mschaef: “The OSS debate is highly charged, since it touches on core values: the ability to make a living, the ability to share information with others, and the ability to contribute back to society in various ways.”
Yeah, right. “Contribute back to society”.
Show me any OSS project that has provided as much contribution back to society as MS and Bill Gates have with their charitable contributions, made with money they earned selling software. IBM makes pretty large charitable donations, too, as do most of the other larger commercial software makers.
Let’s see… What’s the FSF’s record of charitable donations? Three software licenses for something that’s already open source? How about Apache? What’s their charitable record? How many starving children in Africa does Ubuntu feed?
The drivel about OSS “giving back to society” is just that - drivel.
The problems with Open Source is that:
most of it is crap. There are exceptions, like Apache (although I don’t think it’s all that, it works as you’d expect it to) and Firefox, etc. Unfortunately, they are exceptions. Don’t believe me? Look at the source.
there’s no support. Sure, report a bug. If you’re lucky, someone with the knowledge and free time (because the OSS stuff is a sideline; they have a real job too, because they like food at mealtimes and a roof over their heads when they go to sleep) will feel sorry for you and fix it. Chances are, though, they won’t, at least not quickly enough to resolve your problem.
too many are abandoned. Just look at all of the inactive projects at SourceForge. What if one of those is something that you’ve decided on to handle some valuable functionality for your business, because they’ve announced exactly the feature that you need. So you set up to use it, become dependent on it, and then realize that no activity has occurred and it’s dead. Now you start scrambling around to find something else, but it now has to be free, because the money you should have spent on the commercial product in the beginning has now gone to other things (because, of course, you had a FREE version coming!).
There are just too many negatives and not enough positives about most OSS to depend on them. The paid for alternatives, while not perfect either, at least have an incentive to continue to be supported and enhanced; after all, they want money.
I’m a Beyond Compare user; have been since version 1 was released. I’ve paid for every upgrade that’s been made available. Why? Because it’s a good product, and does what I need it to do. I want Scooter Software to keep maintaining and improving it. Besides, I’m a Delphi guy myself, and I don’t mind helping keep a Delphi shop working. g
I think those who reacted badly to that statement never understood what Jeff actually meant. You need to read it again carefully without the rush of blood in your heads.
Not for a second I understood he is suggesting the open-source users are former pirates. I understood former pirates are now open-source enthusiasts because they can use a software tool for free and legally now. If you give a well paid job to a former convict he/she would stop stealing but does it mean anyone with a well paid job was a former convict, got it?
The benefits of free as in beer, and particulary free as speech are overwhelming in many ways, and you know it.
If I found a tool that could save me hundreds of work hours, but costs 10$, i’d have to:
ask my boss for permission
insert the bill into a bad company economy system
find the codes it belongs too…
if it were more expensive, i’d have to look for competitors… argue why, and make not-programmers understand why it would really shave so much time.
If it’s free, I can skip the buracray.
If it’s free (and if it ever had a decent user base) I know I can find it for many years into the future. Right now I’m struggling to find ways to offer service on 8 year old plcs where the software used to program them are discontinued.
If it’s free, it has a much bigger user base, and I can usually find instant support through a google search.
If it’s free, people are more helpfull providing bug reports, giving me often less buggy software.
If it’s free (as in speech), somewhere there is a man annoyed by a missing feature and adds it for me to use.
If it’s free, I can always have the latest and greatest of that software.
If it’s free, I don’t (generally) have to worry about me breaking the EULA.
… closed software have to be brilliant to beat all this.
“These people used to be called pirates. Now they’re open source enthusiasts”
I think those who reacted badly to that statement never understood what Jeff actually meant. You need to read it again carefully without the rush of blood in your heads. Not for a second I understood he is suggesting the open-source users are former pirates. I understood former pirates are now open-source enthusiasts because they can use a software tool for free and legally now. If you give a well paid job to a former convict he/she would stop stealing but does it mean anyone with a well paid job was a former convict, got it?
As soon as I find out a piece of software is proprietary, it loses appeal for several reasons. Deployment is probably restricted – I’m supposed to maybe purchase multiple licenses for multiple machines and platforms. I can’t (legally) just send it to my friends to play with right away – they have to go buy it too, or at least share their email and personal info with yet another harvester of their demographic info. If it breaks, in many cases I’m not allowed to fix or even try to fix it, if I actually had read the EULA I clicked through when I installed it. No, I have to depend on the vendor to support me. If the company decides to focus on other products, or gets bought or sold, or goes out of business, I’m screwed. I have to pay for upgrades to stay current – and if I don’t, that piece of software I once might have paid a premium for loses value every day, until the point where it becomes incompatible or obsolete.
And even if I found a valuable piece of software worth going through all this trouble… if I Google for it, I get flooded with dodgy “software reseller” sites to the point where its hard to tell the good stuff from total crapware that feeds on noobs.
Sure, some of these problems apply to open-source as well, and there is commercial software that clearly offers value above the issues I describe above. The point is, the bar is higher. If they don’t rise above those issues, they’re not worth the trouble, even if the monetary cost is low. Open source does not require this up-front gambling with making a purchase decision or sharing your personal data in most cases. You can gauge the vitality and politics of its user and developer community out in the open on mailing lists, and you learn to quickly differentiate the valuable projects from the crap. And if there really is a bug or missing feature critical to your business, you could actually go and develop exactly what you need, or go sponsor development of it.
