Movement To Open Source Software

Movement To Open Source Software
2005.10.13 1:27

Many people believe movement to open source software is good, why and in what point?
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open source is good...(Score:2)
by kesuki (321456) on 2005.10.13 3:17 (#13775143) (http://kesuki.deviantart.com/ Last Journal: 2005.10.20 4:38)
but what i see is more a co-existance with closed source programming.. rather than 'complete' replacement. open source is great for learning, back in the good old days of the Z80 computers came loaded with tons of information and tools to write your own programs. nowadays, unless you run/emulate those 'classic' PCs the only really readialy avialble 'learning' tools out there are open source. also, there is another thing, in a completely closed source world countless coumpanies spend countals thousands of hours trying to develop the same thing 'as the competetitor' or maybe something better, the point is they spend a lot of time and all those tens of thousnads of man hours of coding are producing nothing but 'legacy' code. once the company has made enough money off it, it becomes unused and unusable, especially to anyone out side the organization. open source can generate 'legacy' code too, but the difference is that other people can learn from the open source code, or find some bit of it they find useful when writing a new open source program.so there you go, sharing information is _always_ better than trying to make it into something so valueable it cannot be shared. america Used to get it, kinda, and western thinkers and society has 'gotten' it for a long time :) that's the primary reason why 'fan subbing' hasn't been 'compeletely' squashed, most groups are only trying to spread the artwork to an audience who may not have a chance to see it otherwise. and those groups will genenerally 'stop' subbing a title if the licenser requests it.. and most people who've been in fansubs a while rent or buy anime whenever they can afford to, although there are quite a few who have no means to afford anime but those people can still 'count as a demographic' and support 'fox kids' or 'cartoon network' by watching the engilsh 'americanized' version...
--you can't spell slaughter without laughter.[ Reply to This ]
Re:open source is good...(Score:1)
by mercedo (822671) * on 2005.10.14 9:52 (#13787111) (http://slashdot.org/~mercedo/journal/109855 Last Journal: 2005.10.20 5:21)
Thanks for teaching me a lot, part of it I couldn't understand though it takes time to see more, thanks.
--Ancient Greek Philosophers -18c Enlightenment Thinkers -Slashdotters[ Reply to This Parent ]
Now you've gone and done it.(Score:2)
by Allen Zadr (767458) * <Allen@Zadr.gmail@com> on 2005.10.13 3:28 (#13775230) (Last Journal: 2005.10.16 9:32)
Now I've got to write a book of a reply, just for you. I could probably more easily point you to a web site with better thought out answers, but I'm a cocky sumbits* and will do my best.
Cost of Entry
If you have a great idea for a new type of automobile, what would you do? Do you have the resources to shape the sheet medal, and weld a frame, and forge an engine block? Why is it, that only 60 years ago, someone with decent financial resources (but not necessarily someone who is "rich") could start a car company? Now, while you could build a car, you couldn't make it road-legal in any developed nation... there are so many regulations, from emission controls, to mandatory black-boxes, to crash-test standards that make the cost of entry enormous.
Micro-Computers, only 30 years ago, were the domain of hobbiests. Some BIG companies used computers, but mostly, it was people who thought they were neat, and would go and buy hobby boxes, and start writing programs (simple programs) that could run on these micro-computers.
Enter Software as a Consumer Business. Microsoft, Lotus, Apple, and many other companies were born during these early days, all by small groups of people with little means, a lot of determination, and decent ideas. Now these companies have grown huge, or been absorbed by larger companies, but even through the 90s someone with decent ideas and a lot of determination can make a big business using computers. Google, eBay, Amazon.
For computers, the cost of entry is still attainable by a 'regular person'. Again, a computer may be too expensive for someone of very low income, but right now... the cost of entry is low.
Except for Windows.
