Opposing Open Source? 567
Carl Nasal asks: "For a college class I'm taking, I have to write a research paper. I chose a topic of how open source software affects businesses, focusing on the use of Linux. While doing searches, I have actually found it hard to find opposing views of open source software. Mainly, what I'm looking for, are opinions, articles, looks, and evidence about the drawbacks of using open source software in business. They can either be online or offline, but preferably from reliable sources. (In other words, I'd rather not just have someone's homepage that loves Microsoft and hates Linux.)" The more constructive criticism we get about the drawbacks of Open Source, the better we can address and fix them.
Perhaps there is a reason (Score:2)
When switching to open-source, the first thing to note is that the fact that the source code is available is usually not why you are switching. The fact that the software follows the 'open source' ideology is also not important. Generally, you switch because the software does what you want at a reasonable price.
In this respect, open-source is no different than any other software.
Now.. switching a shop to a DIY shop using open-source tools as opposed to commercial solutions.. that's a bit of a different story. But that's really an idological change as opposed to a software change.
try the linux-kernel archives (Score:2, Informative)
In fact, there was even one from Intel.
Easy answer (Score:5, Funny)
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-4833927.html [cnet.com]
Kidding aside, it's probably relevant to your assignment.
(Just kidding) (Score:2, Offtopic)
In the DC area, at least, a common tactic is to contact companies or other entities in the guise of a "student" looking for information for a thesis, paper, project, or whatever. The advantage of this was that the person doing the research could gather information on behalf of their company/employer without letting on to anyone that the company they work for didn't know much about the subject.
You don't happen to work for Microsoft, do you?
Re:(Just kidding) (Score:2, Interesting)
Support is the usual reason given ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, it's FUD, but it's true to a degree -- it's often difficult to find support for open source things. And if it breaks, you get to keep both parths -- if you're not able to fix it yourself, you're at the author's mercy.
Yes, if Windows breaks, you're at Microsoft's mercy to fix it too, but many companies feel a lot more comfortable relying on a big company than on a few guys who program for fun.
Yes, you can buy support for many free software products, but these don't seem very popular for some reason.
I'm not saying that these reasons are particularly valid, but they are the reasons most commonly given ...
Re:Support is the usual reason given ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Another downside, as mentioned, is tech support. You can call microsoft and get tech support, but a lot of OSS companies are doing that now, also - when i bought Mandrake 7.2 from best buy, i got a card in the box that said that i had 30 days of help for free, from the date of install, and that was in the $30 version.
Of course, i have no right to complain, as i don't actually program, beyond "hello world"
~z
Re:Support is the usual reason given ... (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, there's no "You have to install Emacs21 by the end of July" from the developers, either.
The flip side of that argument (Score:3, Interesting)
If you are fixated on hard releases then open source is a little trickier, but if you can be more flexible then open source can be really helpful.
Microsoft releases on time? Please. (Score:4, Informative)
It finally came in Feb 2000 as Win2k.
NT5 was supposed to integrate the stable NT kernel with the flexibility of Windows 95, resulting in a single OS for home and corporate use. Later, Microsoft said that feature would not make it into NT5. Instead we got a set of fixes for Win95, called Win98. A second set of fixes was called Win98SE. Then instead of the single combined OS (NT5), we got WinME and several flavors of Win2k.
In late 2001, we will finally get the combined OS that was promised in 1998, with most of the promised features. In the meantime, Microsoft released three other operating systems (not including WinCE), none of which had all the promised features. Along the way, costs have gone up and vendor lock-in is running rampant.
There are reasons to use MS software, but the ability to depend on their announced release dates is not one of them.
Read about Bitkeeper... (Score:2)
Re:Support is the usual reason given ... (Score:2, Informative)
I just want to be careful here and point out that this common perception is in fact a misperception.
Look at some of the most important opensource projects out there - GNU/Linux, Apache, Samba, Sendmail, Mozilla/Netscape, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Star Office - these aren't projects that a mere few hackers tinker with in their spare time. One way or another, they're pretty much all supported with corporate dollars. And they all have a rich market of support available - support you can purchase from reputible companies (RedHat, for instance).
FUD is the only fuel that keeps this misperception alive.
Sounds like a problem I had with SUN support (Score:5, Interesting)
Solaris 2.5 had a routing issue (I don't remember all the details from back then, but it was a bit complex). I spent about 2 hours diagnosing it w/o even needing to shut the system down and had it identified, and had a solution. But the boss didn't like the solution, so I was instructed to call SUN to get support. After 2 weeks of calling, being called, messages left, being forwarded around, the answer finally came back "Sorry, we don't support that, but our consulting people can build a customer solution for you". So I asked them to make a proposal and send it to me so I can give something to the boss in writing since it would cost money. Their estimate was $20K to $30K of consulting time and we wouldn't get either exclusivity or source for the results. My boss laughed at that. And while he still felt SUN should have just "fixed it", and that I should keep calling until they do (I thought this to be a waste of time), I finally did convince him to let me try out my solution. So I put a small Linux box running a 50 MHz 486 on the LAN with one 10 meg ethernet card, and default routed all the Sparc 2000 traffic through it. Performance actually improved. The boss not being entirely happy with a Linux box handling mission critical traffic, ended up opting to buy a well decked out Cisco 4700 to do the job (which it did just fine). Of course if it ever failed (it didn't) we'd have been down for a few hours before a replacement would arrive. If the Linux box were to die, we had replacements ready to go (I had Linux loaded on about 80 old no longer used hard drives sitting in storage, and we had plenty of old PCs around).
Re:Support is the usual reason given ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Opposing views (Score:3, Interesting)
Of Course the Microsoft web site is an excellent place to start they have many comments about the "evils" of free/open source software. I know there were a couple artticles in the NY Times, and on MSNBC(take pinch of salt) with some reasoning agianst as well.
Re:Opposing views (Score:4, Informative)
Much more relevant are anecdotes from the field, which I will hope you will find here.
I am a systems administrator at a small software company in the valley. Although our product runs on a variety of Free and non-Free systems, many of our developers are working on a very proprietary system and using little or no free software. My infrastructure, by contrast, is almost entirely Free. The drawback is not in the performance or feature set of the software I am using to provide services - in fact everyone is extremely happy with it. The drawback, rather, is in constantly having to fight to use good quality Free software in an environment where the mindshare belongs almost entirely to Brand X. As an example, it gets old very quickly explaining to people why we shouldn't be using Exchange Server to handle our mail, especially when our current Free Software mail server has been doing its job perfectly well.
