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Open Source: Facts and Figures 199

Posted by Hemos from the learning-more-about-it dept.
Eloquence writes "Much of the debate about GNU/Linux and open source is dominated by rhetoric rather than facts. David Wheeler has just released a new version of his "paper" (which, at 440,000 characters, is more of an e-book now) 'Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!'. According to David, this paper 'examines market share, reliability, performance, scalability, security, and total cost of ownership. It also has sections on non-quantitative issues, unnecessary fears, OSS/FS on the desktop, usage reports, other sites providing related information, and ends with some conclusions.' May come in handy when talking to your boss about Linux."
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Open Source: Facts and Figures

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  • good... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bin_jammin ( 684517 ) <Binjammin@gmail.com> on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:27PM (#10397234)
    this seems like something that needs the "validation" of print. It would make for a very informative read, clear up a lot of misconceptions, and not suffer from the "I read it on the internet" stigma. People are more likely to believe something if it doesn't glow when they read it.

    • Yes indeed... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:44PM (#10397446) Homepage
      People are more likely to believe something if it doesn't glow when they read it.

      This is true. If it doesn't come in an overpriced management tome or as a summary in some slick corporate rag, not only will the PHBs not believe it, they probably will not even read it.

      • Re:Yes indeed... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @02:10PM (#10397717) Journal
        This trend is changing, especially in light of the quick peer review that the Inet offers, and such scandals as the whole CBS faked document issue.

        Remember it took less than a day for REAL document experts to examine and expose the nature of those documents, while it took CBS nearly two full weeks to reach the same conclusion, with a certain person NEVER really able to admit that the documents are forged.

        Personally, I trust the INSTANT peer review of the Inet more than CBSNBCABCCNNFOXMSNBCNYTIMES .... combined. While some of the INFO on the Inet is wrong, it is easily verifiable with alternate resources.

        If your Boss is stil looking for documentation that filters through the publishing channels, then he/she is likely to miss the curve on important issues.

        If they really need a paper version, then PRINT one and hand it to them. Take it to Kinkos and have them Bind it nice and Professional. Help keep your boss on the curve.

        • Re:Yes indeed... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Jim_Maryland ( 718224 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @03:13PM (#10398335)
          One must still consider the source of information. Taking what is written on the Internet as being accurate is naive. Some sources will be more trustworthy, but anyone can put up a web page with misleading information.

          As for the document, this will be handy for those companies where management does prefer the hard copy. For those a bit more comfortable with technology, the online review will work.

          That said, my company recently sent a message out indicating that the use of Linux is generally prohibited with only a few exceptions. This is primarily due to the legal issues surrounding IP claims in Linux. In my case, I doubt a hard/soft copy of this document will convince management to change until the legal issues are resolved.

          • That said, my company recently sent a message out indicating that the use of Linux is generally prohibited with only a few exceptions. This is primarily due to the legal issues surrounding IP claims in Linux. In my case, I doubt a hard/soft copy of this document will convince management to change until the legal issues are resolved.

            And what legal issues might those be? Even SCO, highly motivated and with millions of dollars to spend on the task hasn't been able to come up with one single example of a

            • Myself and many of my coworkers agree with your philosophy on this, but from the corporate lawyer level, the use of Linux presents a risk they are unwilling to accept at this time. In our case, the operating system cost is such a small portion of the cost of any project so basing million/billion dollar projects on an operating system that (still) has the potential of legal issues is not worth the risk. We do have exceptions that allow us to use it, but avoidance at this time is preferred. Some exceptions

  • 440,000 characters?? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:27PM (#10397240)
    More like War and Peace... :p

  • a 400 meg document (Score:5, Funny)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:28PM (#10397247) Journal
    To describe why we don't need a lot of rhetoric to support linux.

    I know "irony" isn't the correct word to use, but I don't feel like thinking of the right one.

    To summarize: Some blowhard likes linux and wont shut up about it

  • At the end of the day... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by angst7 ( 62954 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:28PM (#10397253) Homepage
    I dont need 440,000 words, and neither do most others. I use Linux because it makes me feel happy. And I feel like I'm in control.

    That said, kudos to the wordy crowd too.

    • Re:At the end of the day... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Nos. ( 179609 ) <andrew@nOSPAm.thekerrs.ca> on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:36PM (#10397355) Homepage

      The problem that a paper like this might help solve is convincing others in a corporate/government environment that there are viable alternatives. Only a couple years ago a co-op student was considering writing his paper on Linux vs. Microsoft and wanted to know if he could ask me some questions (being the only Linux guy in the office). I gave him a lot of information and some links. When he presented the idea of the paper and his initial research, the dean laughed at him. The student was told that any competent 3rd or 4th year CS student should be able to crack a Linux box.

