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BSA Study Demonstrates Open Source's Economic Advantage
jrepin writes "The fundamental premise of the latest Software Alliance study — that licensed, proprietary software is better in many ways than pirated copies — actually applies to open source software even more strongly, with the added virtues that the software is free to try, to use and to modify. That means the potential economic impact of free software is also even greater than that offered by both licensed and unlicensed proprietary software. It's yet another reason for governments around the world to promote the use of open source in their countries by everyone at every level."
Sorry, just because the message is one that some might like I can't get past the messenger. The BSA has spent decades lying to the public and politicians and using math that would never pass muster in any college in the developed world. They have lost any and all possible credibility they could ever possibly have, especially when it comes to on of their 'reports'.
I'm sure this will offend a lot of people here that are open source fans who would love to cite this. However I'm not about to become a hypocrite and give them credibility now just because they are saying something more palatable.
Switching to GIMP, my productivity is about to go through the roof!
It's not about productivity, it's about economic impact. The article is kind of tongue in cheek poking fun of BSA's erroneous numbers manipulation to show that "properly licensed software" contributes oh so much to the economy. For clear reasons, your switch to GIMP from (presumably) a proprietary software alternative wouldn't move you from one column to the other unless you were to somehow pirate GIMP. While pirating GIMP is possible, you'd like just install it legally by downloading it with references to the GPLv3 license. Whether or not you believe it, GIMP with a copy of the GPLv3 is actually properly licensed software -- putting it in the column of the nebulous cloud of software that the BSA claims inflates our world economy to staggering heights.
To try to quantify the "productivity" of GIMP versus something else like photoshop would likely be subjective, nebulous and not 1 to 1. This isn't about productivity, it's about piracy. The author is pointing out how much of the mad moneys comes from open source software and all but accuses the BSA of co-opting that figure to appear to be their own work.
My work here is dung.
Actually, I see switching from Photoshop to the GIMP to be a productivity killer. You'll be using all that extra money on new time-consuming hobbies like a new boat to take fishing, new golf clubs for those sunny afternoons, new hookers for those lonely nights, a new wife when the old one finds the golf clubs...
In reality one should support anti-piracy and open source systems.
With the following understandings...
Some Software Projects can be better maintained and designed using a priority software model. Sometime to get it done, the incentive of money is the best way.
Some Software Projects can be done better with Open Source. The project is interesting enough to have enough supporters to keep it going.
There are some projects the license doesn't matter much.
These ideas are not really in conflict it is only pig headed nuts who try to make them seem that way. When choosing software there are a lot of factors to consider. Sometime those thousand dollar license fees, or the freedom to alter source code are least of your concern, compared to getting support, and hiring staff proficient in the software, or just general product quality.
However whatever license you choose for your software it is important that you try to follow it. If you have say a GNU license, you better make sure you don't accidentally let some of that code slip into your own product, by some naive developer or manager who think GNU = Public Domain. In the same vein you need to make sure your commercial license are equally maintained, as you have already weight the good and the bad and chosen your product and you should take what you expect.
Piracy of commercial software is bad, it is just as bad as taking a GNU product and relicensing it, without the appropriate permission. Making software take a lot of time and resources. Just to toss the software creators license aside, will only make things worse.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Because Governments are supposed to be stewards for the country. They should be looking at the _long_ term. By setting a good example they show that they actually give a dam about spending efficiently instead of justifying mercenary assassination for "things" such as oil, power, control, etc.
There is a reason we have _standards_ in the first place: So we don't force everyone to keep wasting energy re-inventing the wheel. Open Source has it own set of problems (usually poor documentation) but the ROI on it is a major advantage when governments routinely spend other people's money. For using software that follows the standards we keep the vendor's implementation honest, and the money normally spent on licensing can be instead spent on hardware + people.
Open Source _can_ make good business sense. By having governments use it whenever possible it "legitimizes" / removes the stigma from OSS. How long did it take Microsoft to wean off Hotmail off FreeBSD ?
There are a lot of good OSS based on technical code quality. Of course there is also a lot of crap. But at least the difference is one can do a code audit and literally SEE the bugs in the code in contradistinction to closed source where you have no idea what kind of data they are selling behing the scenes.
How does commercial software give you anyone to pin liability on? All of it that I've seen either disclaims liability entirely or limits liability to refunding your money (even from major vendors like Oracle it reads like "if it breaks, you get to keep both pieces"). You definitely won't be able to hold the vendor liable for the cost of lost business due to the failure of their software. Sure it gives you someone to blame, but you're still left holding the bag when it comes to the actual money the failure cost you. At least with open-source software, if the failure's bad enough the business can put it's own resources to work fixing it. Contrast that with commercial software where the business has no choice but to sit and wait for the vendor to decide the problem's important enough for the vendor to fix it.
This is not a knock against the quality of F/OSS. However, I can take a piece of commercial software and show auditors that it is FIPS or Common Criteria certified, which is important for the legal eagles, especially with regs like Sarbanes-Oxley, FERPA, PCI-DSS, and other items.
Say something like a downed production machine or a security breach causes an audit, and the bug that caused it was within the OS or application:
Scenario 1: The software is shown to be commercial, with the pretty ribbons showing it was certified (AES library is officially certified by NIST), etc. Logs were shown that updates were pushed out on schedule, and that there was an IDS/IPS system in place. The auditors find that shit happens, due diligence was done, and head home.
Scenario 2: The software used is solid, but doesn't have the certifications. Even proof of everything well maintained by IT, they go in and report findings that it was "from an untrusted/unknown vendor with an unknown security reputation". Then someone gets sacked because something has to be done or else the company may lose its ability to process credit cards or have the SEC step in.
These certifications have nothing to do with the software's actual security. However, there is a big difference between secure in the eyes of the law and the auditors (CYA), versus actual security.
This is the same exact reason why antivirus software goes on the Solaris, Linux, and AIX machines... not because they will get infected, but so the legal department can tick a check box saying that "all servers have AV software present."