If Microsoft gets their way, there are no computers that don't run windows. If you want to develop software for Windows, you have to buy Microsoft Visual Studio, and Visual Studio costs $600 and up. That's a lot of money, yet still attainable. Good thing there are competitors that can also allow you to write software for Windows, like Borland (there used to be Watcom... what happened to them?). If it wasn't for competitors, Visual Studio would cost many thousands of dollars. This is already true with 'Game Consoles'. You can freely create software that CAN run on a game console, but to actually make it run on a game console, you have to buy a development package, for many tens of thousands of dollars - or beg a huge company to let you use their stuff. Higher cost of entry greatly benefits the HUGE companies. Look up "Trusted Computing Initiative" if you want to see something that will make the cost of entry unattainable.
So, that's cost of computer business entry. What about a Job? Have you looked for a Job lately? How many places ask you to supply your résumé in "Microsoft Word" format? These people expect that you have gone out and spent $300 or more on Microsoft Office? To get a Job I need to spend $300. To spend $300, I need a job. Thank goodness there's Open Office. I can download it, and create a "Word Format" résumé for free. What if OpenOffice didn't exist? Would Office still be so cheap? There isn't a quick-and-cheap replacement for M.S. Access yet. I note that the Office price doubles if you get the package that ALSO includes Access... Why? It would sure help me if poor kids with Student Loans would stop trying to take my job. Maybe if I require they submit their résumé in Gold leaf.
Hardware and Software
What if I buy an Apple Mac. It has an open PCI slot, and I have a PCI device that is "made for Windows". The PCI device is electrically compatible with the Mac. What if the company that sold me this PCI device doesn't "support" Mac hardware? Obviously, PCI is supported, the Mac can physically and electronically interface to the card... the company simply did not write the software to do it. Hey, if I could only get my hands on the Source Code for the Windows driver. I could then simply re-write it to work with the Mac. Why not? This is done with many devices already, because someone reverse-engineered the steps required to make the device work, and released their effort in Open Source.
The Biggest Reason of All.
I have this little program that allows me to manage users in my LDAP database without having to do a great deal of work. However, when I create a user in my LDAP database, I also need to create a user-permission entry that isn't already part of this other program. After a minor change, this program does both. Besides saving me time, it also saves me from the times I've FORGOTTEN to do this little task. Tell Microsoft that you want your version of Word to do something a little different, you'll get a blank stare. ... I don't have time, or the inclination to write a whole user-management platform for LDAP, but I can grab one off of OpenSource, and tweak it to my special needs without a huge deal of effort.
That's my reasons for respecting Open Source.
*sumbits - sounds a little like a disparaging word, which I've chosen not to use.
--Logic is the endeavor of the human race, sans love, hate, religion and politics. -- Allen Zadr[ Reply to This ]
I have only one complaint...(Score:1)
by DaedalusHKX (660194) on 2005.10.13 9:27 (#13778100) (http://slashdot.org/ Last Journal: 2005.08.21 11:42)
OpenOffice 2.0 beta (1.9?) has a database app to replace access, but it is not a dropin, I haven't messed with it enough yet, as I have little need for access as my personal databases are on my gentoo linux server :)Yes, its Postgres, its fully SQL 2000 compliant, and I have little trouble doing EVERYTHING with it that MS"Sequel" can do... and more... for example, I don't HAVE to add a gig of ram for every 10 users that connect to the stupid thing... most IT guys will sell you another gig of ram every time windows "server" 2003 complains about low ram... too bad nobody paid attention but once small business server hits the 3 or 4 gig limit, it cannot use anymore... its there, it detects it, and puts NOTHING in it... unless this has been patched