      If this kind of attitude and mis conceptions exist in University CS departments, how do you expect our managers and directors to have a realistic view of Linux and OSS in general?

      • Re:At the end of the day... (Score:4, Informative)

        by ragnar ( 3268 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @02:30PM (#10397897) Homepage
        What University is this? My experience working and attending several in the United States is that they are open source friendly. Based on my cursory understanding of the student's proposal, I would guess it was shot down more because it wasn't pertinent to computer science. Just a guess.
        • My experience has been the opposite. I see MS courting several universities, especially those that output top level engineers. Carnegie Mellon and other top universities get a lot more money from Microsoft than the FSF. My school held MS recruitment events several times a year at which recruiters would give away Xboxes and Visual Studio which students then resold for hundreds of dollars. In addition to that, MS supplied VS.NET at very low rates to the CS department to ensure that the next generation of pro
        • Years ago (6 to 8 years) this was the prevailing attitude, even in big research Univerities. Its not just MS that spreads FUD. I find lots of Unix people spread FUD about Linux, too. Some because they are just repeating what they heard, and others because they are afraid their 10+ years of Sun experiance is slowly going down the drain.
          • Good point. My current experience is only from the University I work at, but I realize that I don't have an over-arching exposure to academies all over. When I went to school about 8 years ago it was pro-unix and everyone dismissed Microsoft as a curiosity. Another post made a good point about the donations from Microsoft, which naturally have some strings attached.
    • I'm loading it right now and I can't wait to read it (site is slow ATM). My first thoughts is that this will be a karma whore's wet dream. One central document to cut and copy for almost any article on /....

      Right now it's loaded to section A.6 Forking and showing some serious slowdown... Maybe he shouldn't have posted an image of himself in the bottom corner...

      Oh well.. off to RTA.

      -B

    • Re:At the end of the day... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by nkh ( 750837 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:48PM (#10397486) Journal
      A few days ago, I would have said that Linux is good and makes you happy. I'm installing Linux from scratch right now, I'm having fun (playing Solitaire while compiling is great) but I'm actually learning what and how is an OS supposed to work inside!! Even if you program with the Win32 APIs, you can't learn anything from it.

  • why indeed (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:28PM (#10397254)

    why indeed. look at these numbers. i'll no doubt me modded down as a troll or something but when the linux community can make a powerful desktop thats not SLOWER than windows2k/xp then i will switch.

    Windows XP: 233 MHZ 64MB min, 300 MHZ 128MB recommended

    Xandros: PII 64MB min, 450 MHZ 128MB recomended
    Mandrake: 64MB min, 128MB recommended
    Fedora Core: PI 192MB min, 400 MHZ 256MB recommended
    SUSE: 128MB min, 256MB recommended
    Sun Java System: 266 MHZ 128MB min, 600 MHZ 256MB recommended
    Turbolinux 10F: 1GHZ 512MB recommended
    Linspire: 128MB min, 800 MHz 256MB recommended

    • Re:why indeed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sqlrob ( 173498 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:31PM (#10397280)
      So, try each on that 300 MHz 128 MB and see what is best.

      Most software I've seen on Windows severely underestimates "recommended", and I'm assuming Windows itself does the same.

      • Re:why indeed (Score:5, Interesting)

        by rxmd ( 205533 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:42PM (#10397428) Homepage
        So, try each on that 300 MHz 128 MB and see what is best.
        Been there, done that. I had Debian unstable alongside Windows XP on a Thinkpad 240 with 128, later 192 MB of RAM.

        XP was workable; it didn't break any speed records, but it was OK to work with.

        Debian was workable only after I kicked KDE off the hard drive and went for an slim X setup with Ion [cs.tut.fi] as window manager. With Ion it was working OK, as long as I refrained from using Qt and GTK applications at the same time. But then, I wouldn't want to force Ion on an inexperienced user.
        • That's really interesting... because I'm running KDE right now, with xchat, firefox, thunderbird and gaim running, and free says my used memory is 147MB.

          This is KDE 3.2 though, so it may be better optimized than whatever version you were running.

          I still find Linux to be much less of a memory hog than Windows, and much more graceful in recovering if I ever force anything to swap. You have to restart Windows to get performance back after you hit the swap file.

      • Re:why indeed (Score:5, Informative)

        by BoomerSooner ( 308737 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:53PM (#10397545) Homepage Journal
        Why?

        You can get a 2.4GHz machine for $350 Dell [dell.com]

        Who cares if it runs on 1997 hardware? I want it to run well on todays hardware.

