[Renamed] OpenSource Appreciation Thread

Well, THIS is certain to be an enlightening thread!

I hate to be a jackass (okay, not really), but this thread is kinda well, dumb.

It's not like this topic hasn't been oh, beaten to DEATH on these forums.

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Original post by antareus Well, THIS is certain to be an enlightening thread!

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I hate to be a jackass (okay, not really), but this thread is kinda well, dumb. It's not this topic hasn't been oh, beaten to DEATH on these forums.

You both just voted! Damn, now I voted!

seriousness edit:
Honostly though, I think you have to take it in a case by case basis. Some open -source software is better, some commercial software is better. I use both.

Open Source software is terrible. There are no redeeming qualities to it. Why would you possibly want something free? Why would you possibly want something that has an ass ton of people reviewing the code, to make sure it's good?

I just voted again. [wink]

I like it when menu's are labeled "MS-DOS style" rather than "m$ DOS style" and buttons say "Run" instead of "Ruuunnn!!!"

I use and enjoy some open source software, though. Lua, for instance. I'm just too much of an asshole to vote in favor of OSS.

Sometimes I have my doubts about Open Source.

If you write something, and you release it and its source code to the world, and people can read it/alter it to their own desires...

There is always the chance some commercial people will do the near unthinkable; steal your code, tart it up, and sell it as their own closed source, giving you no credit in the process and breaking the ideology of Open Source. Of course you could fault them under the GPL or intellectual copyright etc., but it could still happen.

Also, Open Source seems to have changed somewhat. If Linux is Open Source, how do Mandrake, SuSe, and Red Hat get away with charging money for the good version of something which is called Open Source, and as such should be free? It's just like M$ with their software. The free downloadable versions of Mandrake and SuSe, I'm told, are rubbish, but I wouldn't know.

And I'm happy to pay for software from well known companies, it puts my mind at ease.

I'll throw my opinion in.

Open Source software is almost always inferior to commerical software.

Teams who work full time with budgets in the millions, in my opinion, produce better software than people working in their spare time for free or for very little money.

I'm not dissing open source programmers - given equal time and or resources they're usually better programmers than commercial developers. Resources and time, however, aren't equal.

Many of the arguments for open source are based on philosophy rather than quality.

How many open source zealots do you think would prefer to use Microsoft Office/Photoshop/Microsoft Visual Studio/3DS Max over OpenOffice/Gimp/G++/Blender if the commercial stuff was open source also?

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Original post by linternet How many open source zealots do you think would prefer to use Microsoft Office/Photoshop/Microsoft Visual Studio/3DS Max over OpenOffice/Gimp/G++/Blender if the commercial stuff was open source also?

I've got an old PC I'm dualbooting with Win2K and Linux FC3.

Linux comes with OpenOffice. It's absolutely the slowest, most useless thing I have ever used, absolutely kills my system (which isn't that bad, relatively speaking). It's made partly by Sun.

I don't have MS Office on the Win2K partition, but I have it installed on another similar machine. What a difference, it's faster, more efficient and does way more things than OO could ever dream of. Microsoft charge those prices simply because the software is worth it. And Mandrake and SuSe now cost money to get a decent version as well.

I've been using Microsoft products since 1994 (got my first Windows based computer, came with 3.1 and later got upgraded to 95). I've never had any problems, not even with 98SE (it worked like a dream!). I'm using Linux out of curiosity, but I'm not liking it, it's too slow and inefficient. Maybe it's better for a server, but for a standard home/office workstation it's basically useless because Windows does the same things about 1m times better imho.

Drop my rating if you like, but that's just my opinion.

There is no reason this can't be one thread.

My opinion:

Open source has its place, but from my experience, the equivalent program that costs money is usually better. The only open source program I use is Thunderbird, since I don't like the extra stuff Outlook has. Yes, I still use IE. I admit it's not the greatest on some things and I do have Firefox to use on webpages that IE has a problem with. I tried Open Office...I found it even more annoying than Word. That is saying something.

With open source, everyone can work on a project. This can be considered its curse. Instead of a few good, well paid programmers, most projects end up with many poor programmers. It's no good. There are a few notable exceptions: Firefox, Linux, etc. but in general I prefer "closed" source.

Another thing is usability. I went to download the GIMP a while ago and couldn't find the download. Anywhere. The thing that resembled a download page literally had 50+ choices. It was terrible. I've also noticed most open source applications aren't documented as well, but again, there are exceptions.

It really depends. The problem I see is that people see open source as the solution to all of computer technology's problems. Firefox is great, even though I haven't adopted it as my main browser. Thunderbird is awesome. Linux has its place, but I don't see it as the future for a long time. Open Office...bleh. I don't know what it is, but some projects just don't seem to work as open source.

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Original post by ukdeveloper If Linux is Open Source, how do Mandrake, SuSe, and Red Hat get away with charging money for the good version of something which is called Open Source, and as such should be free?