The bottom line is, the bar has been raised. Ten years ago, you had to pay to do lots of things that are now freely available commodities, this trend will only continue, and we can all benefit.
“It’s tempting to ascribe this to the “cult of no-pay”, programmers and users who simply won’t pay for software no matter how good it is, or how inexpensive it may be. These people used to be called pirates. Now they’re open source enthusiasts.”
“Pirates” still exist, and they’re still folks who use software without respecting the license (and licensing fee) of that software. I know more than I can count on both hands; the pirates of yesterday didn’t all become the open source enthusiasts of today; many are still pirates.
Most open source enthusiasts, on the other hand, may not pay for software no matter how good it is, but then they don’t use that software. Instead, they use an alternative program which is under a license that allows them to do so without cost.
Pirates can be open source enthusiasts, and open source enthusiasts can be pirates, but a blanket statement that one is now the other or synonymous with the other just doesn’t stick.
@Leo: I was referring to my example with recording the stereo output. I searched for a few hours for a solution and couldn’t find one. Maybe saying “they did this on purpose to make copying harder” was overhasty but it was the feeling I got.
But even if I was wrong in this case I think its a bad thing if the OS hides stuff from the user. All DRM is based on closed source secrets. A perfect symbiosis between content manufacturers and companies like Microsoft and Apple and nearly impossible for us to break out from.
Wah wah wah! You’re an OSS developer who can write tight, scalable, original, uncompromising code in 12 different programming languages but you’re too scared of your boss or the scary purchasing system to try to get a $30 purchase order approved, even if it saves you dozens of hours?
This is cult-speak, not debate. Free as in zero as in brain cells.
I really don’t understand the FOSS movement. How is anybody supposed to eat if all the software is f@#4^ing free. THERE REALLY ISN’T ANY SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH.
the thing i hate most about capitalism is that it attacks the very idea of free culture and works to destroy it.
i don’t want to steal your software, i just want to be left, the fcuk, alone. your capitalist culture sucks cos it enables stupidty, monopoly and fascism. free culture rocks cos it promtoes intelligence, autonomy and personal liberty.
you could give me everything in the world, but everything isn’t enough cos the best feeling in the world is taking care of myself, without you interfering in my life, you worthless parasites.
@stirner
Capitialism isn’t perfect but it allows people the freedom to disagree with their government and other people. The same can’t be said for Communism or Socialism though. Those governments have always actively worked to crush anyone who disagrees with them.
I’ll support you on that claim Masklinn; MySql is still a toy. PostgreSQL kicks its ass and is also free and open source. One could argue it is more free with better licensing. It supports more and is more ANSI-SQL compliant.
While I’ve done plenty of PHP programming, currently I program in C# for ASP.NET. Visual Studio is a great IDE and there is a free version too. The .NET platform is full of features and is easy to use. It lacks in linux, bsd etc support but the Mono project is coming along.
Ask everybody who works for Red Hat or Novell or Spikesource or Interface 21 (or whatever they’re called now) or the SugarCRM folks, etc.
It’s important to understand that the word “free” in English has multiple meanings… one more closely corresponds to “gratis” or “without charge” and the other is closer to “libre” which is about freedom, not charge. IOW, understand the difference between “free as in speech” and “free as in beer,” it’s a critical distinction.
RHEL is “free software” but is actually quite expensive and Red Hat make good money selling it.
I do prefer free over pay for, but sometimes pay for is enough to get me to buy it. I do use Windows just because I like to play video games every once in a while and also I develop for .net. I’m not pro-linux nor am I pro-windows. What works best for me is what I use.
A lot of points regarding “free software” are completely missed. For example, by the time you search for it, find it, blog/talk/proselytize about it, you could have easily shelled out the $30 for a RegExBuddy or $40 for a BeyondCompare and save much time and effort.
In addition, and by way of example, I use Wireshark extensively not because it’s free, but because it does what no other similar product can (i.e., for me it’s the best, but being free has nothing to do with it). If a better product should surface but it’s not free, I’ll weigh the options based on ROI.
Lastly, nothing (repeat: NOTHING) is free, monetarily or otherwise. Something always and must come at the expense of something else, a.k.a., the law of conversation of energy.
Subversion, just recently commented about in this blog, has a diff tool included. It works as neatly and nicely as BeyondCompare (for me anyway).
And there is a difference between being an open-source fan and a pirate. Pirates will “steal” the software while open-source users will copy the software according to the license, which happens to usually include the right to copy software for free.
As for lack of personalization, most open source licenses will allow you to make any modifications as you will.
A pirate, for example, will “steal” a Windows copy, and can never be an open-source fan unless he understands how to use it, which is not always so intuitive. (For example, chooses the wrong Linux distro, the one that is not as plug and play-ish or command-line only, and has no idea how to use it.)
To everybody that are saying that Jeff meant to say anything else but what he said: grow up. He had a lot of time to make himself clear and he didn’t. Look, I can also say what others were thinking: he was just trolling to attract clicks. This blog has became a click whore for quite a time with increasingly uninformed articles while sounding more and more as the oracle. I found much more interesting the comment by Philip Hofstetter (that sounds like a real experienced pro) than the article by Jeff. But Philip’s tone doesn’t sell. It’s better to adopt the cockery and the bold attitude. Even if you often say bullshit, you won’t lose.