        • Re:why indeed (Score:3, Insightful)

          by alan_dershowitz ( 586542 )
          Read the original post to understand why. It was complaining that Linux distros listed higher system requirements than Windows XP, which listed 300Mhz as it's requirement. Your parent post said "try it in a 300Mhz.", knowing full well that Linux distros are more honest about their requirements than Microsoft. I have personally run Red Hat Linux just fine on a 486SX-25Mhz, so I can attest to this.

          And anyway, I have three 500Mhz machines sitting around. They would all make a perfectly usable desktop under Li

      • Re:why indeed (Score:4, Interesting)

        by fitten ( 521191 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @02:01PM (#10397622)
        Depends on what you install. I feel sorry for you if you install Linux on that and try to use KDE or Gnome. We couldn't even get Mandrake 9.2 to install on a machine with 64M because the installer crashed repeatedly. I've found that I need a machine with 256M to run KDE or Gnome at a non-frustrating speed for the GUI. I had a P3-450 w/ 384M for a while running Mandrake 9.2 w/ KDE and it was usable but not very fast. The same machine running Windows ran fine. I suspect that a bit of it was video card support though.

        In any case, I've found that lately, most Linux distros (with GUI) to require the same or greater resources to have a similar experience to Windows (not waiting for redraws and such). This didn't used to be the case. 100% of my job is developing on Linux and has been for a year now and my Linux roots go back to pre-1.0 kernel days so I've played around with it a bit.

        • Re:why indeed (Score:2, Interesting)

          by happyfrogcow ( 708359 )
          neh.

          I run KDE on a laptop with a 800mhz duron, 128MB ram and a crappy 8MB "shared memory" vid card. It works fine. Never slow, sluggish or frustrating. Slackware, btw...

          Even when going from my P4 WinXP work machine back to the said laptop, it's ok.

      • Re:why indeed (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        i've done that. xp is heavy out the box but if you switch to classic ui theme and remove some of the cruft (indexing, sys restore) it is pretty snappy.

        it seems that to get a linux desktop as fast i have to dump the whole advanced uis and switch to really barebones stuff like fluxbox, and then run dillo or something. that says a lot. why cant a linux desktop be as powerful as windows without being a lot slower and memory hogging??

        oh and try out windows server 2003, it runs fine as a desktop and is faster t

        • Re:why indeed (Score:3, Insightful)

          by happyfrogcow ( 708359 )
          compare ie to firefox (tho ff is much better), outlook to evolution, ms office to openoffice, the open source ones all take quite a bit longer to start

          let FF sit as close to the OS as IE and then compare. But wait, we don't want our apps that close to the OS because it's a bad idea.

          I'll trade good ideas for a 2 second startup cost.
    • when the linux community can make a powerful desktop thats not SLOWER than windows2k/xp then i will switch.

      The community has already done that, many many years ago. The problem is, the distributions all insist on shipping the bloated GNOME or KDE desktops instead of something that runs at a sensible speed.

    • Linux distributors just are more honest about minimum specs, precisely because they know they get blasted by the critics if Linux is perceived to be slow.

      Just try running XP on its recommended spec, and you will find out that that 300Mhz, 128MB is actually its minimum spec. What Microsoft specifies as minimum is "it boots, that's all".

      Anecdotal evidence: if my laptop (an HP Omnibook 6100) throttles down to 730Mhz to conserve battery, it still runs snappily when running multiple user programs, including su

    • WinXP is unbearably slow on anything south of 900MHz. I speak from experience (at various places of employment). I'm prepared to concede that _some_ of this might be because the machines have been poorly configured.

      I'm currently running Red Hat (not the latest, but only a couple of years old) on a 120MHz (I think) with about 78MB of RAM at home, and while it's slow, it is almost usable and suprisingly stable. I wouldn't consider running even NT4 on it. (Assuming I had a copy. Which I wouldn't.)

  • No usability or features? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:29PM (#10397257)
    "this paper 'examines market share, reliability, performance, scalability, security, and total cost of ownership'."

    Cant help but notice that usability and features aren't listed. There's a reason I still use Photoshop. Its features and ease of use make it worth the price.

    • Re:No usability or features? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:48PM (#10397489) Journal
      Best guess I can make is that "usability" and "features" are too subjective to comment on. At least with the other categories, you can generate some hard numbers based on records and tests instead of opinions.

      =Smidge=
      • "Best guess I can make is that "usability" and "features" are too subjective to comment on. At least with the other categories, you can generate some hard numbers based on records and tests instead of opinions."

        In my opinion TCO is also subjective.

        • Howso?

          Foo Inc., has X stations running system Y which cost me $z a year to maintain. Foo Inc. changes to system B, which now costs $c a year to maintain.

