNU foundation declaring the old one obsolete, hawking a shitty new version. They split the community into those who followed the party line and moved their docs into info and those who realized info sucks and kept their stuff as man pages. Thus to this day it is a crapshoot if any of the core utilities will have usable documentation.
And before somebody suggests pinfo or whatever that "easy to use" info reader is named, too late. I switched to FreeBSD and I ain't looking back. Info was a political move and dammit, operating systems should be political.
When the OS community seems focussed on incorporating features for the achievement of it instead of actually making the software more useful (sentiments like this, even if the details aren't a great example).
Also, stability. I'm using W7 at the moment. OpenOffice installed, and crashed every time I tried to open a file, whereas Office 2007 worked without a hitch. I had important data in spreadsheets, what else was I supposed to do? Sure, you could argue all sorts of stuff, but when it boils down to it excuses aren't going to get my work done.
Much like with racism, people get too hung up over general categories. Its not whether a piece of software is open source, or if it is free. What matters is if the software satisfies the user. The method of distribution, the cost, the license, the openness of the code, the status and quality of documentation, the level of support, the usability, the name, the aesthetics of the user interface, and many other factors all play into a user's satisfaction, and different users will appreciate different things, depending on what they like and their predetermined biases. Anyone looking to choose a piece of software should look into the pros and cons of that software and their budget instead of looking at just its label, open source or commercial.
You owe me a good head... you, you fiend!
Why aren't there any decent open source fonts?
Times New Roman was commissioned by the London TImes in 1931. Times Roman
Helvetica dates from 1957.
It's an extraordinary craft, and the expert practitioners are rare:
Bruce Roger's Centaur [From Typographic specimens: the great type faces
Ok, I'm going to go ahead and say it. "Lots and LOTS of people have absolutely no interest in a command-line or in the learning curves associated with many FOSS. Most people do NOT want to learn Python, C++, or BASH in order to USE their software." If you want the market penetration, accept this fact.
Most proprietary products do a FANTASTIC job of making the 4 or 5 primary functions of a piece of software intuitive and almost idiot-proof. That's what catches the attention of 90% of the market and is the functionality that they require 90% of the time. All the rest of the other options and cool functions can be as esoteric and obfuscated or broken as the developer wants. People will still buy and use it.
GNUPLOT, for example, is awesome and extremely powerful. But its help feature SUCKS, the GUI SUCKS, and every time I take a 6-month break from it and go to use it again....I'm starting from scratch on figuring out how to do a simple x,y graph of a two-column csv. So yeah, I'm doing 90% of my graphing using the weak graph functions in Open Office at home and Excel at work, rather than using GNUPLOT. It only gets pulled out when I have 2 free days and need to graph a couple of million data points, and it pisses me off every time.
Usability (read: user interface). Too many open-source applications, particularly Linux-based ones, have a very steep learning curve. The GIMP, for example, is (for me) a lot less intuitive than MS Paint or Irfanview. Granted, it's a lot more powerful -- but it seems representative of many (good, solid, powerful) open-source applications which have zero appeal to casual users. As far as a desktop environment, Gnome and KDE (and Apple's OSX) just don't seem to have as intuitive a user interface as Windows XP. Linux is a lot more solid and feels to me more like a "real OS" -- but it's IMHO harder to use. With Microsoft seeming to be following Apple, though, who knows -- my next desktop OS may well be Linux if MS continues with their current infatuation with doing away with the traditional menus.
Linux and open-source apps often blow away payware in terms of features, ruggedness, and of course price. But it's difficult to get enthusiastic about all that if an OS or application is difficult to use.
noone ever got a kickback for switching to a free product / service
a lot of companies need someone to sue if they have trouble with the software. the more money the provider has the better this sort of contingency plan looks
After several years as a designer/developer of databases using MS Access (and quite a few databases using MySQL+PHP, and some older mainframe databases you probably never heard of) I thought to get acquainted with OOo Base by converting a near-trivial database I use to keep tract of my checking account. This app is hardly rocket science, with its main user interface a datasheet view of a query against the single table in the database, plus a couple of reports, e.g., year-end payee summary. There are also a number of MS VBA code snippets to smooth the user interface.
I have tried repeatedly to get pieces of this thing to work in Base. The missing link is the Object Model for Base: there doesn't seem to be one. I have yet to manage to find or write code to, say, execute a query, or open a report, or apply a filter to the form, to mention a few of the easy things I do using VBA in Access.
OOo documentation, as others have noted, is of little use. Where something like the maps of objects, and their methods and properties are concerned, the documentation simply doesn't exist. What little documentation I found for OO Basic seems to be exclusively for Calc. So for a developer like me, retired from the rat race, with lots of time on his hands, the idea of using Base to do ANYTHING is just laughable, because there is nothing to grab onto to learn the new database object framework. Many years ago I studied conversational Japanese at a local university. Just as Japanese has no mapping to English (or any Romance language or German, the extent of my language knowledge), OO Base and Basic have no apparent mapping to my lingua franca, Access and VBA, and until some sort of clear documentation of Base objects appears, or even better, a Rosetta Stone that shows how common VBA constructs trranslate into OO Basic, OOo Base is not something I plan to spend any more frustrating hours on.
Actually, every software is free to normal users!
Either you download and crack it yourself, or you have a friend who does it for yo.
That is the main point free software hasn't taken off, and everybody knows it.
Drink and the devil have done for the rest...
Not everyone is part of the geek's pirate culture - or has ever seen any compelling reason to join in the party.
Your employer participates in Microsoft's Home User program. The disks are yours for the asking. You might have to pay for S&H.
The MS Office "Ultimate Steal" was available for $70 to anyone with student ID and 0.5 credit hours of part-time study.
I'm not that technically savvy, which makes open source software even more problematic. I am capable googling fixes if something doesn't work, but sometimes the fixes take me so far out of my comfort zone, that I don't feel comfortable implementing them.
I tried GIMP about five years ago. (I could try it again, and see if it's improved, I know.) Photoshop just works for me. From install onwards. With GIMP, I had to use X11 which was just one more barrier to entry for me. Then the UI for GIMP was just plain difficult for me to navigate. I didn't mind those two things, but when I needed to figure out how to do something I could do in Photoshop, it took forever to google where things were, and how to do it. After a week or more of this, I gave up, and went back to Photoshop. Which sucks because I really wanted to use GIMP instead.
When I decided I was done with MS operating systems, I didn't just jump to a Mac. My husband and I loaded up several consecutive Linux distros on an old PC to see if I could do that. The amount of fiddling was way more than I wanted. If I could have just loaded it up once, and had it work, I never would have bought a Mac. This is what I mean by not being technically savvy as a drawback for open source. Sure, I can google up answers, but sometimes they are way over my head. I can ask for help, but I have found again and again, that if you are not a computer whiz (and maybe if you are) sometimes you get a lot of crap for not RTFM. What if you are just an artsy housewife that wants to figure out a simple daily issue, like email, or layering in GIMP, or where the blasted button is for whatever? The barrier for entry is too high unless you are more technically capable.
I have been part of the "I hate Micro$soft" group since the early 90's and I've been using Linux since some of the first distributions. My main reason for many years was for 1. Fun and learning. 2. Keeping my UNIX skills up while working under Mainframe and PCs, 3. I didn't want to pay $$ as I'm cheap.
Why have I given up on Linux? I've said that I've done this years ago after installing Redhat 5.1(not sure of the version) only to find that they never bothered to even test the Apache distribution they included, which included a dead-out-of-the-box situation. But back to the subject... I find that while some open source is fairly good most is inferior to what I have on Windows.
I'll start that with the OS, Linux.
1. Upgrading has been mostly painless, but of late the problems are nasty. I have 3 RAID-10 disks on my desktop running Mandriva. Since 9.0 ( and this problem appears not to be Mandriva but a Linux problem) 2 of the 3 drives re-sync on boot. I've read the fixes and they don't work. Since one RAID-10 is on a USB port it is a 20 hour rebuilt. I only do this for a some what lame back up. Why? From what I've read it is caused from changes in the boot process to improve boot speed. That's great news, but once again I'm spending more time doing admin than using my PC.
2. Upgrading again. After upgrading and the passage of a week I found out that my firewall rules had been removed. Hmmm, Okay, I'll restore them. I few weeks later I want to make a change to the rules and the rules get wiped out. Funny, what has changed? Something in the structure of the files. Great. More time reading up on how things should be configured. Oh wait, that isn't for my distribution. Oh wait, that article is over a year old, and in the Linux world that is ancient and out-dated more often than note. Groan
3. Opensource (finally) Okay, I can play music, rip-cds, record internet radio, Rosegarden for my keyboard and MIDI devices. Great. It works today. Tomorrow there is a new sound system/tools for the again that break everything. In fairness, ALSA has been fairly good the last 2-3 years, but now PulseAudio sucks up CPU and causes more problems. I can't load my JACK server(for MIDI).
Oh boy, more admin time. Rosegarden, while in itself is nice, it is annoying to have to reconfigure my MIDI devices all the time. RythmBox, Evolution, etc. Nearly every application is either buggy, has problems with a platform which is constantly changing, or simply is so much slower than my Windows applications.
Since I can purchase MIDI software for $90(done that) and playing and ripping DVDs on MS is only $50 (done that) why do I want to spend my life performing admin functions and not enjoying using my PCs?
