Re: Oracle v. Google jury returns partial verdict, favoring Oracle
Date: Thu, 10 May 2012 08:58:14 +0200
Message-ID: <mr-2D89FC.08581410052012_at_News.Individual.NET>
In article <4fab0e68$1_at_news.x-privat.org>, =?UTF-8?B?UMOzbA==?= <Pól_at_not.a.chance.ie> wrote:
> >> How can Open Source be "bogus"?
>
> >> Unlike with closed software - if you don't like it, you can do something
> >> about it, at least in theory.
>
> > Which is as relevant to 99.999% of computer users as "if you don't
> > like it, you can rebuild your house from scratch" is for 99.999% of
> > house owners. Give or take :-D
>
> Which is true - the majority of people (us) aren't capable of making
> major (or even minor) changes to Open Source projects (although I was
> very proud of myself when I made a minor change to a minor project).
I once translated an IRC client to swedish! :-D
> All of which of course does *_not_* mean that Open Source is "bogus".
Just as house manufacturing isn't bogus :)
> FLOSS is what it says it is - it does what it says on the tin - it's
> open about what it is, there's no lying - you can see the bugs up-front
> - you don't have vendor lock-in.
True, but that doesn't give 99.99% of users one iota more control.
In fact, most shareware projects offer far more control to the end user, since they are developed by one person, or a small group of people, that more often than not are keen to hear about customer demand, bugs and fixes.
Open source projects are badly managed, forked constantly (if active) or desperately outdated (if interest has faded) and rarely - if ever - has one point of feedback from the users, or if they do (i.e. bugzilla and such) have so many involved that prioritization is thinly spread amongst lots of people.
For the end user, open source projects are usually a very tricky thing to get involved in. But they *are* open and there is (usually) no vendor lockin.
> As far as I'm concerned, both Linux and the *BSD's are a superior
> technical choice for servers.
No doubt. I currently run OSX on my production servers, but will migrate to Linux in a month, so I'm well aware of the strengths of both BSD and Linux in that space.
> the reason Windows is so popular is because of the multiplicity of
> apps available, but FLOSS is now matching Windows for end-user
> apps. LibreOffice is an example - I haven't booted into Windows in
> over a year.
Microsoft Office is, however, a poor horse to contend with. It's a suit of apps with a thousand features where the end user uses ten. Most contenders match those ten features and thus compete well with MS Office.
I have no idea about Libre, but I know Gimp is a very *poor* contender to Photoshop, where the userbase probably uses more than half of all the features on a daily basis
> But, again, all of this aside, none of this has an iota of an impact on
> the opinion of the OP about FLOSS being "bogus".
I can't tell you what Joel meant by that, but anyone touting open source as a feature for end users is selling snake oil. Whether a project is open source or based on open source makes exactly no impact to the end user. They can not utilize the fact that it is open source, and as described earlier, it being open source may just severely restrict the amount of control they can exercise on the project.
> I'm genuinely interested - I've never heard FLOSS called that before -
> people differing over the merits of the different packages, but "bogus"
> - never...
>
> As Frasier Crane would say, "I'm listening"...
>
> BTW, I'm a fan, not a fanatic. I make a living using Oracle which is not
> likely to open-source it's flagship database prodcut anytime soon.
I hear you.
-- Sandman[.net]Received on Thu May 10 2012 - 01:58:14 CDT