          Ignoring the cost of the changeover (Since that is NOT indicitive of the TCO, although it should definately be considered by any company thinking about switching...), you can then compare $z to $c and determine how you made out.

          And/or you then compare that company with other companies of similar size running either the same or a different system, and see
          • How long does it take all your workers to do their job on Y vs B? Do they "like" Y or B, how does this effect their productivity? There is a lot going on other then the cost of the systems that effects the TCO, however these things are all subjective.
    • Usability is very subjective, and often times addresses how fast you can get productive with something familiar, not how productive you can be with some experience.

      Features is slightly more relevant. But what these things both point to is there isn't something exactly like Photoshop that runs natively in Linux.

      For some people it's a trade up. For you it may not be.

      If you are productive and familiar with a piece of software and can live with the drawbacks that it or the OS it's running on might bring al
      1. Cant help but notice that usability and features aren't listed.

      CEOs and CIOs don't care about usability beyond 'can we use it to do our jobs?' The other points the paper does cover answer that question.

      1. There's a reason I still use Photoshop. Its features and ease of use make it worth the price.

      What tools to use has a personal impact. It doesn't necessarily support the work being performed cross the company. (Photoshop, while not OSS, does run under Linux with Wine -- if not perfectly.) [codeweavers.com]

    • Performance is usability and features.

      You the developer may not like having to do it one way but from a managers perspective whatever get's the job done is the most important thing.

      Really appealing to the developer is a waste of statistics (and the main point of slashdot) as they don't think about what the purpose of their action is going to be.

      Microsoft sure as hell isn't using their marketing/statics gatherers to prove it's "more fun for developers" Jesus.

      Either it's war or not, if you want to com

  • Open source is great and all... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by scaaven ( 783465 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:29PM (#10397259)
    but where is the financial incentive for programmers? I love open source, and even though programmers contribute to the greater good of the world, how do you survive? I guess it's just one of those questions I never really got.

    I work in a small medical device company writing java, and I could not imagine them using my software for free -- I need to eat too.

    • Re:Open source is great and all... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I just started my business and my first service is an ecommerce service. Driven with BSD, python, webware, postgresql and such. if i had to pay for the tools, i probably wouldn't have thought of it since it all started out as fun, but since this is now going to make some money, I realize that I want these tools stable and for the long run. So as I develop my system, I am writing documentations, I am testing these free software, looking out for bugs and contributing code to them.

      Isn't it funny, how you

    • Re:Open source is great and all... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Yaztromo ( 655250 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:42PM (#10397422) Homepage Journal

      You had to post this just as I got mod points, and was going to start using them in this forum...:).

      I find what you have to say very topical, because I was in talks earlier today with an MD who holds a chair at a west-coast University who is interested in contracting me out to write Open Source code based on my Open Source, pure-Java jSyncManager Project [jsyncmanager.org].

      Oh the parallels :). This project is receiving some public funding, so the doctors and developers currently involved are striving to use as much OSS as possible, and to release their custom code pieces as Open Source software. They want to contract my services to help them integrate handheld systems into their groupware/messaging applications they're building.

      As such, it looks like I'm about to start getting paid to write Open Source Java code for the medical field. Yay for me!

      Yaz.

    • Re:Open source is great and all... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by prostoalex ( 308614 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:42PM (#10397431) Homepage Journal
      but where is the financial incentive for programmers?

      There's none. You can tout open source and hide large system integration bill (also known as IBM way), since rarely an open source package works out of the box.

      Or you can tout open source and hide the support bill (the RedHat way), and make money on support.

      Few of the billable hours generated here are development work, most of it is IT and support.

      • Large systems and support (Score:3, Informative)

        by xant ( 99438 )
        I don't think IBM and RedHat are really "hiding" anything, since it's well known by anyone likely to pay for such things that this is how they make money. With that point out of the way, all large systems cost money to support and integrate.

        Doesn't matter how much you pay for closed-source software, if you're intending to use it in even a small enterprise, you'll be paying more money to integrate it. And the company that sells you the software is probably also selling you the services to make it work. T
    • So true, unless your project becomes famous, you have no scope for earning money. Have-a-day-job still holds for most of the open source developers.
      • However, this isn't only about developping OSS/FS, it's also (a lot) about using OSS/FS.

        You can develop a proprietary application and still need a web-server for some reason, and go for a OSS/FS web-server rather than Win2003.

        You can develop a proprietary application and still need a word processor to type reports and stuff, and go for OpenOffice rather than MSOffice.

        You can develop a proprietary application and still need a browser, and go for Firefox rather than Internet Explorer.