IMHO, Linux is great as a server, Apache, SAMBA, proxy server, Email. But as my desktop PC that I want to be productive I do all development in Windows. The only development that I do for Linux is in Windows C# and run it under MONO ( works pretty well). I know that when I purchase my next PC/server it will go back to running XP, I'll simplify my life, and be happier for it.
Former Linux loving fanatic. (remaining anonymous because children will be children and they have not learned to face the truth of their mistakes.)
NX is compressed X11 protocol with reduced number of round trips, so it's fairly responsive even over slow connection. You can create full-desktop sessions like VNC, floating window sessions like SSH with X11 forwarding, and also connect to existing full-screen sessions running on the remote computer like RDP. The server installation creates an "nx" user with a special NX shell. The NX client simply SSH to the server and manipulates the session with the NX shell, as opposed to listening on a TCP port.
No Machine is proprietary, but they let you use the NX client for free (as in beer). The NX free server (running on the remote computer) restricts the number of connections, but Google has released open source NeatX for the server replacement. It's probably easier to install the NX server first, then replace the NX shell with that implemented by NeatX. For me, I just stick with the proprietary NX free server because the restriction is not a problem for me.
NX does have a free open source server and client implementation, FreeNX. I haven't tried it, but you could.
I once had a signature.
What I have seen missing in most Open Source apps in the design-to-release process is UAT. That's User Acceptance Testing. A lot of open-source apps do have the "by developers, for developers" look, that translates to awkward GUI, weird button locations, strange button titles and so on. In other words, it's as if nobody cared what users would think of the app while they use it. App makers should have this goal in mind while they develop and construct the app, but they often overlook this approach and concentrate on functionality.
Having a plethora of abilities/config options don't make an app desirable, as long as a regular user is dissatisfied with the application's look and feel.
However, I have seen and used a sum of closed source apps which also lack proper UAT. Maybe this is where higher management thinks cutting costs should come in. I think they're wrong but who am I to judge?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I keep on dropping linux because it is incomplete I'm sick of hearing the "we couldn't include this program in the OS because it's licensed differently..but you can get it over there for free" crap. This is a prime example of how the concept of IP is stifling and killing creativity. Don't get me wrong i really like the concept of linus but the implementation problems keep me from using it on a regular basis for anything important.
It is a "hack", as you call it because it hacks around deficiencies in the linux driver architecture. Look the goal here is to get shit to work, right? People expect to be able to go to Fry's and buy a wireless NIC and have it work, right? That is a reasonable expectation, right?
Does linux currently meet this expectation? No. In fact, it fails miserably. Why? Because we need "hacks" as you call them to hack around the busted, out dated way linux handles drivers. By "busted and out dated" I mean it does not seem to handle drivers.. every driver seems to be a one-off deal. Or something. Whatever it is doing sucks because hardware support has always sucked on linux.
Maybe instead of blaming the user for having the oh-so-reasonable expectation of having his hardware working, you should redirect your blame toward the one thing that hasn't changed in this equation--the linux kernel. Perhaps the kernel is at fault here. ... just a thought.
Open Source nearly sank my career.
I've been a staunch advocate of OS for quite some time now. I'm the guy who asks the awkward questions at the meeting, like, "Why are we paying 40 grand for a vendor toolchain when GCC is free?"
Well, I found out.
I've spent the last few weeks trying to build a cross compiler on Cygwin. Here's what I went through:
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
The point of the database is that the iPod doesn't have to go through all the folders and all the ID3 tags to work out what songs are available--everything is loaded into the database when the songs are copied to the device. If it has to go looking through the folders anyway to see what isn't in the database, you lose the advantage of having the database.
If you don't like the open source alternatives, feel free to contribute to them, or write your own. Or just use iTunes like everyone else.
I have to agree. I don't like to shoot at ambulances, but cinelerra is so broken I wonder if it could be salvaged in any meaningful way.
OTOH, kdenlive while not as feature-full as cinelerra is maturing quickly, and while some people complain of random crashes, I didn't myself found it to be excessively crash-prone. (Kdenlive 7.4, up-to-date fedora 10 32bits-PAE, AMD X64 3800+).
People are like sheep. If you don't tell them they need it in clever ads ("Hello I'm a MAC") you can forget it. Oh hookers don't hurt either for the top exec's and politicians/school admins. Linux has been more stable than windows for over a decade now, and still almost no one has tried it. Why? Because there is no money to buy cute ads to tell the masses they need it. As I tell my friends all the time, "People are STUPID". As the title says, they buy bottled tap water from coke/pepsi that was run thru a magic filter and pay dollars/gallon. Meanwhile they can get around 1000 gallons for a couple of bucks from their water district if they just opened that faucet. Why. Because the ad told them to & and it is cool.
Linux desktop in various versions since 2001. There have been bad years and there have been great years where everything worked. The last year hasn't been pleasant. I'm speaking about the greater OS here but a couple examples:
1. CUPS, Ubuntu and a print server: Seems like there has always been something that was a non-starter for me with Ubuntu. Gutsy was a great exception on a test dual-boot. For a month. Then I wiped it in favor of 64-bit 8.04 LTS. I've never been able to print to my HP laser printer through a Hawking print server. (Really exotic hardware there, eh?) Following one _year_ long thread, apparently no one else has either. The solution? Fixed in Ibex! (which says something about the LTS in 8.04 LTS, wouldn't you have to agree?) You can echo the linux party line, "Well, it's free. If it didn't work with your hardware right from the start either don't use it or buy new hardware." Will I have to do that for _every_ upgrade? What about random _updates_ that could break stuff? Is this the uncertainty I want? Is this the uncertainty a _company_ wants? Remember, it worked in Gutsy and they broke it in Huron _Long_Term_Support_.
2. Debian squeeze (and I guess Ubuntu) NFS has very recently been broken in updates (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sysvinit/+bug/45842), which is really the craps if you have a file server and you don't want your other user (spouse) to do a "mount -a -t nfs" from root every boot. You can find a link to the discussion that current kernels make a Debian-branch boot a tangled mess. The wisdom had always been to go with Testing as the happy middle ground but I'd say Testing is a snake pit today and advise anyone to use Stable. But doing that, how far behind will your versions of programs be compared to the same open source program on Windows? Not gratifying.
I recently found a fix on the web from eight months ago for my laptop's suspend freeze problem that hasn't been incorporated into Squeeze updates yet. And don't get me started on having an HD TV card _and_ a webcam with microphone on my desktop. The what, why and how of feeding the appropriate module parameters and various configurations to get that working is _not_ the experience every Windows user hungers for. Really it isn't. I guess I must be almost the only person in the world with linux, an HD TV card and a webcam because that was quite a web search. Frankly, I'm getting the unsettled feeling that there is an undercurrent of serious disfunction building among linuxes. Too few hands available trying to work on too much too fast in the economic crisis?
A basic problem with open source applications is poor usability, combined with general amateurishness. There's a tendency to get to "90% working", after which the developers lose interest. The fundamental problem is that nobody is in a position to insist that the hard-to-fix problems get fixed.
Also, each new version of Firefox seems to be more of a memory hog than the last. There is no excuse for a web browser requiring half a gigabyte of RAM.
Last time I did that to get internet was 10 years ago. Today, I just put whatever distro cd I have handy into any computer, and internet here I am. Mind you, it even works magically with virtual hosts inside my computer.
Yes, the database is an advantage. Not being able to play songs that aren't in the database is still idiotic (what if I just want to browse to the folder that the song is stored in, and click play there?).
The point is that being able to browse the disk and select a song has no impact on the database. So not supporting it is either laziness, or from some wrong-headed desire to constrain how users interact with the device (for devices that have sold millions and millions of units, the $50,000 it might have cost to include such a feature is meaningless).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The biggest problem with FOSS is that developers != users. Let's take an basic example:
Open Office in windows.
The way the menus are organized is pretty logical, from a developer viewpoint, but is terrible from a windows user. This is the first thing to overcome. Sure, icons are nearly there, but the drop-down menus are somewhat different... Doesn't follow the usual rules of windows apps. So a casual windows user will get upset pretty fast with the default interface of OOo and will drop it. (Of course unless some tech-guy make changes to adapt the interface and menus to the windows standard style). That's the first difference from windows apps and FOSS apps. (Eg. If someone compares office 2003 with autocad 2004 (Absolutely different software!! nothing to do one with other) the interfaces are similar and if you work usually with office, you at least will now how to open a file in autocad, save, print, edit, copy, paste, make a page format layout, modify options, get help in a nutshell. No previous experience needed. Compare this with MOST FOSS and you will get an instant alien interface sense).
Also FOSS usually have less features than the commercial counterpart. Or just makes things working direrently to the rest. (Eg. to reach a point you need to edit files in FOSS, but commecial counterparts just click one button and is ready).
Finally there are really good apps in the FOSS, but since doesn't follow the rules of the rest of the commercial counterparts, the FOSS alternative is usually dropped. Or is very hard to learn. Eg. Blender. Blender is a geat program to make 3D art, modelling, animations, some video edition, etc. but it's interface is PLAIN HORRIBLE compared to the comercial software and doesn't follow any standard established. So is usually discarded by regular users.