I don't know how relevant this is, but perhaps you will find it interesting. Good luck.
lack of funding (Score:5, Insightful)
This hurts open source software - closed source software generally costs money, which allows them to pay people like usability specialists, graphic designers, and technical writers (people who don't work for free out of goodwill). Currently it seems like only programmers are willing to donate their time to the open source software effort, and I see this as a weakness. Having a larger variety of developers would improve the quality of open source software.
Re:lack of funding (Score:2, Insightful)
On top of that. . (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:On top of that. . (Score:2)
Missing documentation (Score:4, Insightful)
I see little or no documentation out of Microsoft for the stuff I buy, either. Nor did I ever get much out of Sun or IBM. When I wanted good documentation I had to go out and buy it -- either from the vendor like in the case of MSDN, or from some book from my bookstore as in the case of X11/UNIX/IBM.
If you're missing documentation for open source products, you should check out your local bookstore. There is actually a remarkable amount of documentation out there if you're willing to spend some money on it. Much of it is crap, of course, same as with the commercial vendors -- but some of it is very very good.
It regularly astounds me that people who were willing to pay thousands of dollars a year for technical information from Microsoft/IBM/Sun/whomever won't spend a dime on the same kind of thing for Linux. Maybe they should. Certainly there are companies that fill this particular niche.
Can someone make money selling docs on Linux? I think they can. They certainly did selling docs on X11, which you might recall was open source too.
Re:Missing documentation (Score:2)
Re:Missing documentation (Score:3, Insightful)
This obviously got modded insightful on
Re:lack of funding (Score:2, Informative)
This not true. Saying so takes away from the hard work being done by many volunteers to make Linux more user-friendly.
KDE Usability [kde.org],
GNOME Usability [gnome.org].
Re:lack of funding (Score:5, Insightful)
Argh! You are SO exactly right. I was going to write an essay about this once. Still might. Basically, the problem boils down to the fact that the supposition, "open source projects are built to scratch an itch," is precisely correct. And, the only people scratching are old, wizened programmers (and those who aspire to be like them).
The thing is, old wizened programmers are satisfied editing in emacs, compiling on the command line, and doing a pure text debug. In fact, they're downright happy with it. Not that there's anything WRONG with this; it's valid to argue that emacs is actually one of the most powerful editors out there, once you get to know it.
But computer USERS by and large don't want to reach that point of expertise. Nor should they be forced to, to use their computers for other ends. But they're not the ones contributing to the OS movement. Partly because they can't write the code, but PARTLY at least because those who can, just won't listen! And that might be the strongest argument of all against use of open source by business and casual users: the software just wasn't designed for them, and so it probably won't meet their needs (or perceived needs) as well as a more rounded product.
episode: 'who knew' or 'the lack of funding' (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:lack of funding (Score:3, Insightful)
One drawback (Score:3, Informative)
Let me get this straight (Score:2, Interesting)
Thats like going to Landover Baptist [landoverbaptist.org] looking for arguments for atheism.
Re:Let me get this straight (Score:3, Insightful)
Support (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Support (Score:2)
1 quick word: (Score:3, Insightful)
I have yet to see a successful business model incorporating Open Source.
Secondly, without strict project management, a lot of confusion can ensue. In a business you hire someone to control everything on the higher scales.
A better example is simple coding style. Looking at code where 4 developers put their braces all in different places adds time to maintainability/reading of the code. I'll come up with more reasons, lemmie think some more.
Re:1 quick word: (Score:2)
there are many Business that incorporate Open source into there business model. UPS, ATL, etc...
How many business increase profitablilty by using Open Source and maintain a lower cost of TCO.
Re:1 quick word: (Score:4, Interesting)
*********
Then you haven't been looking. Cygnus was profitable for years before being bought by RedHat. ADA Core Technology seems to be profitable (they've been around forever), Mandrakesoft was profitable except for a brief stint where they were run by some flashy US CEO. Penguin has jumped back into profitability. Many, many consultants spend their days developing open-source software for their clients.
I think that people are looking for a big company like Microsoft, but that's just stupid. You can be profitable with Linux, but you can't gouge people. It's kind of a built-in safeguard which prevents people from squeezing people out of money year-after-year. It doesn't prevent profit, just abuse.
A link for some opposing views (Score:3, Insightful)
The heart of the argument is that the GPL is like "Creeping Marxism", since software is written to be shared by all, instead of sold for a profit.
Complexity costs money (Score:3, Interesting)
I write for a couple of Australian Computer Magazines. I've spent the last week interviewing a couple of people for an article I'm writing about server appliances.
One person I'd spoke to got the appliances to replace a Linux based firewall. The firewall worked, but nobody knew how to use it, and it seemed too complex for anyone on staff to operate. They couldn't read the logs, so they didn't know if anyone was attacking them. It was different from all their other systems, so it was hard to learn. And if they wanted to open a port for their Outlook Web Access (which they did) they couldn't. Hiring seperate IT staff to do this work is a cost they couldn't afford.
So they replaced the system with a firewall appliance - specifically a NetGear screening router.
These devices generally use some form os Linux inside them anyway, but the lady I spoke to presented an excellent argument against using traditional non embedded Linux firewalls in SMEs.
This is what Communism is _supposed_ to be (Score:2, Insightful)
So I leave you with this: Wouldn't calling Open Source Software "Creeping Marxism" be a compliment, as that concept is exactly what the Open Source movement is supposed to acheive? It is a harmless way for the community to benefit itself through sharing. Just some food for thought.
Consider legal issues (Score:2, Troll)
I don't have links to share with you, but I can share my experience.
Almost 2 years ago, in a think-tank setting a bunch of us at a company that I won't name here, refused to use Open Source program/code out of the fear that if anything goes wrong using Open Source program/code, there is no one to "hold responsible" over it. Read that as to "sue" the party.
Because of this legal issue, we stayed away from Open Source. I know few other companies that I got in contact with share this few.
However, I must point out that now IBM is supporting Linux, things will change.
Re:Consider legal issues (Score:2, Informative)
Using or developing? (Score:2)
I don't see many drawbacks with just using open source software. Lack of support and not being guaranteed fixes (being at the mercy of the guys who are just doing things because they have 'an itch to scratch') are some reasons I guess.