        You can develop a

    • Some program for fun, or for the greater good. Some add or debug because it's no big deal and they just want it to work. Some solicit donations, some use it as a hook for work. Then of course, there's the fame, the free as in beer, and groupies.
    • ...where is the financial incentive for programmers? I love open source, and even though programmers contribute to the greater good of the world, how do you survive? I guess it's just one of those questions I never really got...

      Good lord! You actually need to make a living from your work? Back to the re-education camp with you! But all kidding aside, I have yet to see a reasonable answer to this question. While it is true that there are many paid programmers writing Open Source for a variety of companies

    • it is all a conspiracy to undermine the profession. Everyone benefits except the programmer. Well some suggest he should do support but what if he's not good at support? Lets say programmer X writes open source software and offers support. Company B with a bigger staff also starts offering support. Not only did he write the software for free, he can't even compete in the support department. And then they are others who say well people who write open source already have jobs anyways, that's true too.

    • Re:Open source is great and all... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @02:02PM (#10397645)
      . . .even though programmers contribute to the greater good of the world. . .

      And that is one of the often overlooked benefits of Open Source(tm) software, people actually will pay you to write it if it contributes to the greater good of the world.

      What they won't often do is pay you to write piece of uneeded and ill conceived piece of dreck just because the company needs something new to sell.

      YMMV, of course, but I don't enjoy tossing rocks over a wall then tossing them back again simply as an excuse to earn wages. I'd rather flip burgers than write that kind of software, because at least I'd be contributing the greater good. People have to eat. They don't have to have software that they only bought because some salesman who thinks he has to do it to eat convinces them they need it.

      There are better ways to run an economy than filching money from each other's pockets.

      And sometimes, here and there, people don't get to do what they want, but rather what is needed. Good people actually like it that way.

      KFG

    • Re:Open source is great and all... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by abreauj ( 49848 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @02:03PM (#10397649) Homepage
      but where is the financial incentive for programmers? I love open source, and even though programmers contribute to the greater good of the world, how do you survive? I guess it's just one of those questions I never really got. I work in a small medical device company writing java, and I could not imagine them using my software for free -- I need to eat too.

      Think of programming as necessary infrastructure for a business, not as its core business. Businesses have a lot of costs that aren't related to the core business.

      For instance, employees need a place to park their cars when they come to work. Most businesses don't charge their employees to park; they don't consider the employee parking lot as a profit center. And yet, the people who build and maintain the parking lot have to eat too.

      Just because the business doesn't charge its employees money to park, doesn't mean the guy laying down the tar and painting the lines in the parking lot has to work for free. And just because the business makes its software open-source, doesn't mean the programmer that did the work-for-hire won't get paid.

    • HI, I'm an occasional open-source developer (Score:4, Insightful)

      by temojen ( 678985 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @02:12PM (#10397737) Journal
      but where is the financial incentive for programmers?

      I work for a company whose business is not software. We need a webserver, operating system, database, etc.

      Sometimes, what comes in an open source package doesn't meet our needs, so I fix it. Sometimes I think others might want the same changes, so I submit them (like when I changed the behaviour of a device driver to be more configurable). Sometimes I don't think others would want the same changes, so I don't submit them (like when I made dbmmanage able to be called from a shell script).

      I get paid to solve my boss' technology problems. OSS is the most flexible way to do that.

    • Re:Open source is great and all... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by yamla ( 136560 ) <chris@@@hypocrite...org> on Thursday September 30, 2004 @02:12PM (#10397748)
      The vast majority of software that is written (something around 80% based on number of lines of code written, though I don't have the reference for this figure readily at hand) is never released outside of the company. That is to say, it is for internal use.

      Provided you aren't releasing trade secrets, your company may see significant benefit to releasing this software. You were going to write it anyway, by releasing it perhaps someone else can improve it or send you bug fixes for free.

      So, you get paid because you are employed by your company. The company benefits with better quality software.

      No great secret, but something people tend to forget when they think of software programmers.

    • Re:Open source is great and all... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by johnlcallaway ( 165670 ) * on Thursday September 30, 2004 @02:50PM (#10398104)
      The real answer to this is why did you get into the computer field.

      I got into computers back in the 70s because I loved computers and had natural talent. I often wrote code for friends and families for free because I enjoyed it. Even though I started out as an operator, I wrote code for my company to help automate simple processes.

      Later on I got a full time job writing NEAT/3 assembler and COBOL because one of the members of the local astronomy club was also a manager at a bank. I had written a simple mailing list system to automate our mailings and he knew I had at least some programming ability. Writing for OSS also brings you contacts and networking is more important than a resume if you are looking for a job.

      Working on things that you don't get to work on at your job teaches you new things. My bank employeer didn't use BASIC or FORTRAN. Helping out friends and families let me use those skills so later on when I went to get a new job, I could at a minimum list a passing knowledge of them.