The main problem of FOSS is that there's no real "Software Management" structure that tell developers how to comunicate with the users. Usually developers hate to do things that please users at the cost of make more complicated some routine. Or even ilogical from the developer viewpoint. If you pay developers in a job, they will do, since is a job and they are paid for it. But in FOSS many of the developers aren't paid (Of course many projects depends on donations, but nobody can donate and say "Make this feature work!" since you aren't the boss) so they can fully decide what to do with the software. And also this will also affect documentation. Comercial documentation is never made by the developers: Always are done by a team of users and testers with few or no programming knowledge but with knowledge in usability and knowledge in the area where the software is focused. That's why they centralize everything in a manual (physical or electronic). FOSS don't.
Just 2 cents.
5. A plethora of linux distributions makes it difficult to choose.
People say this all the time, but really there are only a hand-full that make it to the corporate level - Red Hat, SuSE, and their derivatives like OpenSuSE and CentOS, and maybe Mandriva and Ubantu. Make your app work with these four, and you've hit 90% of the business installs.
Server farms may be using things like *BSD, but these machines are usually built by hand without automagic package managers.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I don't use Adobe products, period. But I can see why some people would get incensed at the GIMP and abandon it. A big part of it is the pace of development on the GIMP project, and another big part of it is the team.
The GIMP developers have, for the past dozen years at least, dismissed all suggestions that they are the de facto competitor to Adobe Photoshop. They are scratching their own itch, not scratching the itch that tens of thousands of graphic artists have, and if you want something in the GIMP, you better write it yourself. (No hint they'll accept your patch, either.) It's taken several years just to find competent developers who can get along with the GIMP project management and still work on CMYK or 16bpc or other important features. Those features are creeping along way beyond schedule, and just getting them onto the schedule took far too long.
I just got a bug-system notification the other day that said they're finally going to support write-protecting layers. Oh, wait, it just says they're laying the groundwork for a padlock icon on the layers menu, they'll get around to doing the actual write-denying behaviors "soon." I submitted that so many years ago that I've lost track.
Not counting nuances, the GIMP is still essentially feature-matched to Adobe Photoshop 5.5, a product that came out in the mid 90s. No wonder they don't want to accept the mantle of competitor.
[
On the verge of dumping firefox after years of use. 3.5.2 was horrible. 3.5.3 crashed within the first 5 minutes of use.
I suggest that you look up your Crash Report to see why it's crashing. The automated crash report will link to the bug report and support articles, if they exist.
The most common crashes in Firefox are caused by third party spyware, by plugins (Flash, old versions of Java, etc), and by extensions that are misbehaving. Mozilla actively works to correct these problems by warning users to upgrade and by blocklisting extensions that cause the most problems.
On the verge of dumping firefox after years of use. 3.5.2 was horrible. 3.5.3 crashed within the first 5 minutes of use. The #1 reason I would dump any SW product is stability. If it can't perform its intended function without crashing then nothing else matters. Lets just hope I don't need to switch to Chrome to get this to post.
One of my laptops has an issue with IE7/IE8 crashing on certain pages. I'm almost certain this is a javascript issue somehow, but I haven't found a solution on Google. Firefox 3.5.2 works fine on the same laptop. Should I go out and tell everyone IE7 is junk, and IE8 crashes after 5 minutes?
In Soviet Russia ^H^H^H America, The bank finances YOU!
I forget who, but some comedian claimed the best kinds of comedy are when you take ordinary things and simply retell them in a different context.
I think that claim is correct. For anybody who reads the above comment, re-read it only imagine you are reading it to, say, your partner or maybe you are in a bar with a couple normal buddies swapping stories.
If you can still read the parent comment with *out* laughing, then there is something wrong with the humor lobe in your brain.
Seriously, I'll pull it out of context right now and just quote it.
Do I even need to comment? I mean can this guy be serious!?
So why are we dropping Asterisk on one site?
1) We had a power surge that actually broke a LAN cable, fried the ADSL router and trashed an analogue phone. VoIP system stays up and goes into power fail mode as it should, but the analogue line everything is diverted to is the one with the now broken phone - boss says "See, the VoiP system has gone down"
2) A couple of weeks later a circuit breaker trips and after the UPS has done its stuff for 20 mins, it shuts down the VoIP server gracefully - boss says "Aha, unreliable VoIP again"
3) Boss tells Area Manager to arrange for a telecoms company to quote for a 'proper system' without telling me - I'm only the IT Manager after all.
Now, my boss sees everything in black-and-white and in this case he 'sees' that the 'VoIP system' died twice (when, in fact, there were two, unrelated incidents that could have knocked out ANY phone system) and so this 'Open Source', 'free' stuff is clearly unreliable and must be replaced. I could explain things to him (oh, how I have tried) - but then I am just being 'difficult'.
So why is Open Source dropped? Paying for things is 'cosy' because you then have someone to lean on when things go wrong and, of course, you can't do that with Open Source, can you? It's all down to perception at some levels and it's VERY frustrating. My boss has made up his mind and - well - he's the boss and he makes the decisions round here...he's even told me so!
Rest of our empire? some Win2K servers running a proprietary app that's so MS-bound it's never going to run on anything else, then Postfix/MailScanner for our email, BackupPC for cross-site and laptop backups (with deltacopy). Intranet is Joomla, Nagios monitors our LANs, servers and VPNs, HQ user shares are on a CentOS box and I have a total of 9 Linux servers doing remote corporate stuff, data collation and reporting (iReport and some automated scripts that drop stats into my Boss's inbox automatically). Damn dodgy all this Open Source stuff!
What's the solution? For me, shoot the boss come to mind!
Oh yeah, and I'll gloss over the fact that we have a similar phone system at HQ and my boss has a Snom 360 VoIP phone on his desk!
PS: Anyone after a damn fine Systems Admin person? South Coast UK, open to offers!
AT&ROFLMAO
It's a decent article, but I don't see any surprises there.
Rational people and, by extension, rational IT departments choose software based on the overall value for cost. The features are the obvious value, of course. Individuals may think of ease of installation as a feature, while an IT department sees it as a cost.
I would also argue that the comparison is distorted because commercial products undergo selection: a commercial product that fails to provide a certain minimum value goes away. FOSS, on the other hand, can stay around forever. If commercial apps were compared only to those FOSS apps that were installed at least as often as a low-selling commercial app, the differences might be so great.
I've seen some saying bits of what I want to say, and I don't have mod points so I'll just do a "me too":
These are my beefs. Feel free to add more.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
"open source tools were too slow and required "too much fooling around to administer"
...
Is this true, is there no 'Open Source revision control system' with functionality equivilent to Perforce?
--
"The newsletter system we had often lead us reboot Apache, this way we opted by purchasing a paid webware instead, and since we have paid for the licence, we got faster support and they managed to keep us running without Apache issues anymore,"
Wha, Apache can't even run a newsletter ??? No prizes for guessing which webware they switched to
>And there you go, the problem in a nutshell. Expecting end users to do stuff like this is bullshit.
Uh, did you read the posting? That wasn't a user issue, that was a SYSADMIN issue. The guy was talking about diagnosing a network service issue which is something a sys admin would worry about, not an end user, who has more important things to worry about like using a browser, or an e-mail tool.
Jeezus, don't hate Linux because it works, hate it because the other OS isn't as expert friendly, dude!
I gave Linux a fair shake, found it as frustrating as driving a Volkswagen Old Beetle that keeps breaking-down, and decided to go back to XP and MacOS. They cost money, but not that much, and that cost is offset
No, it isn't. XP and MacOS cost money, and they have just as many usability problems as Linux.
One other annoyance with Linux Ubuntu is when I switched my screen size to 640x480 to play some Atari and NES gaming. I found it impossible to switch it back to 1280x1024. Why? Because the dialogue box did not fit, and the "okay" button was off the screen! I ended-up stuck.
It shouldn't happen on any OS, but the same thing happens with Windows and OS X. The difference? On Linux, there's a simple way out: you can grab any window and move it around with Alt-Mouse-1. It's documented and it's a useful shortcut anyway.
On Windows, you have to hack the registry in order to fix this kind of problem.
Simple:
One:Support
Two: Customization
I've been running Linux on my machines for 13 years. I generally seek out an open source solution for everything I do because its cheaper, generally more reliable, and puts me in control of my technology.
That said, I recently installed Windows for the first time in years. Why? I've taken an interest in music production and the Linux tools just aren't up to par yet. Yes, the basic underlying systems (Jack, various libraries, hardware support) are often far superior to commercial operating systems, but there's really no good way to hit the ground running when making music in Linux. All of the applications support different ways of pushing sound in and out, and many of them have a good foundation but lack in too many areas. Additionally, many of the packages that ship in distros like Ubuntu and Fedora are woefully out of date. And finally, there is very little in the way of commercial audio offerings on Linux.
Now, don't take this as complaining. I spent the better part of a month trying to get things like the real-time kernel, Jack, and various applications and plugins to work properly with little success. I've lambasted plenty of posters here on Slashdot for trying one Linux distro, finding out that their wireless card didn't work right away, and then gave up running back to Windows or OS X whilst screaming all the way. This is more like wishful thinking. I would gladly help fix the problems that Linux has on the audio front, but I have neither the time nor experience and likely never will. I'm not happy about having to pay good money for proprietary software, but in the end, using the software that does the right job is more important to me.
In the meantime, I'll continue to hope that someday, someone does for the Linux audio ecosystem what Ubuntu did for the Linux desktop.
"Uh, did you read the posting? That wasn't a user issue, that was a SYSADMIN issue."
Nothing in his post says he's a sysadmin.
" The guy was talking about diagnosing a network service issue which is something a sys admin would worry about, not an end user, who has more important things to worry about like using a browser, or an e-mail tool."
