Magmarock: That's fair enough. I think my philosophy is a little more pragmatic though. Specially it's based on capitalism and results.
Capitalism isn't inherently more pragmatic. The jury is still out of what works best (my intuition is that its a mix of capitalism and other things) and I don't think we'll have an answer on this one within our lifetime.
Magmarock: Open source is fair enough but only if it achieves the desired results for both the user and the product.
The product has no result expectation, only the end-user. The product is a means to an end.
Magmarock: Source code is the fruit of labor for both professional programs and industry leaders.
It's a programmer-led effort, but industry leaders have gradually opted in over the years as it has proven a winning model.
Magmarock: Members of the Linux community are notorious for not only preferring open source but down right despising closed source software.
I think the Linux community is quite a mix of people. I think the majority prefers the system layer to be open-source, yes.
Magmarock: Some of the more fanatical members fit into what is called the FOSS (Free and open source software) community. These guys enrage me because they remind me of communists. They will bully software developers for not going the open source rout and pressure others to do the same.
My eyes are glazing over your mention of communism there. It's very 1950s.
Anyways, I've never felt bullied about using only open-source.
Magmarock: This is not only unethical it’s downright disgusting. It’s up to the people who own the source code to decided weather or not they want to share it and if the answer is no they should be left alone.
I have mixed feelings about this. They should be allowed to profit from it for a time and control its distribution, but ultimately, some of this software is a common heritage and should be preserved for future generations (especially games and things that are closer to the arts).
Magmarock: Were the Linux desktop distros come into this is that they react to the closed source industry. Often you’ll hear things such as “such and such company or entity doesn’t play nicely with open source” This is putting the cart before the hours. It’s Linux that doesn’t play nicely with closed source software not the other way around.
It's kind of the other way around.
Linux has played nice with Windows for years. Linux recognized the Windows file system years before the reverse finally happened. Take it from someone who ran a dual boot for a couple of years before fully transitioning to Linux.
See it that way: Linux and the gnu ecosystem is a community, not a company. For Linux to support something, you just need a couple of devs with time to put in the elbow work to support it, assuming they are legally allowed to.
If memory serves, I believe one guy had to reverse-engineer the samba protocol (Windows) to support it in Linux. That's quite a lot of work I assure you. Same thing for a lot of proprietary GPUs out there. The vendors don't want to do any work to support Linux and don't want to release the specs. It's up to the community to reverse-engineer those specs and make compatible open-source drivers.
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Magmarock: I’m not convinced that open source is a good idea for an operating system because it hasn’t really amounted to anything. The best thing to come from Linux was Android but that it locked down and tightly controlled by Google.
Says a desktop user in relation to his personal machine.
Magmarock: Whether it’s the result of bad code or no one putting it to good use, Linux distros stand as a prime example of how open source when taken to the extreme results in a whole lot of free bread that no one in their right mind would want to eat.
Do you have money in the stock market? Then, I suggest you take it out right now before those badly programmed Linux servers come crashing down...
In fact, you should refrain from using ~70% of web sites on the internet, never search again on Google, don't go on wikipedia, don't order anything from Amazon ever again and shop extremely carefully for your next router (because according to your claim, most of them contain very baaaad software).
Good luck, let me know how that works out for you.
Magmarock: Yes you are. Being cheap is a bad thing. Who wants to be George Costanza from Seinfeld? If you can afford a decent computer you can affored decent software. I prioritize software on its quality, not on how cheap it is. If it happens to be free, that’s a bonus.
Who can afford those Windows server licenses at 1k a pop or those Oracle licenses at 30k a pop?
What you are saying is that small and medium-sized businesses are a bad because they can't afford all those pricey licenses?
How about devs who work on home projects and don't want to fork in 30k for an Oracle license on a 50k-100k yearly salary?
And how about that device manufacturer that wants to sell devices 45$ a pop to third-world countries and don't want to attach an extra 50$-100$ for a proprietary OS?
Magmarock: Because it’s your code and your property. Even without source code you can still modify programs and games. Not as much as you could if you had source code but it can still be done. Having the source often isn’t necessary just to get something to work. Simply changing a few dll files is all you need to get a few old games work. Is how gog gets their older games to work. It’s how Fear got patched too.
Me, myself and I. Mine. What I want... such an egoistic language. The individual is a grain of sand in a very large sand castle you know...
Ok, what if I need a library to do some simple thing, it takes me a week to code it.
Realistically, I won't be able to sell it, because the next dev will just implement his own rather than pay money for it.
So, maybe 50 different devs who have a need to the exact same piece of software could re-implement the same thing 50 times, each of them keeping it to themselves. At a party, they can all talk about how they all implemented the same thing. Wonderful...
Say instead, when I implement it, I open-source it. Maybe 50 other devs use it instead of spending a week of their time coding their own.
Some devs will find and report bugs, some devs will improve it. By the time 1000 devs have touched it, maybe 2 man-years have gone into improving the code and everybody is benefiting from it.
That's how open-source works buddy and that's why companies like Walmart are open-sourcing some of their stuff.
Magmarock: I don’t really understand what you’re saying here, but I’ll just say the reason companies do make things for Linux is because it’s not profitable.
That's a bold claim. A slew of companies are contribution to the Linux ecosystem.
They are finding their usage of Linux most profitable I assure you.
Magmarock: Those are just open source projects not operating systems. In fact Linux is kernel and not an operating system itself. I like to think of Linux as the Unity engine. Because it’s free, anyone can use it and its’ often used to make tones and tones of crap. Just like Unity.
It's also used to power most of the internet.