      Who would you hire? Someone who has 3 years Java experience writing web applications, or someone who has the same 3 years experience but was also doing free side work for his local church, astronomy club, stock club, or writing drivers for Linux? I'll choose the second because it appears that they enjoy what they are doing and are probably not just in it for the money.

      And I will probably be willing to pay them a higher salary because they have a broader range of skills and possibly more self-motivation.

    • but where is the financial incentive for programmers?

      The answer is complex and multi-part...

      First, not all programmers require financial incentive. Where is the financial incentive for, say, musicians? Someone who starts a band for the money is a fool. Some Free software will be written just because the person loves doing it. Some will be written because the author wants the product for themselves.

      Second, huge numbers of programmers write software that is strictly used by their direct employer.

    • Let me partially answer and rephrase this question a bit. Large companies like IBM have no problem with Open Source - they are really selling something else other than software, so the software is incidental to their core business (in the case of IBM, global services). So giving it away in exchange for goodwill with the community, branding and marketing opportunities, and sometimes improvements from other contributing users or companies is a good deal for them.

      Other large companies, like your average co

    • Actually, my paper discusses these issues. See the entries on Is OSS/FS economically viable? [dwheeler.com] and Will OSS/FS destroy the software industry? [dwheeler.com]

      Increasingly, people are being paid to work on OSS/FS software. That's how X and Apache were developed, so this isn't new. The Linux kernel is almost entirely developed by people paid to do so (37,000 out of 38,000 changes a few months ago). There are lots of articles about this trend, referenced in the paper. Also, nearly all software is not developed for sale, bu

  • Fairly informative and open (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pillageplunder ( 183475 ) <tarntootaine.hotmail@com> on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:29PM (#10397268)
    The article referenced does a fair job of displaying the info used. References are linked to, explanations are provided (I.e. the difference between "all sites polled" and "inactive vs active" sites when talking about market share). All in all, an article that raises many good points. Useful, from my perspective.

  • Yeah but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PincheGab ( 640283 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:30PM (#10397276)
    Much of the debate about GNU/Linux and open source is dominated by rhetoric rather than facts

    You'll have rhetoric as long as you allow people to make sense out of facts... For example, the same fact (let's say, "source code available to the world") can be interpreted two ways: "More secure because it has been scrutinized by all sorts of people" and "Less secure because it can be scrutinized by every possible hacker."

    What follows is the rhetoric...

  • This counteracts anything your employer might claim about not having any research to back up your claims about open source software. However, they might already have a lot of money and effort invested in closed technologies and might not be ready to move completely right away. At least they'll be convinced to move the non-critical stuff over first. :)

  • Why do people care so much? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BillFarber ( 641417 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:39PM (#10397382)
    I use OSS and propietary software.
    I've developed both.
    I'm not a disciple of either.
    They both have their place.

    As a wise man once said, can't we all just get along?

    • Re:Why do people care so much? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gosand ( 234100 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:50PM (#10397521)
      I use OSS and propietary software. I've developed both. I'm not a disciple of either. They both have their place.

      As do I, although most of what I use is on Linux. That may be hard for Windows people to believe, but it is true. I fire up the Windows box when I want to render videos (tmpgenc) or burn DVDs. That is where the DVD burner is installed. (Although k3b is AWESOME). I wish that Irfanview was available on Linux, it just rocks. I haven't found anything I like as much on Linux.

      As a wise man once said, can't we all just get along?

      Well, that is the kicker. We should all just be able to get along, but then you get proprietary software companies (no names mentioned) that have a heavily vested interest in NOT getting along. The OSS community is more than willing to just get along, but all parties have to be willing.

    • By "wise man" you mean "felon?"

      But more on the point, I use Free Software exclusively (to the extent that it is within my control) for philosophical reasons. I think that those reasons should matter to you, so I do evangelize Free Software sometimes.

      What's wrong with that?

      -Peter

    • Re:Why do people care so much? (Score:4, Funny)

      by hugesmile ( 587771 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @02:04PM (#10397666)
      I use OSS and propietary software.
      I've developed both.
      I'm not a disciple of either.
      They both have their place.

      Not a very poetic Haiku...
      How about

      I use Open Source
      and closed source software as well
      They both have their place

      In Japan, it was funnier.

    • I agree, they should get along. I think that Apple, IBM, HP, SGI, etc. are proving that closed and OSS can get along just fine. The problem is that several companies seem to want to spread FUD about OSS. Basically, it is necessary to shine a little bit of light on it and get the truth out there.