I have to remote desktop frequently, and I'm not a sysadmin, nor do my duties in any way resemble those of a sysadmin. You seem to be making things up out of thin air.
"Jeezus, don't hate Linux because it works, hate it because the other OS isn't as expert friendly, dude!"
Jesus, don't flame others because you make wrong assumptions, flame others because you can't read worth a fuck.
Seriously though, no one anywhere said or implied anything that would lead one to definitively know he was a sysadmin, so flaming that guy because your made an invalid assumption is a dick move.
Mostly I change to proprietary apps reluctantly, because those apps support a proprietary format or system that's not available to open-source and that I have to deal with and can't just ignore. I rarely change by choice, it's usually forced on me.
My reason for being reluctant to change: yes, open-source apps are complex, sometimes awkward to configure, often not as polished as the proprietary apps. Yes, it's often painful and annoying to get them working. But I can usually get them working and doing what I need. Proprietary apps more often tend to make the easy stuff easy and painless (as long as you're doing it the app vendor's way), and make everything else simply impossible. Open-source you tend to have to deal with a hodge-podge of sources of disorganized information. Proprietary apps you have to deal with a vendor support line who have no clue how their app works and can only answer questions we already have the answers to from the manuals. And with open-source if there's a bug I can usually fix it. Vendor software, well, take Oracle for an example (please, preferably to another planet). Our open-issue list with them, counting only serious and up, is into the 4 digits and growing. Average open time for our tickets is the high side of a year. The last time I tried to get them to fix a bug, it was about a problem with their connection pooling. It simply wouldn't work, and it would lock up the database servers (not the client, not just one server, the entire cluster of servers). I managed to reduce the bug to a single-page test program in plain C that reproduced the problem 100% of the time and needed nothing but the IBM compiler, libc and Oracle's tools and libraries. It took 8 months to convince Oracle to even compile and try that simple test case, they kept asking for it to be simplified. When they finally did compile and run it, within 24 hours we got back "Oh, yeah, we know all about that one. It's in all our current versions. We're planning on fixing it in our next major release, you just have to upgrade to it. No, we're not planning on fixing any of the prior releases.". Wonderful. Thanks loads. Really. And that's it, we're done. It doesn't matter how major the problem is or how important it is to get it fixed, there are no further avenues we can pursue.
Automating encryption of data for sending to partners using PGP was easy enough with GPG. However with new FIPS compliance issues and GPG not being FIPS validated, that pretty much leaves only PGP. I know about FIPS capable OpenSSL, which we use. Some places ( using PGP ) want data encrypted before being sent across an OpenSSL tunnel though.
It would be great if libgcrypt was FIPS validated.
"a casual windows user will get upset pretty fast with the default interface of OOo and will drop it"
.. That's why they centralize everything in a manual (physical or electronic). FOSS don't"
..
:"How can I write instructions for something that doesn't exist yet?"
For the life of me, I don't ever see that 'problem'. I have sat msOffice users down in front of Open Office and they can't tell the difference.
"The main problem of FOSS is that there's no real "Software Management" structure that tell developers how to comunicate with the users"
What are you on about. When was it ever that the average 'Windows User' got to communicate with the developers. Contrast that with the FOSS equivalent where you contact the developers on the various forums. And in most cases get the problem dealt with - directly by the developers.
"Comercial documentation is never made by the developers: Always are done by a team of users and testers
'Comercial documentation' is a long running joke in the industry
--
PHB: "You'll have to have all the documentation written by next week so we can ship it when the software is done."
Tina
PHB: "You'll have to make logical guesses."
Tina: "If you press any key your computer will lock up. If you call our Tech. Support, we'll blame Microsoft."
That's sad.
I'd have hoped that initiatives such as ODF workshop in the Netherlands and OfficeShots.org would contribute to better interoperability.
Can you give us any idea whether things are at least improving lately.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Several times over the past decade, I've tried switching to Linux and failed. This time, I've been using Ubuntu on my personal machines for about two years, however, I'll be switching to windows 7 when it comes out. It's the same old story of wasted time and busted software.
.net. Mono itself works fairly well, but MonoDevelop continues to disappoint. For reasons unknown, the debugger recently stopped working after a system update and the latest sources in SVN don't work either. MonoDevelop might be useful someday, and Novel might be able to turn this into a profit center, but I'm tired of waiting.
In the c++ realm, autotools are an abomination and autotools based builds are orders of magnitude slower than vc++. I can live with this, but the available IDE's are either busted or time wasters. Anjuta is unstable and kdevelop is complicated and doesn't like working with custom autotools files. Even the visual studio 6.0 debugger doesn't work with current versions of Wine.
I also develop with c# and
I Recently dumped VLC For every video type except wmv. The reason's are Quicktime X is much better at decoding most videos something that VLC is constantly directly trying to improve but has failed to beat quicktime (even 7). The only reason why I kept wmv under VLC is because flipformac (developed by Microsoft) takes for ever to decode video.
"I've spent the last few weeks trying to build a cross compiler on Cygwin"
Why ?
"In my case, most of the time I spent was late at night after the kids had gone to bed. I was able to suffer through this without my employer knowing how dire the circumstances really were. But had I been required to make a release in these last few weeks"
What was the name of this cross-compiler?
What was the response on the support forums to these issues?
Did you have a support contract with any of the major Open Source vendors.
Then sometime later you want to update python from 2.4 to 2.5. you do the update and it updates all these dependencies as well. And suddenly you find that Gimp or gnuplot or something else you need is busted because say they all depend on some Latex for symbolic fonts and there's an incompatibility.
So, what happens if you try to update and replace the system Python or system gcc on OS X? It completely breaks your system. You can't do it. People don't even try, they just suffer with buggy, outdated libraries and compilers, or they install multiple versions of the same software and then battle with incompatibilities and missing functionality.
I think your bad experiences result from using OS X: package management on OS X doesn't work. Fink is broken. MacPorts is broken. I had drunk the Apple Cool Aid and for a few years really, really gave OS X a try as the "better UNIX", but eventually just gave up.
One would prefer in many cases decoupling of applications or even standalone applications. When you update an app the worst that happens then is that just that app breaks. Plus it's trivial to roll back to the old self contained app.
You can do that for desktop applications to a limited extent. You can't do it for something like gcc or Python. The dependencies are there, and you can't make them go away by pretending they don't exist.
And there's no need to either. Package management may not work on OS X, but it works like a charm on Linux distributions.
Wether I use closed-source or FOSS or paid or free (bw. those metrics are ortogonal to one another!) depends entirely on the usage model and my preferences for the job at hand.
Example 1:
I'm considering getting back to Video Editing after 9 years of abstinence in order to spice up my website about web technologies.
No effing way am I going to hassle around with FOSS Video editors - which practically don't exist. I might look at Blenders Sequencer for an hour to determine if it's usefull or not, but that's about it. I'll probably get Final Cut Express or something like that.
Example 2:
ATM I develop PHP in my spare time - my current daytime gig is mostly ActionScript. I've considered PHPEd as an IDE, but I haven't had a Windows Box since about 7 years ago and no way am I switching just for that. With PHPEd out as my IDE of choice I *will* have a fuss getting full roundtrip debugging to work - no matter which x-plattform IDE I choose, so I might aswell get a FOSS one. Eclipse PDT it is then. I am not shelling out money for Komodo or Zend Studio if the amount of work is the same. Which it is.
Example 3:
I was working on a clients project on my trusty 12" G4 iBook a few years back. It was laden with apps running side by side, including the Flash MX 2004 Pro IDE. Which was the reason I had gotten it in the first place. Needles to say it was slow as molasses. I chose to turn off my favorite Editor jEdit and get a faster one. TextMate was a worthy candidate. However, it costs 30$ (no problem with that), only runs on OS X (ok, that's a tad tricky, but I'll follow along) and gets its power by extensibility with some kind of C dialect scripting language. Here's the dealbreaker: If I have to learn some scripting language to pimp out my Editor with half the features jEdit has, it better be one that runs *everywhere*. TextMate was ruled out and I chose to bite the bullet and learn Emacs. Usability is beyond bizar - you have to actually actively practice select, copy and paste (no joke!) and you won't get anywhere without a cheatsheet in the first year or two - but it runs *everywhere* and I don't have to learn more about some programming language than I would have had to with TextMate. Only here it is Lisp.
Example 4:
I want to highres-scan a picture and print it out on a 1x2 meter banner to hang in my room. I'll have to edit it, remove the rastering and prepare it for 7-color printing. No effing way am I going to attempt that in Gimp, which I work with at least once a week. PS and maybe Corel Photo Paint are the only choice here.
Bottom line: Use the best tool for the job. And invest either your time or your money. Never both.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
to an open source product, regardless if it's 'free.' I'll tell you my story just as an example of what open source has to face. I've used Word since version 1.0 when it came on two floppies and included a mouse in the box. I've used every single version up through 2003. I'm a writer. I was one of the first to use word processing with programs that no longer exist, like Zardax for the Apple ][. I've had a computer since 1979. I'm not as smart as all of you, of course, but I used to be famous for putting together a computer from pieces with only a Swiss Army knife at trade shows.
I write book-length manuscripts in Word, making extensive use of multiple indexes, tables of contents, and tables themselves. I don't have Word exactly memorized the way I still have Lotus 123 memorized (It won't leave my brain), but I have a good working journeyman level knowledge of it. It can be frustrating at times, but by and large I can get it to do what I need to have done.