As far as basing your business on open source software, I see lots and lots of drawbacks. More or less, it's very hard or impossible to make decent money on open source software. Support just doesn't give you enough revenue. A small business with a talented but small crew (think of.. say.. Epic Games that makes the Unreal series of games as well as the Unreal 3D game engine) can make a bunch of money with closed source software. What if Epic Games open sourced their engine? How would they make as much money as they do now? Or even, how would they make any money *at all*?
Of course you can't... (Score:5, Funny)
It's also pretty clear that anarchy by design and design by anarchy work well. After all, open source has brought some exceptionally innovative technologies to IT consumers in the past few years. We now can finally parse flat text files with greater speeds and more flexibility than ever before! And we keep bug-compatibility to programs written for 1960s computers that can be outperformed by a wristwatch! Now, that's what I call technology! Object orientation? component programming? that's for wussies who can't code in C, sh, or perl!
Finally, how can traditional software businesses compete with the multi-level marketing scheme of proselytizing users that become testers and developers and finally evangelists? It's obvious that all great engineering and scientific endeavours have been benefitted by active recruitement and by popular opinion, not some arrogant dude's idea of what 'right' is.
After all, software is tantamount to *speech*, not machinery. It should be spoken and transmitted freely, not designed and crafted like some piece of steel.
Oh, yeah, there was something else, but I am sure the replies to this will fill you in... something about advocacy or something...
I'm all but anti-open source, but here you go... (Score:3, Interesting)
There's no fix for this one, other than simply avoiding anything that requires a restrictive NDA.
I can think of 3 ways to circumvent this problem, but neither of them is very nice (still better than proprietary code, if you ask me):
(I'd probably pick this option if I had to)
The easy ones: (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, the ADVANTAGE to having the source is that you can technically work around any of these issues, but generally only by hiring specialists, at a great expense to your company. It's the big white elephant that no one's talking about in the middle of the open source bazarre: "Software freedom! You have the source! You are empowered!" Yes, but at what COST? For most companies, fixing an open source program to make it do what they want, just isn't a viable option. Plus, many in the community would view it as a "corporate co-opting of volunteer work," and the company could be flamed out of contention before they even decide on a policy regarding releasing improvements to the community.
Open Source does seriously empower expert individuals who wish to customize and improve software for their own use, and the community with which those individuals share the improvements. But that's not really a business situation.
Re:The easy ones: (Score:2)
And how is this different from closed source products? Sure, you can complain to the nebulas entity known as Microsoft if one of their products break, but not like they'll do anything or claim any sort of responsibility or liability. But with open source projects you can complain to the developer and let them know what broke and depending on how important you make yourself sound they might actually fix it promptly and send you a patch.
The point is that there is no warrantee on closed source products and likewise there is no warrantee on open source products so I think point 2 is null and void. However, with open source products you have a somewhat more personal contact (i.e. a developer), than a general vague contact (i.e. microsoft).
Freedom! (Score:4, Funny)
FUD (Score:2, Insightful)
Last time I checked you had to pay for support of proprietary software too. True, sometimes you get a free phone number that you can call when it's not busy, but's that's not an enterprise level support.
2.Similarly, There is no warrantee of any kind. If it breaks, you have no one to complain to: "you get what you pay for."
This is the most blatant piece of FUD that Microsoft trolls keep spouting. Ever read Microsoft EULA? (or a EULA for any other proprietary software for that matter). It reads, in part, something along the lines of: "To the maximum extent permitted by the applicable law, Microsoft hereby disclaims all liability". You have no warranty, no matter what software you use. About 2 years ago there was a case where some proprietary software caused millions of dollars worth of damage to some manufacturing company. The vendor admitted to producing buggy software but refused to pay based on EULA. The court agreed. (Search slashdot archives, ithe story is probably still there).
3.The programmers may suddenly decide they have no vested interest in continuing the project, or development may slow to a crawl (eg, mozilla), and there's nothing you can do about it.
False. The one key advantage you have with open source is that *anyone* can continue the project, including yourself. The original programmer cannot prevent anyone from developing the project. On the other hand, with proprietary software, you have no such recourse. If the company suddenly decides it is no longer interested in the product, it can drop it and you can do absolutely nothing about it. Neither you nor anyone else can continue the project. You are solely at the mercy of the vendor. This is actually one of the key arguments *for* open source.
Re:FUD (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the point that is being made is that a small company is not necessarily in a position to hire additional employees or retask existing employees to fix or enhance an open source project. Not all costs are monetary. Things like time, resources, etc can often exceed the percieved monetary savings.
This is the most blatant piece of FUD that Microsoft trolls keep spouting. Ever read Microsoft EULA? (or a EULA for any other proprietary software for that matter). It reads, in part, something along the lines of: "To the maximum extent permitted by the applicable law, Microsoft hereby disclaims all liability".
You are right in that there is no legal guarantee of a warantee, but there is often a defacto warantee that stems from that fact that proprietary vendors want to make money, and if one of their customers starts complaining about bugs publically, then there is the potential to lose money. Consequently it is in their best interest to address the problem. Of course this doesn't always work since once a software company reaches a certain size, it can ignore the requests of smaller customers since shear momentum may carry its profits along.
longer interested in the product, it can drop it and you can do absolutely nothing about it. Neither you nor anyone else can continue the project. You are solely at the mercy of the vendor. This is actually one of the key arguments *for* open source.
In the long run, this is why open source is better, but in the short term, there is not much you can do if the open source project you were counting on disappears. Of course, you are even more screwed if a proprietary company drops a product.
Re:The easy ones: (Score:2)
* There's no support built into the product. Yes, you can hire people to support it for you, but it's a seperate cost.
Oracle's "support" hardly qualifies. They rely _entirely_ on you being able to test it thoroughly yourself. Often fixes do not even address the problems you specified. Generally with Oracle Apps, you _have_ to have internal support. And, as you said, you can hire someone at a separate cost. So then it doesn't become a problem with Open Source in general, but rather of a specific product.
* Similarly, There is no warrantee of any kind. If it breaks, you have no one to complain to: "you get what you pay for."
Very, very few software companies have any real warranty. Again, you can purchase one.
* The programmers may suddenly decide they have no vested interest in continuing the project, or development may slow to a crawl (eg, mozilla), and there's nothing you can do about it.
