Are you Anti Open-Source?

JaredRitchey

So often I hear programmers and designers condem open-source applications that I often wonder if there is any real merrit to the bias against it.

Recently I had a long discussion with a guy that had not one good thing to say about open-source applications and after our discussion was about to conclude on the subject I finally asked him a very straight forward pair of questions.

"what would you charge to build a website with all the features of this open-source application (joomla was the subject) ?"

and then, "if you hate it so bad why are you using an open-source forum on your site (SMF) ?"

The answers were not what I expected, and too long to go into detail but the summary would be nothing but ramblings and unlogical conclusions.

Granted, some open-source applications are pure junk, written by rookies, packed with bugs, and essentially worthless in a production environment, but open-source has the nasty perceived identity that if its open-source its free and if its free its junk.

Open-Source is not ALWAYS FREE! What open-source means is that its "source code" is open for alteration and or edits. Plenty of commercial applications are open-source, even our shopping cart is open-source (partly encrypted) and its fully commercial.

So sound off if you would like to expand on this subject as I'm interested in seeing other perspectives.

~ Jared

LurkinBack

OUr company makes accounting software and we have a kind of open source thing on it. We sell an enterprise development kit for anyone who wants to make their own bits for the program. Guess how many we've sold...................

1 and I know for a fact they don't use it LMAO!

DeluxeNames

I love and live by Open Source. From Open Realty (Jared's specialty) to Simple Machines Forum, open source helps even the playing field for the little guy. These anti-open soruce types might not have been exposed to all it has to offer.

MGDesigns

I love open source, SMF in my opinion is the best open source forum software available on the net and if it hadn't been for SMF and manually applying mods that wouldn't install via package manager I'd be completely lost with PHP. I think most anti-open source types are people that have never used any (however that is only MHO)

daboss

i'm not anti-open source... but i think that the rate of progress (which was phenomenal) is now slowing down and will be reaching a plateau soon...

open source is great but will not work for most commercial organizations... support and accountability are the main issues.

CaptainKirk

I Practically live of Open Source software, i wholeheartedly support it, mainly as its free, and more often than not, the program is awesome, for this is must bring in phpBB & SMF, Both of which are great software.

Nuvo

From my OS to my graphics editor to my site development tools and media apps, everything I use these days is free software and most, if not all of it is Open Sourced.
Ubuntu is based on Debian and is Open Sourced.
Xara Xtreme LX is Open Source (though not under Windows).
jEdit is Open Source.
Ruby on Rails is Open Source.
Firefox is Open Source.

I think you get the picture.

CannonBallGuy

I'm pro open source. Some of my faveorite things are open source: BZFlag and SMF, for example.

JaredRitchey

I've been working with open-source for about 4 years now and although I see many people say its not production or commercial quality, I tend to think they have been exposed to some bad code.

When we developed the VB desktop front end to CraftySyntax Live Help no-one took it serious until a company approached us and wanted to have it branded for all their agents and lenders to use so they could monitor the site with a desktop application and not a web browser.

Then you take the failed but still fairly decent producted "TypicalInvoice" which I forked and is yet to be posted. Had it NOT been for the open-source license that product would have died and went away leaving NO freely available invoicing software for people to use. But now, I can distribute it without fear or risks of copyrights.

I'm a fan of custom but facts are facts, corporate budgets are in corporate settings and most people do not fit that description.

~ Jared

tec-geek

Even though I use quite a few commercial applications on my forum and PC, however,IMO Open Source is the way to go. Like someone mentioned before, Open Source isn't nessicarily free, take vB or IPB for example, but provides a greater range customization.

tshugo

I`m NOT anti-open source.

Think of all the good programs we have got from open source

Nuvo

CannonBallGuy wrote:

I'm pro open source. Some of my faveorite things are open source: BZFlag and SMF, for example.

And don't forget Darwin, which your entire OS is based on or KHTML, which your browser uses code from.

CannonBallGuy

Nuvo wrote:

And don't forget Darwin, which your entire OS is based on or KHTML, which your browser uses code from.