Being a bit of a dabbler I once downloaded and installed Open Office to see what it could do. Looked fine at the outset. I had no problem with the menus or the look of it, so I loaded in one of my manuscripts. One look through it and I discovered it would not render tables properly. The tables were a mess. So I erased Open Office from my system and have never looked back since.
Why? Because I don't have time for this shit. Maybe they fixed it. Probably they did, but I can't be constantly checking back to see how it has improved. It slows me down and time is money. Word, for all its faults I'm sure you all can point out with great gusto, is a functional program. It works. I and my publisher see it as a known quantity. At a corporate level I can get Word so cheaply that it is not cost-effective to consider a 'free' program.
Proselytizers who have an axe to grind with evil M$ will make some inroads when they have enough power to force an organization to switch, just as they do with Linux on the desktop, which has a similar problem. But overall, the ecological niche for word processing is filled by Word, and it will take more than a few Linux geeks to dislodge it. Those who do use Word will use Word until they are dead.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
I started with Linux by trying out Slackware a decade ago, but always went back to Mac OS (X) and Windows XP since that was what we were using at work. I installed Linux on my own boxen every couple of years, but it was never a practical alternative until Firefox, Gimp and Open Office.org came along.
Gnome finally got good enough to be a desktop, Ubuntu finally recognized most of my hardware out of the box, and Canonical started their insane giveaway program of free install CD's, but I looked at Feisty and Gutsy before I finally installed Hardy -- which promptly killed my wireless, since it didn't include Dell's proprietary Broadcom STA wireless driver. But Hardy was nice, almost everything worked including YouTube, Vimeo and whatever video it is that MSNBC uses. Good enough. I upgraded to Jaunty. Dell Inspiron 1525 wireless works again, and now — everything but YouTube is busted in the video department!
What boils my cheese about Ubuntu, arguably the best free consumer Linux out there, is the lack of cross-sandbox QA. Yes, Apple has been a scurvy scumbag in the broken features department, and Microsoft is no slouch at the game of making users pay for bug fixes (but the bugs ARE fixed), but Linux is a green beacon of broken promises kept painfully slow. Linux is no child growing up, but Frankenstein's monster gradually accumulating bits and pieces, all individually cool but collectively alive only in someone else's paradigm of what a consumer computer should look like.
Bottom line? I can't turn Grandma loose on Ubuntu. It's high maintenance. Way too high maintenance, almost as bad as Microsoft. If I charge myself for my time on this chore, how free is free? I will never go back to Vista, but Mac OS X...? That's in the realm. But I do sorely wish Ubuntu was up to snuff, and frankly it's gotten good enough to pay for, in the under $200 per major version range.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Everyone always talks about the GIMP, and about how it doesn't measure up to Photoshop. I haven't used Photoshop, so I can't really comment on that, but every complaint they bring up seems to not be an issue with Krita. Just to comment on the issues you mentioned, it does support write-protection for layers, and it has a wide variety of colour-space options. It supports:
- CMYK (8 or 16 bit integer per channel)
- Grayscale (8 or 16 bit integer per channel)
- L*a*b* (16 bit integer per channel)
- LMS Cone Space (32 bit float per channel)
- RGB (8 or 16 bit integer per channel, or 16 or 32 bit float per channel)
- YCbCr (8 or 16 bit integer per channel)
Is there something I'm missing that makes Krita unusable for professional work, or is it just not widely known?
One thing I haven't seen mentioned here yet that is a big deal is compatibility with proprietary systems.
If I'm a photographer who's working with another photographer, I can't send them my gimp files, and them them open them in photoshop. I can't open their photoshop files in gimp.
It doesn't matter how good a FOSS video editor is, All the other pros are using AVID or final cut, and we can't work together on anything.
If I have a recording to be mastered externally, the studios are set up to work with pro tools.
You can't have one person off in their own little bubble while the rest of the team is working together on different software. Choosing to use a FOSS program immediately isolates you from the rest of your peers.
If you are a lone person working freelance, FOSS is possible. I can edit wedding photos in gimp, and edit some audio in audacity, and get the job done. But larger production places, the work flow is more like an assembly line. after doing your job, You send off your work to the next guy. If you are ever expected to work as part of a team, you have to use what the rest of them are using. In these cases, a FOSS alternative, even if it works better than the proprietary alternative, breaks the chain, and is useless.
-I only code in BASIC.-
Since the whole OS-App stack is made of too many components with different stake-holders, and these components interactive in non-trivial ways, it's hard to place blame on the OS or the app. In my case, Firefox 3.5 since beta 2 has been crashing my X server with intel i810 driver that came with rhel5. Nowadays, I essentially have a different Windows machine that I rdesktop from Linux that run Google Chrome. This is the path of the least resistance for me to get something that works. In the future, the physical Windows machine may simply be replaced by a virtual machine.
I once had a signature.
Let me introduce you to reality.
1. Most people are not programmers, and are completely unable to read code.
2. For such people, wether a program's source is open or private doesn't matter because they will never see it. Even if they did they wouldn't know what to do with it.
3. This makes all programs a black box of which they cannot peer inside.
To non-programmers free (as in speech) software has exactly zero benefit. Programs will be chosen based on their merits of accomplishing the tasks a user wants to do and within the resources they are willing to expend (money, time, etc). Firefox (open) is better than Internet Explorer (proprietary). But Safari (proprietary) is better than Firefox. Also, "better" is subjective.
Wether you like it or not, that's the reality.
This seems to be a subset of pragmatism versus idealism-type issues.
I use OSS, not because I believe in OSS idealism, but because specific OSS programs are better than the other programs in that field, be they free or for-cost, open or closed.
I'm typing this from FireFox; I use that because I feel it's the best Web broswer out there, not because it's an OSS web browser.
OSS advocates may respond that characteristics of OSS are what *makes* it better. To that I say: Fine. Let OSS win that way, rather than letting OSS win "just because it's OSS".
I'm no programmer, so having the source available doesn't mean much to me directly. As such, I gladly use free closed-source software if it fits. For example, I've got music on in the background through MediaMonkey, some of that music having been acquired via uTorrent. :P
VLC? Best media player (except for media-library features, but it's great if you want to throw one specific file at it)
Notepad++? Great text editor, period.
Also, while there's some software I use every day, there's some software that I use only occasionally. (for example, video editing - it's not my main focus; I get occasional projects.) Not going to bother figuring out OSS stuff for such occasional projects, even if the OSS thingy may be a "better' piece of software in the end.
I just happen to *like* XP as my OS and Office 2007 as my "productivity software". (Yeah, I like the Ribbon, okay? :P) Sometimes, it's hard to quantify these types of things, in those cases it makes sense to go with your overall impression rather than specifics.
I like saving money, no doubt about it.
However, one thing I know is that, in general, sometimes it makes sense to pay up for a better product, that in some cases, using the cheap thing is penny-wise and pound-foolish.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I just checked Apple's site. They don't seem to have a Linux version of iTunes.
... because making software is time consuming and hardwork and doesn't pay the bills.
The reason commercial software is preferred to free software is that commercial software is still better then free.
That and linux can't run windows apps perfectly, I would move to linux if it
1) had the same shell as say windows xp
2) was faster in performance then windows (i.e. games had higher framerates under linux and there was no bullshit compatability, things "just worked".
The best free software has a lot of great ideas but the problem is that software takes too much work and time from these guys lives without any compensation, they can't compete because
1) They usually over-estimate their coding skills
2) They code for themselves NOT for users
When making any program you're coding for that "motherfucker" the public, therefore you can't make a program for coders, you have to make a program for users, ease of use.
In the early days of video editing software, almost all video editing software was complicated for what joe user needed it for, finally for profit companies came to the rescue, companies like ULEAD for instance.
Take a lot of the pain of video editing out of video editing for the average user who just wants to mash up videos, cut paste, etc.
http://www.ulead.com/
Open source guys obviously don't use or are unaware of how to do things better, when any company or person hits on the "magic user interface formla" you have to copy it and make it even better for the user if there is room for improvement.
The thing is good software design is hard and time consuming for the output you get over time spent, it literally takes years to figure out how to build good software, since developing good software is extremely labour intensive.
I got it perfectly right.
What he (and you) describe is not vendor lock-in. When the vendor lets you go with the source code, no question asked, it's not vendor lock-in. Period.
You're describing an hypothetical situation (code soooo hard to maintain but the vendor can) without even providing an example for it. I doubt you could -- it's completely ridiculous.
So enterprises are like me: I don't care about cancer, I only care about the consequences of cancer, the part with the dying and shit.
Come on.
I think if people are coming from an existing application they generally have expectations, provided they can do the same things in the same way they usually stay. If users have to change their workflow however, then the novelty wears of really fast. Which brings me to my second point, if user have support, then they'll stay longer, and wont mind doing stuff like tcpdumps, etc. provided somebody else is telling them what to type or tweak. If people know they can just ask somebody and get results in a day they usually stay. At least in my experience of familial & work tech support anyway.
First, there's the expectation that if something breaks or something isn't working for you, you can just "fix it". Now this might mean anything from editing a configuration file to rewriting the code, which is far above a lot of people's heads. Plus, as you mention, sometimes it seems like developers focus on some technical aspect of the problem while ignoring the end-user aspect. It's great that ODF is an open format, but it doesn't really work as a universal file format if every program has a different implementation.
