Phil Mattison said:
> Close, but I would say:
>
> 1. Linux kernel & shell are a-ok, no problems.
> 2. X based desktop environments (kde/gnome/etc) [tend to be] too slow,
> buggy, crappy.
Not in my experience.
> 3. Free alternatives to commercial products tend to be slow, buggy,
> crappy.
Again, not in my experience.
> 4. Commercial motivation does not necessarily result in good
> products, but of necessity tends to place more emphasis on identifying
> and meeting the needs of a specific market. Open source projects seem
> often to be done by hobbyists who then want the satisfaction of seeing
> other people benefit from their work. There is nothing wrong with that
> but it does not foster the same level of discipline you find in most
> commercial projects. The GPL can be both a blessing and a curse.
I strongly disagree with this statement. I planned to just let this topic
roll without me but this statement is what motivated me to respond.
Linux (the kernel), OpenOffice.org, Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, eGroupWare,
KDE, GNOME, Mozilla family of projects, Eclipse and more of the important,
core functionality development in the FS/OSS world is directly corporate
sponsored. (For example:
http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/26641-1.html) IBM, Red Hat, Sun
(yea, Sun), HP, Novell and others fund these projects because it makes
business sense for them to do so. Developers are either directly on their
payroll or on the payroll of foundations and entities funded by the
companies. This is to say nothing of the many smaller businesses that
fund development with staff time.
The image of the FS/OSS developer working on his own time "as a hobby" is
not as true as it once was. And, only holds true for smaller projects
with smaller "markets."
I have worked on commercial, closed software applications. I have used
and supported many commercial, closed software applications. I have had
more problems with bad UI design (ever used Peachtree Accounting?),
instability (MS Access), released-to-soon (VB 3) and untested code with
commercial, closed applicatons than I have ever had in the FS/OSS world.
I have also had far more trouble getting bugs and problems corrected in
commercial, closed software than I have ever had with FS/OSS. Try to
develop a Visual Basic or Visual C++ application with a few third party,
closed source controls. Aaargh, I hate to even remember that nightmare!
I have, several times in my career on different applications, spent
literally weeks of man hours defining and debugging problems with closed
applications only to have the vendor refuse to do anything about the
problem. Even when my employer was under paid maintenance! In one case,
they actually looked at the code and found the problem but still refused
to issue a patch. I have *never* had such problems with FS/OSS
applications.
Granted, there are "flakey" FS/OSS developers out there. The power they
have to ruin your world is greatly decreased because I or my employer or
you have the code. The problems I debugged, without code, as I described
above, I potentially could have fixed if I had the code. This is the key
to Free Software that sometimes is not emphasized or understood. What is
the value of knowing that if Joe Developer or BigSoftwareCorp will not fix
a bug in a program critical to how your business runs, you can fix it
yourself or hire someone to do so?
> Does that mean I never use free software? Certainly not. Far be it from
> me to make "perfect" the enemy of "good enough." But neither will I fool
> myself into believing that GPL is good and commercial software is evil,
> even if I do think it is usually overpriced.
In a couple of decades, Free Software has gone from small, unknown and
only niche usable to "good enough." Even MS knows that the next step
beyond "good enough" is "as good as" on the way to "better than" and that
has them worried. SCO is suffering from FS/OSS becoming "better than" and
they are taking the destructive way out of business because of it.
> I guess the reason for my initial comments were that I was thinking
> about the recent experience of a friend of my son's who was interested
> in Linux. I recommended Mandrake 9.2 because I found the installation to
> be quite painless. He had trouble downloading the ISO images and making
> a CD set that would install, and so went out and spent $100 on a
> shrink-wrapped distro, I think it was SUSE. He couldn't get that to
> install either. I recommended going to one of the install-fests but I
> don't think he wanted to wait that long. After this experience he
> probably is now an avowed critic of Linux.
That may be true. Give him a computer with an empty hard drive and a
Windows XP install CD. Will he then become a critic of Windows? ;^) My
brother-in-law tried this and still does not have sound working!
> To those who wish to make Linux into a religious crusade I would say the
> reward isn't necessarily worth the effort. If you were offering eternal
> life that might be another matter. But to go around spitting on people
> who don't happen to support your agenda makes me wonder if you wear a
> towel on your head.
I use proprietary software every day at work. I help people with
proprietary software all the time. There are some applications that
simply do not have FS/OSS equivalents yet and if you have to or choose to
use them, you are free to do so. I am not a zealot by any stretch. But,
because I want to control my data and my computing use and future, I will
promote Free Software over commercial (I say proprietary or closed)
software everywhere it is possible to do so. The more FS/OSS is used, the
more it will be accepted and supported and the more benefit to my freedom
to do as I want or need to.
As for a reference to someone with a "towel on [their] head," I think that
is in poor taste. An analogy to the Taliban would have been more
correctly specific.
Alan
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