Yep, but Mac OS itself, is not open source, so rather than have to explain... I left it out. :P

tony

the only bad thing i have to say about open source is that things like phpbb and things that are widely used are quite easy for people to hack into, your argumt may be that as its free not many people would want to case any damage which is probably true but it leaves the possibility open and its much easier to hack something if you have the code than if you dont.

daboss

don't you guys see the trend? most home users who are geeks go for open source because these guys are typically anti-establishment. some non-geeks also go for open source.

however, many corporations who initially embraced open source are now moving back to licensed software. this is happening. it's not that open source software is not good - in fact, most people agree that the software is great. however, imagine that you are the cio of a bank and you endorse open source. when the system goes down, who are you going to 'blame' and ask for support? that is the main issue...

Nuvo

I think more people would go for open source software, but not everyone knows what open source is.
People are more likely to go for a product which offers phone support and is distrobuted by a big name company such as Adobe because they don't think that community supported open projects can compete, which is pretty sad as forum based support can often get better results if done well and open source projects can be very good.
One thing I like about id software is that although they sell their games, they have given out the sources once they know the games have stopped selling.
While that might not sound amazing as nobody is as bothered about Quake or whatever these days, it does allow others to see how things work and build off of them.

If you gave someone a copy of Open Office.org and a copy of Microsoft Office XP, they'd probably pick Office, but if they were made to use OOo for any length of time, they may find that it suits their needs and saves them money as although it's had issues in the past regarding stability, it's got better since then.

Basically, it's not knowing or not undertanding which keeps a lot of people from using open source projects as they think they can't compete with commercial tools, much like how people think animation is only for kids, but wouldn't think so after watching Akira...

daboss

Nuvo wrote:

...People are more likely to go for a product which offers phone support and is distrobuted by a big name company such as Adobe because they don't think that community supported open projects can compete, which is pretty sad as forum based support can often get better results if done well and open source projects can be very good...

you must be kidding...

when a production system like credit card or loans system in a bank goes down, they normally have less than 2-3 hours to bring it back up again. and these are really complex and expensive systems we're talking about (in the millions of $$$). the vendor jumps when they get a call and assembles a team to go on-site to look into the problem. the system owner simply sits there and screams and shouts... that's why they rather pay for support.

if banks have to wait for community based support, you as a customer would be in real deep trouble...

DeluxeNames

Several months ago, the French Government has announced their move away from Microsoft products and OpenOffice.org is their new choice for word processing. Granted, that being the "French" Government, it doesn't mean as much as other governments :rofl:.

Nuvo

Daboss, I didn't say it was better in terms of speed, but I often find that I can get useful results from forums while phone support is often very poor, or provided from a country out in the remotest parts of India where the staff speak hardly any English (no offence Daniel, but Indian call centers do not cut it unless you happen to be bilingual).
I've had some god awful phone based "support" from companies such as British Telecom that have had me getting advice from other people online.

The average computer user isn't going to be setting up systems for banks, or building dynamic, data driven websites with custom content managment backends, so chances are that they aren't going to be put in the situation of needing the support as fast, or even having access to the support services you're on about.
Most people using computer will only have access to the 2,000,000 mile away on the planet zerg call centers which everyone hates, website based support systems or e-mail support.

As an everyday computer user rather than someone running a bank or other large company, I've found that getting advice from other software users has been a better option than spending money listening to someone rambling in some alien (as in from Mars) language about something I've already done which didn't work (turn the power off and back on again... For the 50th time before we accept that we've screwed up your installation because we don't do a good job with wiring).

LurkinBack

LMAO!!! Is OpenOffice.org French cos they don't like diluting the "Frenchnees" of their nation. The majority of things in France have to be produced by the French right down to the music! :violent:

Nuvo

Nope, OO.o is an Open Source project derived from Sun's Star Office, which means that it technically has no nationality as a project as people from all over the world have made it possible and even if it did have one true origin point, it would most likely be America where Sun Microsystems is based, or Germany, where StarDivision (who made StarOffice) was based before being bought by Sun.
StarOffice still exists, but is now a commercial version of Open Office.org distributed by Sun (Stanford University Network... God I love Wikipedia).