Again, you can purchase it. Also, proprietary companies do this, too. Oracle Applications basically stopped sending us fixes on a regular basis when they decided they needed to push the next version (which takes at least 6 months to upgrade to). So, we either spend 6 months upgrading or have an unsupported product (it is _listed_ as supported, but that doesn't mean much).
Re:The easy ones: (Score:2)
This may be unconventional, and probably not what a company is looking for. In practice, though, I think it is generally more effective than the paid support from the technician who may or may not actually use the product. The drawback here is that poor or unpopular open source products have poor support because they have few users.
The other drawback is that enterprise level support means hiring someone who can learn the code. I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't a better deal than some other commercial solutions that also assign a single technician to your case. Maybe more expensive, but you can get more customization from the open source support.
Re:The easy ones: (Score:2)
1) Last time I used Windows, support was seperate there to ($95 a call, as I recall). One advantage open source gives you is that you can shop around for support. Don't like Redhat? Dozens of company will happily give you support.
With Windows, if Microsoft doesn't give yousatisfication, you are SOL.
2) If it breaks, you can fix it, or pay someone else to fix it.
3) If the original developers decide to move on to bigger or better things, you (and everyone else depending upon the software) can pick up the development. I note you comment on Mozilla- this is the problem with *corporate* supported code. When the corporation decides to stop paying for it, development stops. With Mozilla, development can get picked up- this is how Apache started. NSCA had stopped funding development on their server, so the various webmins teamed together and picked up development. Mozilla may do this. Had the source been closed, there would have been no choice- development simply stops.
Open source doesn't mean you stop paying for software. Nor does free software- they mean free as in speech, not free as in beer. The difference is one of choice, and true free-market competition.
Re:The easy ones: (Score:2)
Bottom line: No warranty on software. Get an SLA.
Re:The easy ones: (Score:2)
As long as you can find the program and it's not an early beta. And the developers actually finish it, so you don't have to.
You did what the parent to your post states - you skirted around the issue by blaming OSS shortcomings on poor marketing.
I'd say you proven him right.
Soko
Cathedral and Bazaar Criticism (Score:5, Informative)
I guess you've read Eric S. Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar. You might be interested in also reading A Second Look at the Cathedral and the Bazaar [firstmonday.dk]. It's not directly open source criticism, and doesn't focus on business usage of free software, but it's a good read nonetheless.
Open Source has nothing to do with it. (Score:2, Insightful)
The only valid reasons to not use open source are the same reasons to not use a particular closed source solution. The only question any one should be asking is "How much will it cost to do what I need?"
Cost here does not mean licensing cost, but the total cost of ownership including customization, support, hardware, training, upgrades, and licesnsing.
The first question to ask about any product is, "How much will it cost to do what I need?" or "How much will it cost me to settle for what this product does as opposed to what I actually need." Very few corporations are lucky enough to find what they really need on the shelf. They tend to either live with what they can find or pay to have something customized. This is the number one arguement both for and against open source. Often there is not an open source solution that is as good as a particular closed source solution. If a corporation has the resources to customize a solution, then often open source is a better way to go, since it is usually cheaper to customize.
Support is also critical for any software application. Every company has to decide to trust an outside support organization or support it themselves. Costs and quality very greatly for both open and closed source solutions.
Training costs do not differ based on wether an application is open/closed source, but instead on the popularity of the application. A company can expect a certain level of competence with popular applications, but not with those that are less popular.
Upgrades and Licensing are really negligable and tend to tie into support costs.
I know that when I decide on an application for corporate use, solving my problem and dependability are my first concerns. If an application doesn't do what I need, why even consider it. Dependibility includes not just not crashing, but how long it will take to get something fixed when it does crash. I would rather use something where I expect to be down once a day for a minute than something where I expect to be down once a year for a week.
Microsoft? (Score:2)
opposing view (Score:2)
Halloween is coming. (Score:2)
Perhaps you should look at the Halloween documents [opensource.org]. They're an outside critical look at Free/OSS and comparison of different development models.
Ask Dave Winer (Score:5, Informative)
Some examples:
And that's just a few of the more recent posts to his log. Don't get me wrong, Dave is a very thoughtful, articulate guy who's no Microsoft parrot -- he and his company, UserLand Software [userland.com], were one of the authors of the SOAP specification [w3.org] that is proving so critical for future interoperability. He's just got a keen intelligence and is fond of applying it, which means he'll often come up with a different angle on things than you might expect. Go search his site and I bet you'll find, if not the answer you seek, at least some interesting questions.
-- Jason Lefkowitz
Irony here (Score:2)
Compare that to Microsoft which likes to claim that pointing out the gaping huge flaws in their products should be criminal.
lots of reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
In general, though, open source software is inferior to its closed source counterparts in:
Very little application or toolbox-level open source code is ready for prime time, in fact, whether we're looking at GCC, Mozilla, GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice, GIMP, or what have you. It's still hacker-oriented, better-enjoy-strolling-through-the-minefield stuff, and measurably inferior to proprietary solutions in most of the ways listed above.
One "killer argument" for many people here recently came in the form of consumer advocate Jamie Love's reasons [slashdot.org] for shifting his site away from an all-open-source footing.
Tim
Re:lots of reasons (Score:2, Insightful)
- Usability: Windowmaker, taking the best from the labs at now defunct NeXT. Very very good.
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Aesthetics: huh? This is highly personal, but some enlightenment themes are breathtaking.
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Integration: StarOffice. Open, documented, plain-text document formats, unlike M$ Word
.doc which must be reverse-engineered for every release.
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Feature Completeness: You must look at stable projects. LaTeX, Emacs or Windowmaker are good examples. Unlike commercial bloatware, OSS does not need to continuosly evolve, and tends to stabilize when needs are fullfilled,
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Support: I grant you this one, *if* your notion of support is having someone to call 24/7 and to blame if s/w crashes.
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Documentation: Take a look at GTK or Qt documentation. Clear, and thorough.
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Stability: Get a stable debian, don't use bleeding edge, pre-1.0 alfa versions.
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Ease of instalation: SuSE 7.2. Damn fast install, all questions asked at the very beggining and so easy that my mom could install it.
- Hardware Support: My TV capture card (Bt-based). Works MUCH better with Linux drivers than buggy windows ones. Lack of h/w support was a problem two years ago. Now, with most h/w companies embracing OSS, it's better than in Windows.