  • OSS has definitely produced good language tools (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ShatteredDream ( 636520 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:40PM (#10397398) Homepage
    I can't even imagine where the web would be today without Perl, PHP and Python. Perl and Python are excellent CGI languages and PHP 5.0/5.1 is a great substitute for commercial products like ASP.NET in many cases. Small businesses and home users simply don't need all of the wiz bang features of something like ASP/JSP. OSS has definitely stepped in to provide a lot of power to the little guys who want it. Now Mono is rapidly becoming a viable alternative to Microsoft's .NET and Tomcat has been for a long time a very solid basis for J2EE web projects.

    But perhaps the best thing about OSS is that it has helped to return a bit of an "ownership society" to software development. The GPL despite its problems says that it doesn't apply to you if you are just a regular user who isn't going to modify the code and redistribute the changed binaries. For all intents and purposes, you "own" that code until you do something public with it that takes commercial advantage of it without meeting the GPL's requirements. That's a hell of a lot more property rights-centered than a typical industry EULA.
    • For all intents and purposes, you "own" that code until you do something public with it that takes commercial advantage of it without meeting the GPL's requirements.

      A GPL violation doesn't have to be for money. Violation is a violation even if no money is involved. See the X-chat mess.
  • a huge "paper" full of anything besides pr0n isn't going to be fun.

  • Why is open source usually about OS? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by prostoalex ( 308614 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:50PM (#10397508) Homepage Journal
    The thing that gets me is how open-source vs closed-source debate is always OS-centric. True, you have Microsoft on one end and Linux OS family is one of the most succcessful open source products, but what's wrong with promoting open-source product on top of Windows platform?

    OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox and many other products off the SourceForge.net have a Windows binary available for download. Windows itself provides great hardware support with almost anything imaginable out there, and has nice OS-level features like fast GUIs and built-in support for burning CDs and what not.

    If you look at a Linux box and a Windows box, the price difference from the vendor is generally $50-60. If you use the computer for 5 years, the cost of Windows is $10-12 a year. What's the incentive to go "free" and deal with ugly fonts, hardware issues and other problems related to Linux nowadays?

    Moreover, promoting open source on Windows nowadays would set the ground for switch to Linux in the future. Guess what - the aforementioned OO, Mozilla and other apps work exactly the same way either with Linux or Windows. Thus a switch to Linux later on would not require such huge re-education costs, since the user lives in app world, not in OS world, and doesn't care whether it's kernel32.dll or kernel.org latest version, that's running on his machine.
    • Moreover, promoting open source on Windows nowadays would set the ground for switch to Linux in the future. Guess what - the aforementioned OO, Mozilla and other apps work exactly the same way either with Linux or Windows.

      Isn't this what is happening? I seem to remember a huge buzz a month or so ago where even some in the "mainstream" press where pushing Mozilla/Firefox as a better option to IE.

    • From the developers perspective starting with Linux makes lots of sense. The tools available to create open source software tend to be open source themselves. Not only open source, but freely available as well (just to make the distinction).

      Currently it would be very difficult to develop for the .NET platform using any reasonably priced packages. Reasonably priced compared to the amount of money you would like to make, that is.

      Currently I am using Java/Eclipse and I'm looking at SWT/HTML for my GUI needs.
      • Currently it would be very difficult to develop for the .NET platform using any reasonably priced packages. Reasonably priced compared to the amount of money you would like to make, that is.

        Huh? Everything you need to develop .NET software is free. I can't think of a much more reasonable price.

        (I'm using the MS .NET SDK, although I could be using Mono on Linux if I preferred, along with the sharpdevelop [icsharpcode.net] IDE, which I think may be Windows specific.)
    • Well, I don't know about you, but in my experience, Linux has better fonts than Windows, and I have no fewer hardware problems with Windows than I do with Linux. So I'd be paying $10 - $12 for things that work worse.

      I can't use KDE on Windows.

      I can't use k3b on windows, I have to spend $100 on Nero.

      I can't use TV Time on Windows, and the WinTV drivers on windows don't deinterlace for my card, so TV time is unquestionably better.

      If you're going to use open source software, Linux simply has more of the be
      • I have no fewer hardware problems with Windows than I do with Linux.

        Well, you've been lucky. I've frequently had to go a long way out of my way, spend hours in research, and order more expensive equipment in order to get hardware that will work with Linux. My main problems were with ISDN hardware a few years back and wireless networking adapters right now. In both of these cases, everything I have available from my usual local suppliers was/is based on unsupported chipsets, meaning I had to purchase vi
    • Um, the debate is OS centric because that's the core of a computer system. Without it, the rest is pretty useless.

      Realize that any current distro of any importance has fast GUI's (more than one of them, unlike Windows) and built in support for CD burning and DVD burning (unlike my Windows box at work that intermittently decides that it doesn't recognize CDRWs until I've rebooted twice).

