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How important is open source... to YOU?
I've been going over this idea with friends and coworkers lately - an open source lifestyle. How important is open source software to you? Has it ever factored into deciding which piece of software you use? What are your favorite pieces of open source software?
For me, it only factors in on my personal endeavors. I've never been able to push open source on a client *just because* it's open source, since most of the paid options have 24/7 support instead of a more 'troubleshootesque' style of support. I can say that I use Linux at home and really enjoy that Open Source stuff is free and usually on par with other products.
For me, it only factors in on my personal endeavors. I've never been able to push open source on a client *just because* it's open source, since most of the paid options have 24/7 support instead of a more 'troubleshootesque' style of support. I can say that I use Linux at home and really enjoy that Open Source stuff is free and usually on par with other products.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alexander Tolkan on -
I personally like community support better then Commercial. I also love the Mods/plugins/distros/ for each product. I can get a mod to make Phpbb3 do everything VBulletin do. But sometimes I simply like Closed source better. For instance I like Dreamweaver so much more then Kompozer its unbelievable. So I would rather use Open source is important, but not essential.
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Permalink Reply by Beau Dierman on -
I agree with you about some software being better than it's open-source counterpart. I personally hate GIMP and cannot live without Photoshop, but that's about the extent of it.
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Permalink Reply by d on -
Every OS and software titles has it's limitations and strong points. I think it all depends on what you need to work with on a daily basis. Open Source for me is interesting from a computer geek perspective but requires time and a certain amount of skill to learn. And again there are easier distros to learn than others but all require more or less some customization. The latest version of Ubuntu is proclaimed as being the most user friendly version yet and will recognize all my hardware and we're talking 2010 here so it's taken a long time for an Open Source distro to reach this level of friendlessness. Take note that the OS will recognize and use specific hardware but cannot use the software that normally comes bundled with it. An example is the Quick Cam Pro 9000 and that's the best cam on the market.
Factor in specific software titles that run on specific OSes be it in the realm of gaming (PC) or powerful video editing (Final Cut on OSX).
In the end most users use Windows. Right. Smell the coffee.
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Permalink Reply by Wandering I on -
Open source to me is a double edged sword. I do very much like the idea of a community creating something that can be freely distributed and used by anyone. On the same note, just because people can add code to something doesn't mean they should. For example, if you have a small team of say....10 people working on a program, it isn't that hard to get the majority of people to agree on a certain feature, or graphic, or overall look of a program. Its a lot harder to get 10,000 *nix community members to agree on something even very basic, which is why there are innumerable amounts of *nix variations and distros. Closed source software to me is always just more polished than an open source. And it just seems as if the closed source software programmers are the best of the best because lets face it, there getting paid, unlike open source programmers.
Flip that over, and open source programs can do anything and sometimes more than what a lot of closed source programs can do. I really do agree with david here when he said that it really depends on the use and applications in question. I still think there are a lot of pitfalls that need to be addressed before any open source OS can be taken seriously as a main stream option opposing OSX and windows.
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Permalink Reply by Beau Dierman on
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I'll agree with you that there are too many distributions of Linux out there mainly due to the thousands of people who collaborate on the projects who have different ideas of what an OS should have(GNOME vs. KDE for example.) But I do have to throw in the mandatory Google reference. They recently abandoned all Windows computers in their offices in favor of Linux and OS X. Another neat find is that Dreamworks/Pixar has actually been using Linux for both design and rendering machines for quite some time.
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Permalink Reply by Wandering I on
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True, I'm not surprised that major cpu processing and server apps are handled by linux box's. The slimmer the actual OS the better the applications can perform because of the extra resources given to them. I See linux as always being the choice for something such as that, more single task brute power type of use as opposed to other OS's where there is the need for multitasking and visual UI's, etc.
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Permalink Reply by Jorge on -
To me it's not really about the price of the software, but the quality. Some open source software like Firefox, and Audacity are great at what they do so I use them, others not so much. I also don't mind paying for great software, but only if it's truly unique, powerful and offers things that open source developers just can't give us.
I also think that people are forgetting the reasons we should pay for software. People are trying to make a living. Why must we feel so entitled to getting everything for free? Would you do your job for free when you have bills to pay and a family to support? Think about it.
© 2012 Created by Chris Pirillo.