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Availability of s/w: Depends on what you mean. You won't find any good desktop publishing app, for instance (only on MacOS), but you'll find dozens of web servers.
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TCO: Big industry-pushed lie. Ex: Patch a campus-wide network of NTs with the latest service patch: it takes days. Now, do an automatic Yast online update on the same network: about 20min.
As for the apps, its a never ending discussion. Gcc is much better than VC++, KDE is more than ready for prime-time, I only use GIMP for my web image editing needs, for instance.Nikolai Bezroukov Article (Score:2, Informative)
slashdot for unbiased research.... surely you jest (Score:2)
Lack of commitment (Score:3, Interesting)
Missed deadlines: The open source projects that we worked with had limited commitment to deadlines, and frequently missed them. When you're counting on product launches, this can be very painful
Lack of Support: Things never go wrong at 3PM. Instead, they always happen at 2AM on Sunday. Commercial outfits have dedicated people to help when this happens -- open source people aren't around.
Development of commercial features: Any commercial product has features or enhancements that aren't strictly bug fixes or new enhancements. These are unsexy jobs, but they need to get done. We found it difficult to get people to commit to them
Obviously, your mileage may vary. I'm sure there are some great stories about open-source, as well as even worse ones. But that's my $0.02.
(Some of) It is restricted. (Score:2, Interesting)
Has anyone seen this opinion written up (read: expressed clearly in a paper)?
Can be hard to rely on zealous hackers (Score:3, Insightful)
Many projects start out because college student X hates Microsoft/BillGates/Windows, and decides he is going to drive them into the ground by writing the killer application for Linux. Of course it will be Open Source, because Closed Source is Evil (tm). So he dives in and writes an application that attempts to outdo a major windows application like Word/Photoshop/Illustrator/whatever. Let's say he achieves some success and has a partial clone up and running a year later. Let's say it gets lots of press and looks like it might really be a killer app. Now what are some good reasons not to use it?
As the program is not someone's livelihood, there's no guarantee that the author won't lose interest and walk away from it. There's also no guarantee that anyone else will want to maintain it. With closed source the company could go out of business, but at least they have strong incentive (money) to stick around.
The program was initially written by a college student with no experience architecting large applications, and most likely no experience with any kind of real software engineering of any kind.
Without strong leadership there's no guarantee that the program will remain stable, managable, and continue in a direction that really suits the user base. This happens quite often because, say, a graphic arts program is not written by someone familiar with graphic arts, but someone who wants to get back at Microsoft.
reasons: GPL, patent infringements, etc. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you work for a commercial software company, who may not want to make their source open (because they have some proprietary algorithms or whatever - the reasons do not matter for my point), then you simply won't be able to use GPL'ed software. If you have a closed source app, or any software product that doesn't use the GPL, then you can't put GPL code into your app (without making your app GPL essentially). So, my point here is, you will have to beware of the licenses and how they impact your business and your code/application.
Second is a big one: patent infringement. There is a ton of open source software out there that comes with various licenses and such that say "no warranty", or more specifically "AS IS". What this means is that if you use this code (we'll call it "Code A") in your own code, yet Code A infringes on some patent, you can be held responsible for that patent infringement. Through legal wrangling, if the company who released Code A is reputable and well known, you may have recourse and be able to show that they should have known, etc, etc., but not always, and it may be a tough fight.
There are many benefits, but these couple things can be extremely serious issues to content with depending on your use of open source.
no open source games (Score:2)
There are open source games. But if you go to gamespy, games domain (etc.) and read about the newest, hottest games out there, none of them are open source.
Why not? Probably because it isn't profitable. Presumably you could run a MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game, for the uninitiated) with open source clients profitably, but since nobody has done it yet, it probably isn't that great of an idea (it would facilitate reverse-engineering to create alternate servers, for one).
My point is that software markets exist where open-source has yet to find a profitable business model. And if you're in one of those, you can't write (or in some cases, use) open source software.
It varies, as you would expect. . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Key issues are support (legal and technical), and risk management. Many corporate General Counsels are deeply concerned about issues such as warranty and intellectual property indemnification, areas for which open source offers zero, nada bupkis, and for which varying improvements can be found in the proprietary sector. Technical support is well-covered in other responses.
Legal support in the form of support agreements and/or decent warranties have meaning to corporate lawyers and businessmen, particularly when coming from a decent enterprise. They are not always available, and in some cases expressly not available, but AT LEAST, these warranties are (even for Microsoft) much better than the NO WARRANTY, "AS-IS" warranty given by most open source licenses.
Indemnification *IS* a big issue, make no mistake -- and an indemnification coming from a large corporate enterprise is tantamount to an insurance policy against infringement; as compared to one coming from a small entity (worth less than nothing) or an individual, as compared to one offering no rep, warranty or indemnification against infringement at all.
This is not to say that these arguments are unanswerable in every case. The devil is in the details, and you need to compare specific products before you can balance and weigh the issues. But the questions ALWAYS need to be weighed.
Finally, there is a meaningful legal cost involved with open source compliance. Specific licenses need to be weighed depending how the software is used, and complied with in full. This means that procedures need to be followed, opinions need to be written and so forth, which in some cases (particularly in the development or modifications arena) can be pricey overhead that may outweigh the costs and benefits gained by differences in price. Of course, to do so, I would compare costs of an open source compliance policy against the price of a commercial source code license, but still, I have seen corporate folks decide to go commercial on bean-counting alone.
how about Apple? (Score:2, Informative)
I may get flamed for this, but I think Apple gains clear and obvious benefit by keeping certain parts of its code to itself. Things like the unprecedented capabilities of the PDF-based windowserver [apple.com], the ease-of-use of apps like iTunes [apple.com] and iDVD [apple.com] for CD and DVD burning, the integration of digital photography [apple.com] and DV editing [apple.com]
Windows XP clearly wants to get in on the action, and has gotten close to some of the smaller stuff like digital photography, but overall, from someone who's really used both, it really isn't even close.
Since nobody else has the technology, you can only get these features (and the killer apps being derived from them) on a Mac, so therefore to get them, you need to buy Mac hardware and get the bundled software. And that's where the money comes from.
In instances like these, it's not only smart of Apple to go closed-source to protect its unique technological advances, in many respects it could be downright foolish for them as the "underdog" (successfully turning a profit while competing with Microsoft and Dell/Compaq/etc, no less) to release their source code while they have a technically unrivaled product that is making good money.