recently...Also, windows pages EVERY DAMN THING... EVEN LARGE CHUNKS OF THE ACTIVE APP!! Linux, and BSD for example do things the other way around... instead of paging everything to the drive, they use the ram first, and start paging once the ram runs low.When I added another 512 megs to my Linux rig (a 1600 Athlon XP), I saw MASSIVE speed increases, because it paged the RAID 5 a lot less... the windows rig... hmmm... only change was that "sequel" was less slow... but not by much... Windows running its "ADS" and "SQL" and "Exchange" crippled a 2 ghz athlon XP rig with a gig and a half of ram... Linux, running Sendmail, LDAP, Postgres, PHP, Webmin, Apache, Netfilter (iptables to the gearheads) and a few other goodies to remain nameless (including Clam AV to keep the windows mail clients from being infected by shit that gets past the "fine" security in MS Office XP and 2003) and I have NO issues (since replacing them all with mozilla tbird and other OSS software on the linux clients I have NO issues at all even if clam misses an update)...LAST POINT... 40 holes patched for Mozilla Firefox, 10 for IE6... ARE PEOPLE REALLY THIS STUPID?!?! THE WHOLE POINT IN OSS IS THAT BUGS ARE EASIER TO FIND... FOR MICROSOFT IT IS UNFEASIBLE TO FIND BUGS AND FIX THEM... THIS MAKES THEM NO MONEY... THEIR USER BASE IS LARGELY IGNORANT OR STUPID AND ALWAYS LAZY... THIS MEANS THEY DONT NEED TO FIX WINDOWS, THEY JUST NEED TO SELL A NEW PRODUCT TO "patch" the old holes...!! Remember the embedded JPEG, GIF and PNG issues in Red Hat linux? THEY WERE PATCHED 2 ***YEARS*** before MS released to the press that IE6 and Windows in general was also vulnerable...!! SAME DAMN VULNERABILITY IN TWO DIFF OS's... WHY DID M$ with its "superior" methods not discover this?? With closed source, by the time someone patches the vulnerability, you're fucked... remember the CISCO IOS flaws recently found? Anyone use FREESCO for their router? You may find this amusing, but it is cheaper than a CISCO router... and ummm (besides being an ANCIENT linux based mini OS for a ghetto router at home)... heh... well... it fits on a floppy and runs on any box with 2 LAN cards :) (okay there's better alternatives and FreeSCO is old (stands for Free Cisco) but it was a damn great tool back in 1998 and 2002...)Windows, in my honest opinion is only good for ONE thing... and the only reason one of my old athlons still runs it.... "gaming". Some games will not run in Linux despite all the hard work I put myself through... so for those times, I have a Windows HDD I plug into the system and then reboot it :)... for everything else, I run only OSS.~D
[ Reply to This Parent ]
Re:Now you've gone and done it.(Score:1)
by mercedo (822671) * on 2005.10.14 2:56 (#13783199) (http://slashdot.org/~mercedo/journal/109855 Last Journal: 2005.10.20 5:21)
Thanks, I think I was able to understand the points. Especially these days the matter of open source software caught me a lot in relation to copyright law, patent law, the protection of intellectual property, private property, etc. Since the liberation of knowledge is deeply related to that of humanities, and more and more I've been noticing the use of open source software has been dominating in the world scene.
I would like to see the consequences, though, seems expansion of open source software will be the inevitable step toward the favourable future.
--Ancient Greek Philosophers -18c Enlightenment Thinkers -Slashdotters[ Reply to This Parent ]
Bullet point man to the rescue(Score:2)
by FidelCatsro (861135) <mailto:fidelcatsro@[%20]il.com%20[> on 2005.10.13 4:37 (#13775944) (Last Journal: 2005.10.21 0:21)
1:Cost2:Adaptation3: interoperability4: combined knowledge base5: Security through openness and a possible quantity of developers that no company could have checking for bugs and trying to speed it up and improve functionality6: Freedom to use the software as we wish (even including stinginess with the BSD license)7: Sharing is a great trait to teach our children
--Siol nan Gaidheal[ Reply to This ]
Re:Bullet point man to the rescue(Score:1)
by mercedo (822671) * on 2005.10.14 2:40 (#13783020) (http://slashdot.org/~mercedo/journal/109855 Last Journal: 2005.10.20 5:21)
Well, nothing needs to add, I will learn by heart.
--Ancient Greek Philosophers -18c Enlightenment Thinkers -Slashdotters