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Alright everyone, I'm going to see Richard Stallman speak next week and as many of you probably know he is very radical for the open source software movement. I'm wondering, with you being a programmer, your thoughts on open source software. Are you for it? Against? or in the middle? Explain...
Now I agree with Stallman to some level... However, I don't think his theory would be totally functional... i mean open source software is good, but I can't see that many programmers programming for no profit.
I voted for, as I believe in it, but I also strongly believe an individual or company should be able to build closed source software as well. Up to the individual or company...everyone has a choice. That's what I believe (I've done both), not what Stallman does. Saw him a few years ago...he reminded me of the aggressively drunken guy at any given bar...you're pretty sure he's not going to jump you, but you keep an eye on him anyway.
You can include the source in the software bundle. Offer paid support, there are lots of ways one could profit off open source. Open Source and Free Software are two different models depending on the creators intent.
Commonly used libraries should be open source, applications (freeware and shareware/ the sort) should also be open source, but if you are selling it for money it should be paid software.
So, my ideology doesn't really fit into either category...
I use open source as much as I can. I've written some in the past. A dinky little bootstrap program I wrote five years ago still ships on every Ubuntu CD; that's kinda cool.
I've seen a fair amount of proprietary code that's absolute crap. But no one expected anyone else to see it and figured the job was done "good enough." Open source, if nothing else, puts good enough under the scrutiny of many eyes. It's really hard to argue with that.
In historical terms, open source is the Renaissance; closed source is the guild system that stifled Europe for half a millennium.
I think Open-Source is a huge movement, not just for software, but as an example of what can be accomplished collectivity instead of through competition. I think the more areas of the commercial sector and society could benefit from these ideas and examples of how collaborative efforts can yield products rivaling and even surpassing the quality of products developed through competition and profit motive.
As a programmer I intend to do a lot of work as open source, but at the end of the day I see myself developing closed source application as my main source of income. I think open source is a good concept, but I also think there are some applications better developed commercially, and I also think that the profit opportunity for open source projects is less than ideal.
But is that entirely true? If you consider the scope of some open source projects I would say that collaboration has almost surpassed competition in one sense. I do admit that these efforts will never surpass the profit motive, but considering the nature of the open source beast the fact that you can have a limitlessly large number of contributors fixes can almost be implemented with this software.
I do agree with you however KYA, I think that profit and competition ultimately win out. Most contributors that are worth their salt for these projects deserve to be paid, and that is why I still believe in closed source.
Because i am in the beginning of my programmer career, i am absolutely for opensource programs..
But i can not say, if it will change in future..
Generally os is a great thing, so everyone can use programs they need to use, without paying a big prize for it. I also think at the express editions form microsoft! Without these programs we would have a lot less programmers over all!
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27 Jan, 2009 - 06:23 PM
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