I know that this argument can go both ways, and it could be argued that the higher levels of OSX need to be open-sourced as well
So that's one possible argument against a very specific application of OSS.
Brett Glass (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, and try not to laugh too hard at his hair. The man looks like he was a member of Abba.
OT What's a moderator to do... (Score:5, Funny)
What do I do with all this crap? Do I start posting reasoned replies? That would be troll-feeding, and might take hours. Do I mod them all to hell? Not really fair, since they asked for anti-OSS, but they're all so, so... WRONG!
It's like having my eyelids forced open to watch the XP launch or something!
Aaaaaugghh!
Quick, click on the Science section! Ah, that's better...
The thing that always bugged me... (Score:2)
It always seemed irresponsible to me to go around insisting that software be handed out in source form, freely reusable and redistributable by anyone, without regard for whether there was some expectation that the software would get paid for. Of course, I'm talking about fanatical promoters like RMS, not people who just put their own effort in for their own reasons without saying that others are immoral for doing otherwise.
But then, I have a bad habit of thinking that things change overnight. I suppose it's a reasonable assumption that some form of compensation would be worked out before all programmers ended up sleeping in dumpsters, and it was probably a better idea to get things rolling on principle right away than to demand that all the specifics get worked out in advance.
Anyhow, there's a bit of critique in the essay linked below (along with my 2 bits on how to get it all paid for).
Argument: Free ($$) software stops the little guy (Score:2)
This is an argument I've seen against open source software; it is not my own opinion. (I expect to be moderated down anyway). It's a little rough, so work with me here.
Open source software prevents little companies from breaking into the market, and thus hurts competition overall. I'm going to use an imagined example of a person who's got a few good ideas for a compiler. They're not enough to revolutionize compilers altogether, but they are a step forward in certain key areas. He would like to take those ideas and form a company that sells compilers, to fund further research into his ideas.
It's a difficult business to break into, and even if his compiler has improvements that would entice a few people to buy, those people alone aren't enough to fund a company. He could, however, get more people to buy the compiler by undercutting the big guys on price. He could build a bigger customer base that way; some customers are buying because they need his revolutionary compiler, some are buying because it's cheap, but in the end, it's enough to keep him in business. As his customer base builds, he puts the money back into his product, and eventually he really is competing with the big guys.
Unfortunately for our hero, he can't undercut everyone on price when his product is new, because gcc is absolutely free. There's no way he can enter the market now; this hypothetical product may even be better than gcc in key ways, but it's not good enough to encourage people to switch. He may find a few customers, but not enough to encourage him to sell a product.
This example is a bit contrived, but can you come up with a scenaro where a new company today breaks into the C compiler market? I really can't. There's a potential segment of the market (adequate and cheap compilers) that is not attractive to enter, because an adequate and cheap compiler can't compete with gcc.
Check out Craig Mundie at M$ (Score:2)
I am a user of both open & closed source products. As I see it, the only downside to open source is that you have to be prepared to fix bugs yourself if you develop a dependency on a product is not actively maintained.
There is also the issue of "hand-holding" support from a vendor's 1-800 line that you certainly don't get with open source. This is no longer such a big deal with most products, since the solution to your problem is probably on somebody's website, and it's tough to get a knowledgable person on the phone when you call for support. For the most part, you will be dealing with a clerk who is reading from the same FAQ that you can get online.
The concept of being "orphaned" applies to closed source products as much as it does open source. This happens when the vendor goes out of business. Sometimes the vendor sells the product to a competitor who simply forces the users to convert to the competitor's product. Whever a software product is sold from Company X to Company Y, you can assume that support and future development will be thoroughly slashed. Anyone who as been in the IT business for a few years has interesting stories to tell about customers being abandoned by software vendors.
Support is a barrier (Score:2)
Putting StarOffice into Jobsearch engines produce zero hits. Nobody wants to hire people with StarOffice skills. Equally, no one wants to learn StarOffice skills as nobody is hiring. Nice idea but dead at step one. Exactly the same with Bynari - no market in these skills either.
I know it's a vicious circle but it's one that I cannot, as a solutions provider to my company, break.
Another argument is training. Every new person that walks through the door at my company has MS Office amd MS Windows skills. Time to get the up and running is about 1 hr to teach them the company specific apps. If we used Linux/StarOffice training time is couple of days to get them to a sensible level. Time is money, and if you are learning how to use a wordprocessor you are not bringing home the bacon.
So vicious circle number two.
Everytime an alternative is looked at it comes up against these two problems.
Open Source and Ralph Nader... (Score:2, Informative)
The following article talks about the supposed disadvantages of open source and makes an odd link between OS and Ralph Nader--as if it were some conspiracy. This is the most in-depth anti-OS piece I've ready. It's also quite amusing.
I try and fail (Score:2)
to come up with reasons not to use Open Source software.
In the past, the argument was frequently made that OSS was inferior to available closed source software. In a lot of cases, that was true. Now, it is not true as much. And, even if there is a higher quality closed source alternative, you'll end up paying a lot more money for it, detracting from that advantage over OSS.
As a business user, it could be argued that using open source software gives you no advantage over your competition, who also has access to the source code. But, it would be difficult for you to buy closed source software that your competitor could not buy. Unless you happen to have a lot more money than your competitor. In that case, perhaps you can obtain an advantage buying expensive software they cannot afford. Assuming, that is, that the software is worth the money to you for your purposes.
No, really the only arguments against open source software will come from software producers and sellers, not from the users.
Users stand to gain from OSS at every opportunity in decreased costs, lower risk of lock-ins and upgrade treadmills, obsolescence, etc.
OSS puts software producers in a fix. They have to produce something substantially better than the OSS to justify the price. They have to create substantial, real value in their products, and the bar that defines that value keeps getting raised with time. It's a difficult endeavor that takes a more time, money and talent. No wonder various software producers are against OSS; particularly those whose software products are not based on providing real value as in locking in their customers to provide the company with future revenue streams.
So, OSS really is unAmerican, because America currently hosts many software producers that benefit from the world's dependency on closed source software.
I don't know about you, but this American thinks that we should be above such tactics which artificially inflate the costs of software to the world at large. That world could really stand to benefit from the use of software to improve their productivity and standard of living.
Lack of leadership and direction (Score:2)
One of the biggest advantages and disadvantages is the lack of leadership and direction in Open Source.