This is one of the common refrains of the anti-FOSS FUD patrol -- that 'all of us non-programmers have no control'. That couldn't be furter from the truth. It's actually a close relative of Microsoft's 'are you going to trust your business to code written by amateurs' FUD.
Truth of the matter is that the bulk of the code that goes into the major FLOSS projects is put there by people who are paid to do the work. It's not a bunch of lone wolves doing it for their own gratification. This means that they take their orders from the people who pay them to do that work. In other words, you don't have to be a programmer to get a wanted fix into your (not so) favorite FLOSS project, you just have to convince a programmer (by hook, crook or paycheque) to do it.
This is quite a bit different than with proprietary software, where it has to be in the business interests of the program seller to fix what for you is a show-stopper bug. For example, when MS-Word for OSX first came out, it's multilingual support (especially for RTL languages like Hebrew) was abysmal. The Israeli government offered Microsoft 7million of dollars (plus a guaranteed bulk contract to fix it, but MS was more interested in using the bugs as a leverage point to force people to move from the MAC to Windows. Microsoft didn't budge on the issue until Israel's Department of defence paid a group of programmers $1/2 Million to port Open Office to the Mac, and ordered a halt to further Microsoft contracts.
So the moral of the story is: If you have a show-stopper bug in a FLOSS project, then hire someone to fix it, then sit back and laugh at the people who spend 10 times as much money working around similar problems in proprietary programs. If you then feed your fix to the greater community, then not only don't you have to support your fix, as the base code is updated, you also get to bathe in the good karma of having contributed to the greater commumity. That's what FLOSS is all about.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Coders are now preferring Visual Studio Express and GoogleCode over MinGW/Cygwin and Sourceforge, and for a good reason.
If you look at most open source software packages, they are basically copy-cats of proprietary software -- FROM SEVERAL YEARS BACK!! Lots of cool new features of programs like Mac OS Finder, Windows Explorer, Photoshop and Dreamweaver either magically appear in open source programs years down the road, or have some competing feature that nobody wants except the coder and his friends. Many of us are still waiting for a good open-source alternative to Adobe Flash. Hopefully, HTML 5 will help out somewhat in the meantime.
Windows Aero -- with all of its flaws -- looks good out of the box. Microsoft doesn't make you forage for the graphics and the libraries, or *gasp* create them yourself. Microsoft also goes out of its way NOT to copy Apple's Aqua interface. Commercial companies, in general, follow some rather fundamental design principles that most OSS developers neglect. KDE turns options into requirements, which is illusory and abandons the mission.
The barrier of entry for OSS development is lower than that of a commercial software company. This attracts coders who don't know what they are doing like moths to a flame. They end up copying the next person without understanding that person's motivation, inspiration, life experiences, etc.
Then there are people who develop OSS just to flip the bird to "the capitalist pigs" but are really just egotistic bullies. Working with this kind of divisive, oppositional mindset helps nobody.
When you look at open-source development options, you see lots of questionable names and faces. Not everyone sleeps well at night knowing that a program named "Python" is running on their machine. This has been one of _several_ elephants in the room regarding open source, I believe. Ironically, if they kept to the KISS principle, someone would probably create a programming language named "Lucifer."
People assume that they can produce portable programs by coding them in Java. History has already shown that Java is bloated, unreliable and insecure. Coding in Java is beating a dead horse. People are starting to say the same thing about OpenGL on Windows.
Overall, OSS developers, in general, need to look beyond their noses. They need to actually talk to people -- REAL PEOPLE, AND LOTS OF THEM -- to see what people want, instead of making inaccurate assumptions based on lofty generalities ("people want options") or acting snobby. This is called "market research." OSS developers who wish to be competitive should actually do some research before complaining.
If it's open source and *doesn't* have a GUI, it's probably fantastic. My email, programming, backups, version control etc. is all open source and I wouldn't have it any other way.
But as soon as you add a GUI and plug in a monitor, the quality drops away and things start to get iffy. What happened with KDE4, for example, was unacceptable. You can't just dump everything and expect users to accomodate that.
Actually it was the distro maintainers that did that to the users, the KDE 4 team made it quite clear that it wasn't ready yet.
And stability. A lot of open source apps are fantastic but they have rough edges - little bugs and issues. The way media managers like Rhythmbox and Amarok handle an iPod, for example: sometimes I get weird errors about mounting the iPod, or it doesn't behave properly when there's no free space left, and other little issues. They may not be show stoppers, but they're enough to give you a bad impression. The quality just isn't quite there.
Its not like Apple goes out of its way to make sure iPods only work with itunes or anything
And you know what the worst part is? This isn't getting any better. Open source GUIs are about the same quality now as they were a decade ago. Sure they're more capable, but all the rough edges are still there and don't seem to be going away. I've been using desktop Linux since Redhat 5.2 and I can honestly say the standards and general incompleteness, relative to the competition, are about the same today as they were back then.
I still use Linux on my desktop but I'm tempted to buy a Mac next time and use it as a front-end, while keeping all the 'real' stuff on a Linux box. But I don't want to manage two computers if I can help it. Ho hum.
I find it hard to believe that F/OSS GUIs haven't changed at all in a decade, perhaps you can give some examples?
Nuts!
There could be "several" people on campus running CP/M. No more visible than you are.
The other massive advantage is software repositories. When something comes up and I need some new program to solve that problem, I google to find out what can do the job, download, install, and some five minutes to half hour later, I'm ready to go.
The repository loses some of its luster when you need Google to point the way.
How many of those programs are available for Windows - and are they really more difficult to find or harder to install?
There is a vocal minority of computer professionals and users who operate off of an ideological model rather than a pragmatic one. They see moral issues where most of us only see an engineering problem. Furthermore they define themselves based upon their attachment to their ideology.
For the rest of us this is silly at best and downright exasperating at worst. Try working with someone who demands that a sub-par solution be used on political grounds and who casts your reluctance to do so as a moral failing, if not evidence of participation in an evil conspiracy of some sort. I really do think that people like that are mentally ill.
I make technological choices on technological grounds. I choose the solution that works best. I don't cloud my judgement with emotionally driven ideologies.
I use (and contribute to) open source products because they usually offer the best value proposition. When they don't, I look elsewhere. It is not wrong to support a proprietary solution. It is not wrong to reward those whose efforts have made your life easier.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Ever heard of Youtube? There are plenty of OSS tutorials, including gimp tutorials
I'm a semiconductor test engineer in a department that has folks in various places across the US, and in Asia. I wanted to setup a departmental wiki so that we could share best engineering practices. My employer is not known for frivolous purchases, so free software sounded like a good deal to me. I'm not a Linux expert, but I wound up trying TWiki running in a canned Linux distribution inside a VM on one of my desktop PC's. It was a bit daunting at first, however I got an excellent prototype site running reasonably quickly. Since it was running inside a well-maintained firewall, security needs were nominal rather than dire. My boss liked the idea, so I went to IT to get them to host it on a "real" Intranet server, and they were favorable at first. They quickly made a counter proposal however and proposed that I employ their Enterprise Web solution instead. My first impression was disappointment, as I felt that their solution was a lot stodgier, with less flexible content editing. I quickly changed my mind for practical reasons however, as my career is based upon developing electronic test methods, and not upon fiddling around with open source software that is based upon a sweat equity model of ownership. I like TWiki, but the technical details of our Enterprise Intranet Web solution are managed by our IT team with corporate level backups and maintenance. In that context my departmental web site is growing into a major source of information for our far flung team members. If I were 30 years younger I might have stuck with TWiki anyway, but my job is very demanding and I have a family and a life to go home to after work. Regards.
This post coming out just 2 days after the launch of Microsoft's half-assed Open Source initiative. Word of the day is that proprietary software doesn't get it's due credit, and indeed coming from free software proponents. Microsoft is not making as much money as they'd want at this moment, and this just might be a desperate underhanded attempt at swaying public opinion in favor of their lock-in.
"For many FOSS applications the UI isn't nearly as polished as the commercial alternatives. This might be partially because UI designers want to get paid for the work (perhaps not a dedicated to the free community as sofware developers)."
I doubt that it is about pay. I think it is more likely two things:
1. A UI designer cannot sit in his house and contribute like a programmer can. Usability tests require finding real people to take the tests, and this often requires paying them to do so. If a UI designer only uses people from his own industry, or programmers, the results will be poor. He needs average folks to test with, and this is a lot of work.
2. A UI designer needs to have the authority to make a programmer change something. Even if a designer went out of his way to conduct formal usability studies with dozens of people, compiled the results, and sent them to the programmers working on the project, it's probably likely that the programmers would consider the suggestion list "not fun" and ignore it.
In the case of our company, the problem with F/OSS is that there is a real lack of local support/knowledge in our country; that way we are left to use the internet as a support source and that *is* a big issue for conservative companies like where I work.
... for Yummy FTP. The reason was that cyberduck would download 2 Megs of a 1 Meg file and then fail. I would then find that the 1MB file had downloaded correctly. In addition, the fault tolerance was poor and all around offered a slightly less refined user experience. Cyberduck now is a great FTP program and I recommend it to people who use FTP rarely. For people who use it regularly, I recommend Yummy - which is the best FTP program I've ever used on any platform.
or else!
My company dumped SugarCRM for Salesforce. I hate salesforce every day. It's a terrible program.
