Here’s a tech story from CNN written for a more general audience about open source software and its prevalence:
Now, the software once branded the byproduct of dreamers, academics and hobbyists is the foundation of the Internet economy. It’s forcing established companies to rethink their business models. And it’s giving Microsoft Corp. and other entrenched entities a run for their money.
It’s certainly very idealistic, but it works
Very nice article, they quote Brian Behlendorf, a founder of Apache as saying “Call it idealism,” he said. “It’s certainly very idealistic, but it works.”
I’ve always thought that. I remember the first time I heard about Linux, and then went on to read about Open Source Software in general it just didn’t make any sense to me. It’s still hard to believe this system works so well. So many people spend so much time writing so much great stuff and then just give it all away. The strange thing is so many people make so much money from all that free stuff it’s just amazing. In many ways we’re an idealistic group, us open source geeks, but I think most of all we’re very practical and pragmatic. We write all this stuff to get something done, the idealism comes in when we give back a part of what we’ve done.
Problems with Open source? Usability & documentation, and the legal questions they bring up in the article.
Problems with Open Source
I’ve come across three problems with open sourced software that keep me from making “the big switch.” That is, totally dumping Windows off my hard drive and replacing it with Mandrake, my favourite flava of Linux.
1.) On board documentation sucks. By “on board” I mean what actually comes with the software. Now granted, both Windows and Linux both suffer from this flaw. How many of us wish that Windows actually came with a (gasp) user’s manual? And I mean something substantial. It doesn’t have to be O’Reilly, but an honest to goddess book that tells you how to use the damned thing? Neither Linux or Windows, or at least not most versions of Linux, come with such a manual. Sure both have help files. But Windows isn’t helpful, and Linux is TOO helpful. For those of us who’ve ever tried to sift through a “man” page, we can attest to the fact that sometimes, too much information is just as bad as too little.
2.) Software companies aren’t on the bandwagon. I love video games. I can’t wait for Half Life 2, Doom 3, and I wanna play Painkiller bad. Yeah they don’t make those for Linux. Damned few games are made for Linux. What gets me though, is that, for many multi player online games, such as Jedi Academy, you can use Linux to run the server that powers the online playability, but not actually play the game. Let’s face it, most people use Windows at home, so that’s what a lot of software manufacturers code towards.
3.) Overall usability. Until they make a version of Linux that’s as simple to work as Windows, people are going to use Windows. Windows; in spite of all its security flaws, in spite of all it lacks for geeky folks like me, in spite of all its instabilities; remains pretty damned easy to use. To install Windows, you boot off the CD, answer basic questions like “What time zone do you live in?” and the rest pretty much handles itself. Unlike some versions of Linux (especially Debian) where you may be asked to specifically define hardware, denote the refresh rate of your monitor, and wonder what the hell eth0 and hd0 are and why you can’t grep something.
Face it, Joe Schmoe doesn’t want to tinker with his computer. Jane Doe has no interest in how her OS works. All they wanna do is play some solitare, get some work done, and look at porn on the Internet. It’s just like many of us couldn’t care less how our cars work, as long as they get us to work every morning. The problem I see with a lot of open source development is that coders are coding too much for geeky guys like me who do like to tinker with their machines, and not coding so much for people who want to double click an icon and surf the web. The majority of the world doesn’t build their own systems, they don’t read Slashdot, and few even know what a “command prompt” is. If they want Linux and open source to really go mainstream, they’re going to have to code for everybody, not just the club.
Libraries and open source?
Open source has great potential for libraries in the future, as open source at the moment is in its infancy. The beauty of open source is that it is “open” and the potential for development is huge. Currently, most library systems are proprietary and their usability and documentation are not too flashy either since their user-base is snall and narrow, with data migration and upgrade problems. At least with open source, one is not bound to one vendor, and the code can be changed quite independently.
Open source
Wall Street Journal had an article on this about 2 weeks ago, I think. For their take, see here.
In case you didn’t know…
Software is ridiculously expensive, and companies like Microsoft are changing their licensing models to make sure they get a steady stream of revenue. You are just renting the software, and you can’t buy it.
Nbruce’s post was a good one, because the WSJ give some hard numbers. Oracle’s “enterprise edition,” for example, is priced at $800 a user or $40,000 a processor, plus a 22% annual fee for software updates. So a typical quad processor with 100 concurrent users is ~$300,000 a year.
You just can’t compete with free at those prices.