Local Newspapers Use F/OSS For a Day

An anonymous reader writes "The Journal Register Company owns 18 small newspapers, and in honor of the July 4th holiday and Ben Franklin, the company's newsrooms produced their daily papers using only free software. The reporters were quick to note that 'the proprietary software is designed to be efficient, reliable and relatively fast for the task of producing a daily newspaper. The free substitutes, not so much.' I applaud the company for undertaking such a feat, but I hope their readership's impression of free software won't be negatively affected by the newspaper's one-day foray into F/OSS."

Comments

As well they should

[Kludge]

Odds are they will be met the same way my father was met by the GIMP developers, i.e told to fuck off and do the changes himself,

As well they should.
That is the source of open source software. Open source software is developed by people who use it for themselves; they do not develop it for other people. (Well, a few do, if they can make $ at it). If you happen to be in the same business, then you luck out and have a product that you can use.
Do newspaper companies develop software for their use? Sure! See djangoproject.org. I use that software to make software for my local pool. I do not expect the django developers to do anything special to please my needs and wants. Likewise, if I were to release my pool software, anyone who uses it gets it as is. If they want something different, I do not have time to change it. But they have the ability to change it themselves, or hire someone who knows how to change it.

Why did I develop my pool software out of django rather than buying a commercial product? Because I could not find a commercial that did everything I wanted it to. Now I have one.

The bottom line: If you want a product to do specifically what you want you have to do it yourself. (Or hire someone to do it for you.)

Re:For a day?

[GameboyRMH]

I'm still using an ancient version (that I know is gonna break one of these days following an OS update)

STOP! It's VM time!

I have an old XP VM that would likely be pwned instantly if it were connected to a network. Instead I share files with it using a VirtualBox shared folder and the machine has no network adapters. I use it mainly for playing heavily modified games and simulators that were installed on the physical machine it used to be.

I could keep using that VM forever without updating it as long as I don't drop a virus on it myself.

There's good info online for working through the long, miserable and difficult process of moving an XP install to different hardware.