OSS vs Proprietary

augie schwer at sonic.net
Sat Sep 21 16:12:09 PDT 2002


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

reporting live from the NBLUG installfest...

below is part of an ongoing correspondance i am having with a fellow
student here at SSU. he has some good questions and points. i think it
is a good idea to have discussions like this even if you are an OSS
zealot, because questioning and reaffirming these ideas can only make
them stronger.

[rant]

My opinion is that open-source software will continue to evolve,
but will have a hard time replacing some proprietary software.  For
example, Linux on the desktop will never be as ubiquitous as MS
Windows
on the desktop for a variety of reasons. The first and foremost one
right now being that Linux desktops (KDE/GNOME) do not compare well to
Microsoft Windows on a usage basis, and that their application suits
do
not compare favorably either. This seems to be the biggest thing
stopping Linux on the desktop, but it also seems to be one of the
areas
that OS will always have a very hard time conquering for a few
reasons.
First, ubiquitous standards are very important from many people's
viewpoints, this is something that Linux Desktops do not have, and
probably will not have. The second is development of complex projects
like operating systems, or Desktops will probably never get the
resources devoted to them from the open source world that a company
like
Microsoft could devote to them. The result would be that OS would
continually be playing catch up to proprietary solutions, while never
adding innovative or new features.

But for other things, systems that are designed around one open
source platform things are different. Anywhere where what the software
needs to provide is a simple tool set for application vendors. In
other
words where developers need a platform to build off of, instead of
having to reinvent the wheel. Look at where Linux is used a lot today,
anywhere where someone needs a simple operating system to provide a
simple service for some other application.

Anyway, to summarize things, I do not think that open
source/free software will ever be able to continually commit enough
resources to a complex software product that a proprietary company
would
be able to. However, for simple applications that do not change often
(i.e. something like Apache), OS looks to be a great alternative.

[/rant]

- -augie

- -- 
"There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand
binary, and those who don't."

registered linux user #229905
Key fingerprint = 9815 AE19 AFD1 1FE7 5DEE  2AC3 CB99 2784 27B0 C072
gpg public key: http://www.sonic.net/schwer/schwer.asc
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iD8DBQE9jPzFy5knhCewwHIRArXIAJ4thG4nFeVs/5CjnwpxXyPD6qBaewCeJbLi
hLW/W0N60vdyRarUrkn0hYk=
=I4sq
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



More information about the talk mailing list