That is the misconception of open source software, its free as in freedom of speech and not free as in free beer.
They charge money because theyre allowed to. Basically, Linux is all around GNU, and GNU is about GPL, and this license says you can charge for a GPLed software (likely, the downloading/burning into a CD cost), and these companies create Linux distros, and make a lot of effort on them, so why wouldnt they???
Besides, there are literally thousands of Linux distros, that are free, like the great slackware, or gentoo...

On the other side, I know I just voted against OS while trying to defend it, on this on-the-fly poll... hehe

Everything has better quality when a team of developers are concerned about putting food on the table. Sure, you can put out quality OSS on your own time-- but your effort is dampened by the nagging thought that your target demographic of people who embrace the concept and can contribute is greatly outweighed by the hordes of people who just want shit for free and can't find warez.

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That is the misconception of open source software, its free as in freedom of speech and not free as in free beer. They charge money because theyre allowed to. Basically, Linux is all around GNU, and GNU is about GPL, and this license says you can charge for a GPLed software (likely, the downloading/burning into a CD cost), and these companies create Linux distros, and make a lot of effort on them, so why wouldnt they??? Besides, there are literally thousands of Linux distros, that are free, like the great slackware, or gentoo... On the other side, I know I just voted against OS while trying to defend it, on this on-the-fly poll... hehe

No, "free as in freedom of speech" is what the FSF says but it's bullshit. The Open Source philosophy is not the concept of "Freedom" at all. It's the concept "public ownership" which is a synonymn for Communism. If you want to talk about freedom then the person who creates something needs to be free to do whatever they want with it. Including either giving the source code away or hiding it.

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Original post by linternet Quote: That is the misconception of open source software, its free as in freedom of speech and not free as in free beer. They charge money because theyre allowed to. Basically, Linux is all around GNU, and GNU is about GPL, and this license says you can charge for a GPLed software (likely, the downloading/burning into a CD cost), and these companies create Linux distros, and make a lot of effort on them, so why wouldnt they??? Besides, there are literally thousands of Linux distros, that are free, like the great slackware, or gentoo... On the other side, I know I just voted against OS while trying to defend it, on this on-the-fly poll... hehe No, "free as in freedom of speech" is what the FSF says but it's bullshit. The Open Source philosophy is not the concept of "Freedom" at all. It's the concept "public ownership" which is a synonymn for Communism. If you want to talk about freedom then the person who creates something needs to be free to do whatever they want with it. Including either giving the source code away or hiding it.

It's not about what the creator wants, it's about what information wants. It wants to be free, yo.

IMO, OpenSource software is simply a bi-product of capitalism gone wrong (read: the one thing capitalism can't handle by definition - a monopoly). So while it is needed (and oftentimes produces very adequate software for a majority of uses) it cannot thrive in our current society (which does not advocate the same ideologies by any means). Once it has served it's purpose (e.g. teaching the commercial software industry a lesson) it will dissipate until needed again.

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Original post by linternet The Open Source philosophy is not the concept of "Freedom" at all. It's the concept "public ownership" which is a synonymn for Communism.

Ah, I see we have aquired another mindless anti-OSS drone. I am not even going to refute or point out the utter ignorence and stupidity of what I just quoted from you.

To the original poster Genjix: Your polling method (with 2 threads) is seriously flawed and going nowhere. I suggest you tally up the votes by hand and ask one thread to be closed. I recommend closing the other one, because this one has some more discussion going on.

I'd have to say that if linternet was saying that only about the FSF, I'd agree. The FSF is more about control than actual open source software and I don't consider its licenses to be open source licences. Real OSS licences would be ones like the BSD licence.

However, I do have to disagree with control == communism. Perhaps under the Stalinist and Maoist schools of thought, but for little C communism that's completely off.

Finally, I agree with Sander. Close the other and just have a debate. If you're still counting, this is not a vote.

I've found that commercial software just tends to be of a much higher quality. OSS that I've used have loads of features, all done badly. Closed-source software however I've found might not have the feature set of some OSS, but it works far better. As soon as they start releasing closed-source software on linux is the only time that it'll take off as a large scale consumer OS.

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I am not even going to refute or point out the utter ignorence and stupidity of what I just quoted from you.

Then why bother quoting it in the first place?

This thread SUCKS.

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Original post by linternet No, "free as in freedom of speech" is what the FSF says but it's bullshit. The Open Source philosophy is not the concept of "Freedom" at all. It's the concept "public ownership" which is a synonymn for Communism. If you want to talk about freedom then the person who creates something needs to be free to do whatever they want with it. Including either giving the source code away or hiding it.

Erm, yeah. It's a shame nobody is allowed to make closed source software, isn't it? After all, the FSF don't say that you have to apply the GPL to your software for it to apply, do they? They say that the GPL applies to all software regardless of whether or not the creator wants it to. That's what they say, right?

^ sarcasm ^