The problem with SugarCRM is we always did the simplest possible hack at any given stage to meet the immediate need without ever cleaning up. This meant that it got creakier and creakier over time, until we had to start over, and it was viewed as easier to start over with a commercial solution. In our situation it seems that the ability to modify acted as a tarpit, due to poor self-control.
-josh
Ok, this has to stop! How come this guy gets 5, insightful. Who gives these points? /. used to be so cool and trendy. You put a rock -- and not a precious stone -- and it gets modded +5 something. It's such a big shame!
> The number of people who use Windows but loath it could be twice the number of total number Linux users combined, and it would still be less than 5% of number of people who use Windows.
5% loath Windows because they know Linux/Mac; 50% loath Windows but cannot/don't want to change to another OS and 30% either loath it but don't know another way or don't loath it because they think the PC sucks. Probably 15% of Windows users thumb their noses at their jobs and don't care enough to loath anything. If you think I made up these numbers, well, you see, you got +5... so anybody can write anything.
> There will never be an open source replacement for Windows, if anything replaces it it will be a closed-source OS like OSX, because programming the bits that make Windows easy to use and acceptable to a large user base are the very bits that nobody likes to write.
I get you don't know jack about programming. Some dudes practically orgasm while programming the bits you say nobody wants to write. Following your reasoning, who would play the piano if it requires years of training? I can't believe you're writing this bull...
> They are, in fact, a pain in the ass to write and there is no real sense of accomplishment.
Well, maybe for you. Then again, for the life of me, I'd never play golf -- but look who's being paid thousands/millions of dollars.
> That is why GUIs in Linux are horrible. Not just bad, but horrible. The rare GUI that is easy to use is a pleasant surprise.
Yeah, right. You might say Linux is copying the Mac and I would give you that... but you know M$ is now copying both Apple and Linux, don't you?
Also, that might be a pleasant surprise for you, but Linux has Gnome which has had very significant advances in usability and KDE, which I like best, and mops the floor with your darling Windows. Not only more powerful, KDE is also much easier to use than Windows -- I'm talking things like virtual spaces/desktops with single key switching, automatic copy on selection, middle-button single click mouse pasting, focus-follow-mouse automatic window selection, windows layout unaffected by windows selection, simultaneous multi-user login with instantaneous user switching -- not that lame "fast user switching" which is all but fast, extended customization, fonts better looking, automatic file content preview on the icons (pics, audio and video) with expanded view on mouseover, better picture visualization with tools like Kuickshow (Windows viewer is so much weaker), much more powerful file manager (Konqueror, nothing comes even close, Windows Explorer is so useless it makes me angry), KIO slaves, file formats working perfectly out of the box etc.
Note that I haven't talked about all those cool 3D desktops which Aero mimics.
> some schmuck got paid to make sure all the bits that nobody likes to program work the way they are supposed to, and what you get is a GUI that is so easy to use nobody even thinks about it.
First of all, I think. I have to use it at work and I grind my teeth at how difficult to use Windows is. The poor schmuck probably didn't like to program which must be the reason why the UI has a lot of room for improvement. In fact, Windows doesn't need to be easy to use; it must be easy to understand so not to foul up things during the sale. I though everyone knew this.
If you think Windows is an example of a good UI, I'd say you're in for many pleasant surprises...
And I'm surprised you got a +5. What has /. come to?
All brands, marks and products belong to their respective owners. I don't claim any of them.
First, as I said -- the purpose of my post was to identify problems (including perceptions) so that they can be addressed. I have the silly idea that it's a good idea to know why people say No; that lets you find out what you would have to change to make them say Yes instead. (It's up to you to decide if you want to do those things; but you can't get that far unless you know what the objections are.)
Also, I started research on this question several weeks ago.
And, oh yeah, I've been writing about open source and software development for about a decade.
It's really much simpler than people here think ---- most working people value their time and in such cases it is simply far more efficient to purchase a product that "just works" than to spend many hours (if not days or long) futzing with an open source product that has to be installed, is fiddley, and, quite often, just doesn't finish what it has started. The actual cost of a commerical product is generally negligible compared to other factors in play. If you're in the open source world, you're not motivated by money, at least not directly. Therefore, that last 10% that takes 90% of the effort often doesn't happen. It's why the user interface of products like the gimp don't come close to commerical products like photoshop or the many other commerical image processing apps out there. It's why that community does not understand the priorities of most users. Most (i.e., 99.xxx% of) users just don't care about the "joy" of the open source world, and even many who are technically knowledgeable (I'm one of those) just don't want to spend a significant amount of their time trying to make other peoples' stuff work. Apple understands this deeply. The technical community "laughed" when Apple finally included copy/paste in the iPhone. But instead of chuckling about Apple being late to the table, they should have understood that Apple recognized that most users just didn't need the feature. How many people do you think choose not to buy an iPhone because it didn't have copy/paste? Very few. Apple (and most successful companies) understand what motivates general users. Most of the technical community does not.
The summary states that cost isn't the primary factor in choosing commercial vs FOSS. Granted, but I wonder what role the (often tolerated) ability to pirate commercial software plays in this?
If there was genuinely no option but to stump up ~$1,700 each time one wishes to upgrade to the latest Adobe Creative Suite (Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop etc), this would discourage home users and push them toward FOSS alternatives. Same for MS Office vs Open Office, etc.
Students are a prime example - what percentage of students do you realistically think pay for their software (particularly those requiring numerous high cost tools, such as programming students)? The tools that students become familiar with they will then become advocates for when they start working.
It's no secret that Microsoft tolerated a rife pirating of MS DOS in order to strengthen their install base - a tactic which has reaped dividends. I wonder if this tolerance continues today for major software titles that rely on ubiquity to ensure their popularity, such as MS Office?
I don't open source applications all the time. The thing is I never switch to a non-free application. The reason I switch open source applications is because sometimes one meets my needs better than another. Be it documentation, prior experience, or better security.
If we're talking about average joe desktop users I would say that people just don't remember to save in the right format- and then when someone else can't open it they give up and go buy MS Office. I sometimes have to repeat to people that Microsoft Office is a very risky venture- so while do what you have to do be aware and if you can avoid it I'd suggest you do.I also make sure to inform people the polite thing to do is send PDFs not MS Word documents. Not everybody can open an MS Word document.
This is very timely since I'm making the switch from Ubuntu Linux to OSX.
You see, I discovered open sorce software in high school. At the time I was poor and couldn't afford software so I ended up using programs like VLC, OpenOffice, and Firefox. And then I found Linux shortly thereafter whose old-fashoned virtual terminals amazed me. (I had grown up with dos)
Soon I was a Linux and FLOSS fanatic. During those years I went to the local lug and installed linux variants on dozens of computers. Even the grandparents were using it.
But you know, after years of using FLOSS, I'm soon switching to a Macbook Pro. Why? The real world demands it from me. I greatly appreciate the technical merits of FLOSS, but things aren't always the way I'd like it in the real world.
1) I need Adobe Photoshop for photography. GIMP doesn't offer all the features and efficient workspace I need for editing photographs. Saying to studios that I don't/cannot us PS is a bad thing.
3) Adobe premiere. There's no open source substitute.
2) Openoffice seriously lacks templates or the ability to have a pre-formatted doc. Sure, templates exist for OO. They aren't as easily obtained and implimented as microsoft's. And clients are always sending me documents in the new word format with crazy formating that OO can't read.
3) GUI Asthetics. Sorry, not even KDE4 is as visually pleasing as OSX. I also feel great inconsistency in my favorite linux programs. Additionally, all the RSS readers and music players suck. Period. Using winamp for the time being.
4) Status symbol. There's a lot assumed, for better or worse, about Apple stuff. People usually think you're superior or better just for having the shiny equipment. Boasting Linux puts me on a lower level.
5) Pro tools. Honestly, there's nothing like it. Period. Ubuntu studio gives me occasional lockups and odd bugs. Plus the UI blows.
6) Lack of completely stable and fully functional drivers for new devices. I need it for m-audio firewall devices which all performed horribly.
I won't even get started with graphics and xorg woes.
7) Codecs. I can't legally playback video and certain audio formats.
I really appreciate technical merit. Once more, I've entirely been using Linux and FLOSS for years now. But my present operating system and software inhibits me from earning money. Not cool.
Sorry, I'm going to the dark side.
I've been using Linux as my primary OS for about a month. I took the advise (in numerous articles and tried many distro's. I will admit that I am still getting used to the way things work in Linux. Just the same.... My impression is that many (not all) examples of FOSS software lack the "polish" that much of the propriatary software has. Now I keep in mind that this is also true of many Windows products, and I have replaced much of that software with better stuff over my experience with Windows (sometimes with FOSS software). I have plenty to say about my experience, thus far, but it does not pertain to the question asked. I think that the UI is a larger part of the less polished impression. What I mean by "polished" is the UI, documentation, features (or lack of), and the overall usability...
There is one thing that annoys me more than anything with software and has caused me more headaches - more than interface (which also can ellicit rants from me), more than stability, more than all of that - and it's this: licensing.
I like open source software because I can go to a new computer somewhere, jump online, download, install and carry on working happily (or set someone else up to work).
I have spent far too many hours (I used to work as an IT admin) bashing my head against walls with proprietary-licenced software. Oh, you can't find your licence code? Oh, you're having trouble with Windows activation? Well, we could set that up on his machine, but we'd have to pay [arm, leg, firstborn], even though he will only use it once a week. What do you mean you didn't keep the original install disks? The list goes on.