      You clearly haven't used linux in a few years if you thing that ugly fonts and hardware issues are still the norm.
    • What's the incentive to go "free" and deal with ugly fonts, hardware issues and other problems related to Linux nowadays?

      What bloody idiots marked you insightful with ridiculous flamebait like that in your post???

    • There's actually a LOT of FOSS software out there for other OS's, you're correct. And in many cases FOSS is supplying a need not met even by shareware on those platforms. From a user's perspective, that's pretty much it, right?

      Well not from a developer's perspective. Every commercial OS requires you to pay to play; it protects their API and incidentally makes good money. A FOSS OS is better for developers because that barrier to entry is gone, and they benefit from FOSS sourcecode, which means the user SHO

  • Damned Statistics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:51PM (#10397528) Homepage Journal
    Numbers exchanged among people are also rhetoric, though clever. Quantative selections and qualitative exaggerations are equally misleading. Debate, as opposed to argument (or mere contradiction, or being hit on the head [wuzzle.org]), requires consensus on facts, or at least values and rationale in evaluating statements. Marketers don't care about consensus, and most purchasers/consumers have a catch-22 with consensus before decision. What really counts is results. Especially because the cost of the switch itself, between any platforms, is so high, only when the benefit of one over the other is easily demonstrable will enough people be convinced to matter.

  • One case where it's fine not to RTFA (Score:4, Funny)

    by hugesmile ( 587771 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @01:55PM (#10397557)
    There would be no comments here, if we all R'd TFA. Too much reading for my small brain.
  • I use it because its more reliable than other software. Also excellent documentation helps.

    I've paid for my open source support software when I've placed in on deployed servers. Without Apache/Linux/Php/mysql I wouldn't be able to afford to work on side projects as the overhead of windows /unix servers would be too high.

    Keeps my prices lower so the software is more affordable and I take home more.

    Everone wins, except proprietary expensive software makers.

  • ends with what? (Score:5, Funny)

    by eddeye ( 85134 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @02:22PM (#10397816)
    It also ... ends with some conclusions.'

    You fools! That's exactly what they expect! You can't fight the system playing by their rules! It should end with a tangent. Or an introduction. They'll never see that coming!

    You damned fools, you've played right into their hands! We're doomed, doomed, doomed ...

  • Facts have a date, too (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30, 2004 @02:24PM (#10397847)
    I'll openly admit I didn't RTEFA. Still, through "critical skim" (a frequent management trick), this doesn't seem to be very persuasive.

    GNU/Linux is the #1 server OS on the public Internet (counting by domain name), according to a 1999 survey of primarily European and educational sites
    Interesting -- using a survey prior to the release of Windows 2000, XP, or 2003 server as the basis for trends today. Reading the article critically (as the hypothetical "boss" would), those numbers aren't as significant as the state of the world today. I may be completely ignorant to research turnaround, but doesn't it seem more recent data would be more relevant?

    Consider this one as well:
    GNU/Linux is more reliable than Windows NT, according to a 10-month ZDnet experiment

    How many companies today are deciding between Linux and Windows NT?

    Clearly there are reasons today that companies / governments / users are seriously considering OSS. However, to try to convince through comparison with 5 year old OS is probably not very effective.
    • How many companies today are deciding between Linux and Windows NT?

      Most of them. Windows NT is a product line that includes the following products:

      Windows NT 1.0-4.0
      Windows 2000
      Windows XP
      Windows 2003 Server

      Asking that question is like saying most companies are looking at using RHEL, and then saying "How many companies today are deciding between Windows and Red Hat Linux?", as if "Red Hat Linux" did not apply to their new RHEL product...

  • Sounds like... (Score:3, Funny)

    by thewiz ( 24994 ) * on Thursday September 30, 2004 @02:46PM (#10398062)
    "The phishing threats and the growing professional chorus of disapproval for Internet Explorer provide Windows users with very good reasons to turn elsewhere, even if only temporarily. But [OSS/FS] Firefox is so good that many will want to stay with it. And once they have tasted the power and freedom of open source, maybe they will be tempted to try 'just one more program'."

    Sounds like a commercial for potato chips. However, I'll admit that I can't download just one OSS/FS product.
  • I recently upgraded my cell phone to a Nokia 6620. This rather amazing phone has several hundred dollars of commercial software "bundled" with it. Each one has a trial one time use, then a need to pay a license fee, which can be $15 to 20 dollars or more. This market [micro applications on mobile and wireless devices] is growing very rapidly. For example, many companies now are discovering that almost 1/2 of their *entire* data communications, networking, and telephone budget is going into mobile and wirele

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