I'm not going to tell here what the advantages of lack of leadership are. I'm sure everybody here already knows. And besides: that's not the question ;-)
Lack of direction means lack of uniformity. Which means the system is harder to learn. Nobody in Open Source is forced to use somebody other's wheel, so the invent their own. This creates inconsistent interfaces, config files, file locations, distribution channels, licenses, etc, etc.
Now, for us hardcore Linux hackers that's no problem. I do know about sendmail.cf, named.conf, smb.conf, fstab, lilo.conf and all those nice and inconsistent file formats. But in my experience they tend to annoy beginners. Same story goes for Gnome/KDE/X-interface-of-the-week.
And there's next to nothing you can do about this problem.
Programmer-driven, not market-driven (Score:2, Insightful)
This means that non-coders (read: the 99% of humanity who are not programmers and have better things to do with their time) are second class citizens for the open source community. Not only do they not contribute to the code base, but their suggestions are met with a scornful "write it yourself if you want it". (This attitude is common on Mozilla's development lists, where you can almost always count on at least one "if you want X submit a patch, otherwise shut up" for any feature suggestion X.)
Down this road lies software written by and for hackers and everyone else can either shut up or get in the car. If you don't know C, you're worthless, and if you don't even want to try to learn C, you're worse than worthless. Besides, the common folk suggest really boring stuff that just shows they're stupid lusers. Our time is better spent on stuff we find fascinating. (For an example of "lusers say such stupid things" consider the recent KOffice usability review which found some users are confused by the case-sensitivity of formulas in KCalc. The response was not "Well, it'd be a mere few minutes of work to make KCalc formulas case-insensitive, so we'll do it", but "Don't blame KCalc that these idiots are too stupid to enter cell names in uppercase. If they care that much they can write their own patch.")
Imagine doctors telling you that if you don't know how to take out your own appendix, they're certainly not about to do it for you. Besides, the time they spend on your appendectomy could be so much better spent working on a new scalpel technique for an obscure procedure that's almost never performed in the real world. That is the image many open source proponents offer to the world: if you already know how to do what you want, we'll consider doing it, but what you want us to do is boring, so we won't anyway. And anyway you can do it yourself, so don't be a lazy luser.
This is an attitude that closed source could never get away with, by definition. Since the customer cannot offer code, all they can offer is money and feedback and they will be more than happy to stop offering both if they aren't listened to (or catered to, if you prefer). Microsoft has obtained its market position mostly by giving people what they say they want. (Feel free to insert a snotty "and never giving them what they need" if you'd like. The argument stands nonetheless.) Non-programmers are elevated from second class citizens to kingmakers. They are the ones who decide what software lives and what dies, based not on whether or not it is fun to code feature X but whether or not they want/need feature X. And this infuriates some hackers.
Not doing something because it's boring isn't a great way to run a hospital, and it's not a great way to run a programming philosophy that is supposed to bring freedom to everyone, either.
Developers everywhere... (Score:2)
It has far less to do with moral issues or "what OS is better" -- many of these guys work on or with open source code fairly often. I run Cobalt Linux on my development webserver because that's what it came with and the logisitics of installing Sco or BSD over an rlogin is frightening. But I'm uneasy about it.
Why? Because in many ways it threatens our jobs! The problem with true open source programming when you're a lifetime developer for a large solution provider is that it suddenly becomes less feasible to develop custom solutions than to pay exorbitant licenses. A lot of the applications I've developed have been very similar to tasks you could probably perform in Access or Excel -- were it not for the cost of deployment of these packages. These apps were written from the ground up, they are very specialized niche pieces which are perfectly matched to what our workers have to do. Now, consider what would happens when an open office solution comes along and does something similar to what Access does. Suddenly, you don't need a programmer to build your application, all you need is a scripter. A scripter is much cheaper, and I get my walking papers.
Now a lot of you might chime in about how I'm technically doing too much work, or how I can transition to a "support" role (find a supporter who makes six digits and you'll have found a man with a silver tongue) or how the elimination of senior programmers is in someway good for the company. But the solutions I provide are easy to support because they only operate in one way, they're easier to learn for our customers and the code is well known by everybody here because we developed them part and parcel. The initial cost of open source seems low, but the support cost of pouring over lines of code written by god knows who using god knows what style to find some bug that may or may not be known and then fixing and releasing the fix legally under the license of the code is much higher -- rather than employ one programmer for a few hours to fix a bug he knows about, you're faced with either hiring a consultant at exorbitant rates to fix the bug or a scripter for a couple days to research, fix and release the patch.
I like getting free software, but promoting open source is something that is very delicate in our industry. It's harder and more expensive to support, extend (with exceptions, apache is much easier to modify than IIS, but in my experience that's very rare among open source projects) and deploy than homebrewed software, and often has no associated costs to use yet it purports to be "free as in speech not as in beer." It's really hard to get people to pay for steak when you're giving them hamburgers for free!
Problems with open source (Score:2, Insightful)
Open source software is great if you're a programmer. You can look at the code, understand what's going wrong, fix it, etc. But non-programmers don't care about that.
What I want in software is ease of use. If I'm installing some normal, closed source software, it's incredibly easy. I stick the CD in the drive, and a screen pops up asking if I want to install it. I click yes, then I click Next a few times, and it's installed. I open up the software, and it's easy to use. Nearly everything I want to do is intuitive. Anything that isn't is clearly explained in the help file. No problems, no fuss.
Now contrast this with open source. I've only installed an open source piece of software once, but it was a nightmare. I went to the site on Sourceforge, and saw dozens of different versions. I didn't know which one I wanted, but assumed the most recent one would be best. So I downloaded it. But I couldn't install it yet, as I needed to make sure I had the right version of a Java compiler. So I opened up a command prompt and typed in what the instructions had told me to type. Nothing happened. Eventually I realized that I didn't have Java at all. So then I had to download that.
I finally succeeded in compiling the code, and opened the program, only to discover that I couldn't use it at all. None of the menu commands did anything, the buttons didn't work, and the software was completely useless to me. I checked the help menu, only to discover that rather than having explanations of how the program worked, it only gave a link to the raw code. I paused to curse my open source advocating friend who had reccomended the software. Then I was complaining about it to another friend who used it, and he told me that he hadn't had any of the same problems I did. I realized after this that I had a bad version of the software. So I downloaded a different one, which worked, although it still involved quite a bit of finessing and difficulty in figuring out how to do what I wanted to do.