As for the other reasons software sucks, it goes both ways (proprietary and FOSS) - broken upgrades? Bad interface? Ignoring users? Lack of support? (Have you ever actually read the average help file?) I've seen rubbish and gold in both free and proprietary.
But knowing I can install and not be stealing is really helpful.
And this is not mentioning things you can do with software that doesn't need DRM to protect it, like portable apps (I love being able to take my browser - and my office suite - with me) or live installs. I think this sort of thing may be areas that free software can really win against proprietary because the licence enforcement in a situation like that would be a headache, if not impossible...
I tried to do the opposite, actually. Way back in 2006, my friend's site used CuteNews, which is now all but abandonware, though there's a community developed fork. Well, I wanted to throw up a quick page for personal reasons, and scouring the internet for ages, I finally came across something that almost exclusively did what I wanted, which was replace CuteNews completely. I found SuperSimpleNews. The problem? No built in support for avatars (eh, not too bad), no support for commenting, no support for any user accounts (Just one Admin account, which... as we all know, is a bad idea for anything with more than one user). But the key features I wanted were still there: It simply delivered news posts without requiring anything but PHP5. No mysql, no postgre, etc.
But the good news is... I know a bit about PHP. I've already looked at the source and said, "Ok, I can implement a lot of these things myself". But this is a simple application. I know a bit of Java, too, but that doesn't mean I'm going to jump into something like, say, OpenOffice.Org and start coding in support for, I dunno... how about collaborative writing in the style of Etherpad? I wouldn't know where to start. It's not a project one man could hop into and start working on features he wanted (or maybe she, whatever the case may be). I would have to learn their coding styles, learn their naming schemes, learn where the lines of code that provide the functionality I'd need to use or change are. In SuperSimpleNews, this was a five minute process where I just looked at it and went, "OK, this is about as simple as it claims to be," even with it's minimal commenting.
But, yeah, it's easy for me to see why I'd go pick CuteNews UTF-8 over SuperSimpleNews. If I wasn't enthusiastic about adding functionality to SuperSimpleNews, I wouldn't mind the stupid, "Powered By Cutenews" after every post if it meant I had my comments, avatars, and usernames.
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"
And closed source apps priorities have been
check nagaiah portfolio to buy or sell financial assets in bombay stock exchange
We have a few pfsense routers at some of our locations in my soon-to-be former job, a consultant basically said "why arent these cisco?" and bypassed me and sold the boss on cisco products (through him, of course) and wooed him with brand name alone.
Funny thing about that, these pfsense routers replaced our aging PIX 501s that were dying on us.
The only open source apps that have done well have a company supporting them. Unless they are a programmer's tool or application, like Apache, a C lib etc.. It takes a paid team to put up with end users :)
can u tell ur boss that no one is supporting the app when someone's gone? while no funding to let others continue
so u think some robots work for u and fodd is not needed?
if someone would take up the prj.......
open src or proprietary doesn't mean any difference to bosses........
just someone takes the responsibility.......then whatever works
Radiance is a well known FOSS famous for rendering photorealist 3d visualization based on the physics of light. After many years of setting up various Linux boxes and converters to finally get my first renders with this program (actually a collection of 50+ programs), I found the support from the Radiance mailing lists not only valuable but AN ABSOLUTE NECESSITY. This software package learning curve is so steep with non-existent GUI, to make the program impractical to ACTUAL USERS WHO HAVE REAL WORLD JOB DESCRIPTIONS OTHER THAN PROGRAMMER: the software to be usable in anyway requires constant and repetitive custom bash scripting and commands switches without end. ITS LIKE HAVING A BOX FULL OF CAR PARTS WHEN YOU NEED TO DRIVE SOMEWHERE. The PARADOX here is that FOSS that are useful are often useful only to those who are not programers yet would require hiring one to operate. It makes more sense to get a proprietary software developed for end-users rather than the phenomenal WASTE oF TIME REQUIRED TO OPERATE RADIANCE FOR NEGLIGABLE RESULTS OBTAINABLE BY OTHER MEANS. Radianace was intended as a means to geting real world results. I've succeeded in doing that but at a terrible cost in time. My time has become more valuable to me than the software's potential. According to some numbers there are about 400 Radiance users worldwide..that number has barely grown (mostly phd students doing very NARROW research.) The software user base will never grow until its usefulness in consolidated with a comprehensive GUI and a complete documentation of its functions are published. The problem with FOSS is that with so little incentive to the developers, the software will wallow in complete obscurity.
I use RealVNC instead of TightVNC. TighVNC just has way too many bugs when using its video driver. If running Excel through TightVNCs video driver, you constantly get a "Not enough system resources" popup. And, if you edit anything with high ascii characters in it, the rest of the text goes invisible. The RealVNC video driver just works correctly immediately after you install it.
Now before you all call me a trator ;P note that I have TRIED the above packages, and tried to live with them for quite sometime, but I just could not live with the bugs.
If you do insist on treating your iPod like a filesystem, apparently you can do that:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ipod+fuse
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ipod+kioslave
(I haven't tried any of these myself)
Expecting users to differentiate between songs loaded by iTunes and added to the iPod's database, and songs just dumped on its filesystem fundamentally alters user interaction with the device. All people want to do is select $ARTIST -> $ALBUM -> $SONG (or playlist, et cetera) and go from there, not navigate folders to a specific file. It's not about cost or laziness, it's recognising the iPod for what it's intended to be: a music player first and a USB drive second. Parsing filesystems and MP3/AAC metadata is a once-off task best left to a real computer.
I just checked Apple's site. They don't seem to have a Linux version of iTunes.
Use WINE. Or YamiPod, or something else. There's plenty to choose from.
Neither 'fuse' nor 'kioslave' are obvious terms to associate with an ipod, so lmgtfy, while snarky, is not appropriate in this instance.
Again, the idea is not to expect users to differentiate between managed songs and stuff on the disk (most users wouldn't even know they could mess with the latter!), the idea is to at least allow a user to use the audio and video hardware to play back something that only happens to be on the disk, for whatever reason.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I assumed that someone who appears to have been on Slashdot for quite some time would be at least familiar with a cross-platform project like FUSE, if not one of the underlying technologies of KDE. My bad.
What I'm trying to convey is that the only way to get an iPod to play something it doesn't know about without the user telling it to would be for the iPod to look for 'stuff on the disk' by default, which negates the benefits of its being designed to not have to do that, just to suit a minority of users. There are programs out there which can be run from the iPod's disk (a la portable Firefox) that can load songs onto an iPod without iTunes. I mentioned one in another post, which I sometimes use myself if I want to add an MP3 without adding it to my iTunes library.
People will use which ever tool is best suited to the job at hand. I don't see how much deeper you can take the discussion than that. The OP said that sometimes people leave Open Source for things like more features... implying that Open Source regularly has less. If we ignore broken assumptions like that, the equation is pretty simple and obvious: people will use whatever offers them the best tools to do their job. Sometimes that's open source, especially if they have programmers that want to customize their tools, but sometimes what they want isn't available in open source. Child's play.
My solution is much easier than using some alternative iPod manager, I buy music players that work the way I want.
And I'm not asking for the iPod to find and play arbitrary content on the disk, I'm asking for a 'browse disk' menu item. Then the user can find the file. All the iPod has to do is know how to play it.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I work for a popular video startup (not YouTube) and we use open source tools to encode video.
The documentation, lack of support, and sheer buginess of FOSS like FFMpeg, Mencoder, and x264 when we are trying to make the service reliable pushes us daily towards using commercial alternatives. It has started to be the same with other FOSS software as well. To find anything resembling an answer to a problem, you have to look high and low through a million different forum postings to find any answers and the mailing lists don't guarantee any answers. For example, an update to x264 one time caused some serious problems and it turned out that somebody had decided to just change the default settings and left only a minor note in the commit logs -- I would not have known this had I not had a conversation by chance with somebody on IRC. There doesn't seem to be any accountability half the time. There are also irregular release cycles and things are constantly changing as a result of only having nightly builds. You would think that there might be some benefits there, but being able to just have a predictable rather than bug-free software is preferable in a larger environment. I have a feeling that our experiences are not uncommon.
Commercial software on the other hand solves a lot of these pain points: they are accountable and will give you support, they make sure that stuff works consistently, etc.
I think there are definitely ways to fix these problems, and FOSS projects should seek grants and contributions so they can pay for things like user testing. But this take what you can get attitude or inner circle cliques present in many FOSS projects hurts it overall. Most companies don't care about the money spent if it gets them what they want and reduces problems and friction, so this "free" offering does not really matter. The place where FOSS excels in this regard is reducing barriers to entry for small companies/individuals.
A few years back my boss encouraged me to use OpenOffice version 2 because, well, it was free. I tried it out for about a week, mostly the word processing and spreadsheet applications, but it was horribly slow, so I was forced to drop it. Has it improved since then?
It pains me to say it, but I have actually dumped my beloved Ubuntu a handful of times. Most occasions were the result of a bad-tempered repartition, due to lack of drive space. (I wanted to play a new game in my Windows partition, and didn't have the gigabytes. WINE wasn't an option, etc.) At the same time, however, while I may dump the application or software itself, I actively follow the progress of later versions. Which is why I've re-adopted Ubuntu 9.04 (eagerly awaiting the 9.10 release, too squeamish for pre-release, right now) dual-booting quite pleasantly with Windows 7 RC. (Wait, did I say pre-release software made me squeamish? Um... Just take my nerd card and leave me alone.)