Open Source:
Is it always free.The common terminology of open source refers to software that is offered for free for public personal or business use.
Who contributes
The creation of these products are usually a wide collaboration of people that work together in their personal time. Large projects may require the work of hundreds of people and they may receive small donations of users of the product. The open source projects can be found online and are always in need of help
Products offered and why Pay?
The most common software that is available are Unix and Linux distributions. According to market research it has a little bit under a 5% market share. With its competitors as the giant Microsoft and the fancy Apple. They also provide server distribution and they recieve a lot more attention than personal OS. With Linux distributions such as Red Hat theres is a long list of software for them. Such as Gimp which is a photoshop and Open Office for normal writing uses. The list is endless
Source: MarketResearch
Source: MarketResearch
So with all of these options what keeps up from using the alternatives.
Almost everything now a day can be found for free either online or from an extra cd that your neighbor has bought. Yes there are various copyright laws and many infringements, but I do not know one person who does not download music. So the question is how far are you willing to take it. There are endless torrent websites that contain Adobe Master Suite to movies in theaters and etc. If you want something you will be able to find for free. While it is true that paying for a product allows you to redeem services, technical help and warranty which is necessary for companies. For personal use I pay for a very minimum of the software I use whether it is under a free trial license or just open source software such as notepad++.
After reading your article I was amazed at how small the market share for open source software is -- just under 5 percent. I even found that fact hard to believe given how good these open source software actually are. In my opinion some are even better than or very competitive to their commercial counterparts. For instance, Gimp vs. Photoshop, Open Office vs. MS Office, Ubuntu Desktop vs. Windows, etc. I agree that paid software competes better than open source software in the consumer market. But in the server market, I think open source software dominates. One example is the LAMP stack, which stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/PERL and it is widely used all over the world.
ReplyDeleteI really liked your post, but I think you assumed an entirely free computer basically, free operating system and free applications. However, there are also many free applications that run on operating systems that aren't free. There are plenty of software out there that runs on OSX and Windows that are also free versions of expensive software. You gave the example of Open Office vs. Microsoft Office, but in your article it seemed to assume that Open Office is only a Linux program which it is not. I have Open on my Mac OSX and it runs great. Not to say your post wasn't informative, but I think the reader may get the wrong impression. Overall, great post and who knows maybe I was the only person who saw it that way.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your post! You summed up the whole of open source software very well. I see you mentioned Linux distributions specifically, and I agree these need more attention.They provide a means for having an operating system on your entire network for free, with tech support available from the community. People are timid in learning new things, so Windows stays the mainstay. Good post, although the random font sizes made it difficult to read, especially the last paragraph.
ReplyDeleteYo man:
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I like the title you come up with. In this post, it is very informative and nice experience you have on the Linux. I am also one of big fans on Linux. The most amazing thing I learnt in Linux is about its security. “ Walls and flexible file access permission systems prevent access by unwanted visitors or viruses. " When I was using Windows, I always got trouble with system crush and update problems, but after I used Mac, every single problem about system crush has gone. By the way, very good English writing skills and technical writing. Also best blog I has reviewed in this week.
Hi Patrick,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your post. The way you changed different size of the text in each paragraph was cool. The post is very informative and readable. As open source is now stable, usable, low cost or even free, most small business and start-up companies with low budget currently are using open source software. In addition, because of the rate of being hacked between an open-source and commercial software is the same, so why people have to pay a lot of money for the paid ones. I would say "YES" to support the open-source community because it is our future.
Overall, everything is good. I like the way you put the link reference in the middle of the post. So far, there is not much students doing this, yet it is a minimum requirement for a paper research.