Now, I admit that I'm basing my judgement of Open Source on just one experience, but my experience matches what most non-techy people assume OS is like.
Ask yourself a question. How many non-techy people do you know that use Linux? I have lots of techy friends who use it and love it. But I do not know, nor have I ever heard of, a non-tech type person that uses Linux or even has the slightest interest in using Linux. This is not because they are ignorant. It's because ease of use is important, and Microsoft has invested a lot of time, effort, and money in making windows easy to use. I, like most non-techies, am willing to live with having to reboot my computer every couple of weeks because something crashed, rather than dealing with all the complications of Linux.
Another issue is name brand recognition. A lot of you may scoff at this, but it does have a real value. I know that for the things I do in my job, MS Word, PowerPoint, and Excel will work perfectly. If someone's willing to pay me $50K a year, they're going to be willing to spend $300 on MS Office so that I can do my job effectively. I'm sure that there exist open source programs that do everything these programs do. But I don't know what they are. I wouldn't know where to look for them. I wouldn't know what different software packages do. I wouldn't know which distros to trust. I wouldn't know what patches to take. This is all things I could find out, but any time I spend researching the issue is time I'm not spending working. It's much better to just go with what I know. It doesn't matter how nifty a program is; it's completely useless if the people who need it don't know it exists.
Finally, there's an economic critique of OS. It's a basic fact of economics that market failures arise whenever someone either doesn't bear all the costs of their actions, or doesn't reap all the benefits. The same principle that makes companies pollute too much because they don't have to pay for the damage the pollution causes will make programmers produce too little when they their code can be copied freely. It's a basic problem of externalities and free-riders.
There are areas where programmers will code for fun, that this won't be a problem. But what about other areas? Oh sure, you might argue that someone who needs the software would hire a programmer to create it, but this only works if there is a single individual willing to pay the entire cost of development.
I'd be willing to pay $150 for an accounting package. There exist closed source companies that are willing to spend millions to develop such a package, becuase they know there are tens of thousands of people like me. These companies hire dozens of programmers to write the code, QA monkeys to test it, tech-writers to explain it, marketers to get it out there, and market researchers to figure out what people actually want. This is simply not an effort I could replicate by paying a contract programmer $150. So I go with the closed source solution.
A problem with Open Source (Score:3)
I write/maintain closed-source software for a living. And there would be a big problem if that code became Open Source: we wouldn't have lock-in. I remember in 1999 when we found out that, amazingly, some of our programs actually did have a problem with Y2K. We "fixed" the Y2K problem in our Clipper programs by adding a single line of code:
If the programs were Open Source, we would not have been able to charge each customer hundreds of dollars for a few seconds of work. Why? Because we would have had competition. The customers would have been able to fix the programs themselves, or hire some other Clipper programmer to make the modification for $50. But since we were the only ones who had the source, we had a monopoly on modifications and bugfixes to those apps.
That's the problem with Open Source: it's too American and Free-Enterprise oriented. Reaming customers is "good for the economy." Competition prevents that sort of thing, and must be prevented.
People will have to decide for themselves whether I'm being serious or joking about my conclusion, but the aforementioned Y2K story is True.
There's nothing but coders (Score:3, Insightful)
I could go on for days about this and I'm sure so could everyone else, but not I, too, have got some school work to do.
I've always wondered. (OT) (Score:2, Funny)
Are there any public companies that are in the hot-cake business?
What are their ticker symbols?
Re:Opposing Opinions of Open Source (Score:2, Funny)
Softpanorama (Score:2, Informative)
I detail some of the flaws I see with open source software in my paper The Wall Street Performer Protocol [firstmonday.dk].
Re:Here's an opposing view for you. (Score:2)
Re:It's simple (Score:2)
Re:It's simple (Score:2)
Re:It's simple (Score:2)
I have infact made many contributions to the Fire Department, I greatly respect what they do...I live near Worcester, MA and know people that were affected by the Wharehouse fire there 2 Years ago.
Of course you probably wouldn't know anything about that...My Girlfriend also has friends that worked in the Twin Towers...so that hit close to home as well...perhaps next time before you spout off, get a clue what your taking about...another reason why I hate AC's.
Re:It's simple (Score:2)
As was so wonderfully illustrated with the recent worms.
...ponder...
There's a tremendous amount of potential.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I wish I did this... (Score:3, Insightful)
If he had posted a math problem and asked for answers, that would be another story.
Re:Opposing View (Score:2, Funny)
People will have more money left to alcohol and other drugs. This can be a big burden for the society.
Re:No revenue (Score:2)
a) it would be rolled back into the main distribution (this saves the company maintenance costs)
and
b) they know that the original developer has the best knowledge of the source code.
Better viewpoint (Score:5, Insightful)
My point is that your business software has to be supportable as well as inexpensive. If you can get support from a vendor, then OSS is great. Otherwise it is dangerous at best. And what if your vendor goes out of business-- you may be better off than if it was completely proprietary, but it may be more likely to happen if you choose a product form a company like Eazel than if you choose a Microsoft product. Can you survive? Yes. Assuming you can support the software yourself. IMO, this is the main reason for BSD's loss of market share to Linux recently is the difficulty in finding people qualified to support it and/or good vendor support (though anyone who knows Linux well should be able to transition to BSD will minimal study-- just most people don't know that-- though the boxed set of BSD has an Awesome manual).
Business questions:
1: Is it reliable enough?
2: Is it vendor supported?
3: Will my vendor go out of business and leave me without support?
Re:Tell that to McCarthy (Score:2)
And no, I have not.
Re:What does pro-microsoft have to do with this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, you know that and I know that, and most others who post to Slashdot know it, too. But as a matter of fact, when Microsoft has criticized the GPL, they have not made much of an effort to distinguish it from the other kinds of open source software.
Their vagueness is surely deliberate, and therein lies the ever-present dishonesty of that ethical midget with respect to this particular issue. There are many plausible criticisms of the GPL that the general public can easily understand -- after all, the GPL is not universally liked among developers of open source software either. (But even there, M$ has been misleading, by implying that if you just use a GPL'd tool like emacs to develop software, then you have to GPL the software you developed with it; which is sheer nonsense.) By failing to state clearly that there are other models besides the GPL, M$ leaves the impression that these criticisms apply to any open source software. That's dishonest, but as always, they're probably not sorry about it.