There are many businesses that require long product life cycles that only open source can provide. If I buy a brand X hardware, who is to say it will work with next year's version of Windows? Who will say the company still supports the product?
There are many long life-cycle assets out there: heavy industry is an obvious example....nuclear stations, oil refineries, subway systems, military... These businesses want their IT to last as long as the machinery it controls does (decades).
It is also a pain to buy a computer and get 95% of it working under Linux. Even major vendors like HP don't really tell you what works and what doesn't. The same can be said for Windows, because shipped drivers are usually terrible, but at least you can get new ones from the web site.
In Canada we have French on one side of every product, English on the other. My French is not great, so one must flip the box this way and that to find the preparation instructions, generally in tiny type (a small sacrifice to make for the pleasure of living in a bilingual country).
Does this mean there could be a button somewhere to change languages? Perhaps it could talk to the RFIDs on the other products in my cupboard to show me recipes on the box for dinner in the language of my choice.
Perl plus VisualStudio - I can see why this does not really sell. ActiveState's Perl is an excellent product however and it is surprising how well applications run on it between Windows and UNIX.
An IDE typically reflects a programming environment where coding must be spread across a multitude of small files. In it's extreme, I'm not a big fan of this style as I don't think it documents the code well. An IDE often kicks in a build system, a debugger, a configuration management system, perhaps even a work management system. Integrated into one product none of these components is going to be ideal compared to dedicated tools. It much like an integrated stereo system - yes it does everything, but it will never sounds as good as discrete audio components.
I'm hard pressed to why one needs something more than emacs (a rabid few might argue it is the only application one would ever need!). Admittedly customizing emacs in Lisp is not exactly easy to learn...
The bottom line is that Microsoft fans (who would shell out big bucks for VisualStudio) are typically not going program in Perl. Similarly, those of us more familiar with the UNIX world aren't going to program in VisualBasic whatever its possible merits might be. The two worlds just don't cross much, we don't read the same web pages, we don't go to the same conferences.
I've personnaly tried to purchase Linux (Our corporate application were running is UNIX based) on notebooks and servers from HP. I was told that they had to sell me Windows XP Home edition pre-installed for CDN$85. The extra $85 is no big deal for a large corporation, but this really irritated me.
Why? Well, this was the cheapest version of Windows that could be sold. I was informed by the sales rep that HP's contractual terms with MS required that no hardware could be sold without an operating system. The accounting involved was so onerous that HP could not be bothered to do the extra bookkeeping in North America where the Linux market was so weak.
So MS gets paid even when Linux is installed. That's just not right!
Many companies now have expectations of longer life cycles out of their IT systems. In my own area of engineering computing we have faced a number of costly challenges over the years due to product obsolecence.
Compared to public domain products, does proprietary technology inherently face more life-cycle risks because of changing marketing goals (& often bankrupcy/mergers) of the original vendor?
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This would influence my buying decision as well.
...nuclear stations, oil refineries, subway systems, military... These businesses want their IT to last as long as the machinery it controls does (decades).
There are many businesses that require long product life cycles that only open source can provide. If I buy a brand X hardware, who is to say it will work with next year's version of Windows? Who will say the company still supports the product?
There are many long life-cycle assets out there: heavy industry is an obvious example.
It is also a pain to buy a computer and get 95% of it working under Linux. Even major vendors like HP don't really tell you what works and what doesn't. The same can be said for Windows, because shipped drivers are usually terrible, but at least you can get new ones from the web site.
In Canada we have French on one side of every product, English on the other. My French is not great, so one must flip the box this way and that to find the preparation instructions, generally in tiny type (a small sacrifice to make for the pleasure of living in a bilingual country).
Does this mean there could be a button somewhere to change languages? Perhaps it could talk to the RFIDs on the other products in my cupboard to show me recipes on the box for dinner in the language of my choice.
Perl plus VisualStudio - I can see why this does not really sell. ActiveState's Perl is an excellent product however and it is surprising how well applications run on it between Windows and UNIX.
An IDE typically reflects a programming environment where coding must be spread across a multitude of small files. In it's extreme, I'm not a big fan of this style as I don't think it documents the code well. An IDE often kicks in a build system, a debugger, a configuration management system, perhaps even a work management system. Integrated into one product none of these components is going to be ideal compared to dedicated tools. It much like an integrated stereo system - yes it does everything, but it will never sounds as good as discrete audio components.
I'm hard pressed to why one needs something more than emacs (a rabid few might argue it is the only application one would ever need!). Admittedly customizing emacs in Lisp is not exactly easy to learn...
The bottom line is that Microsoft fans (who would shell out big bucks for VisualStudio) are typically not going program in Perl. Similarly, those of us more familiar with the UNIX world aren't going to program in VisualBasic whatever its possible merits might be. The two worlds just don't cross much, we don't read the same web pages, we don't go to the same conferences.I've personnaly tried to purchase Linux (Our corporate application were running is UNIX based) on notebooks and servers from HP. I was told that they had to sell me Windows XP Home edition pre-installed for CDN$85. The extra $85 is no big deal for a large corporation, but this really irritated me.
Why? Well, this was the cheapest version of Windows that could be sold. I was informed by the sales rep that HP's contractual terms with MS required that no hardware could be sold without an operating system. The accounting involved was so onerous that HP could not be bothered to do the extra bookkeeping in North America where the Linux market was so weak.
So MS gets paid even when Linux is installed. That's just not right!
Many companies now have expectations of longer life cycles out of their IT systems. In my own area of engineering computing we have faced a number of costly challenges over the years due to product obsolecence. Compared to public domain products, does proprietary technology inherently face more life-cycle risks because of changing marketing goals (& often bankrupcy/mergers) of the original vendor?