Linux Format forums

ggreaves · LXF regular Joined: Tue Apr 12, 2005 1:58 pm Posts: 124

Those of you from the old server may remember my posting about an artical in FAST's FASTtalk magazine on GNU/GPL and Opensource. The Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) has released issue 2 of their mag and once again OpenSource is in there. Here are some points raised:
1. Open Source quality is not guaranteed. Laughing

Not with the apps I use
2. There is no standard OpenSource License.
3. "Open Source products can, unwittingly, violate patents..." So can
commercialware as far as I'm concerned. Moot point.
4. Legal indemnification does not exist in OpenSource
5. Very little vendor support say from Micro$oft? Wink

6. "Its only the licence that is free." waffles on about costs for
maintenance, updates etc cost
7. "The Talented techie factor." My favourite, talks about organisations that
have built up small teams who can exploit OpenSource internally
8. 'The "compliance" factor.' Laughing

This slams Open Source vendors for
lack of knowledge on best practice, compliance standards in countries,
local liability laws.

If you are interested in the first FAST artical you can get to it via this link. Its the pdf version.

davecs · Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 5:00 pm Post subject: RE: FAST Reviews OpenSource

FAST = Federation against software theft.

So why do they want to steal code from the people and give it to the big corporations they represent?

They are right. Opensource is rubbish, second rate software. Consider the evidence:

Commercial Software is released when commercial conditions dictate. OS software is released in two stages. One for testing, one when ready. Yet linux boxes full of testing software stay up longer than Windows computers full of commercial apps.

OS software? Hah! I mean look at the list:

Open Office, Firefox, Konqueror, Scribus, KDE, Gnome, Linux Kernel, Kino, Gnucash, Rosegarden, Audacity, MPlayer, to name a few. Would you want that rubbish running on your computer.

FAST? They catch on a bit SLOW if you ask me!
_________________

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guy · Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 10:54 pm Post subject: RE: FAST Reviews OpenSource

The problems with open source all apply to proprietary software too. Even Microsoft have open-sourced some code, and they didn't do that for charity.

Free software (as in speech) is dogged by few of these problems.
_________________
Cheers,
Guy
The eternal noob

ggreaves · LXF regular Joined: Tue Apr 12, 2005 1:58 pm Posts: 124

ggreaves · LXF regular Joined: Tue Apr 12, 2005 1:58 pm Posts: 124

Oddly enough, the company that did the artical for fast, have another artical on their website heaping praise for the OpenSource ethos. They actually null the first point (see first posting) of the FAST artical.

I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic davecd, but stealing software? I don't think many OSPs, some who work for commercial companies, knowingly do that. The clever commercial companies have clauses in employee's contracts to state that the code they produce belongs to the company and there is also the confidentiality clause (this one is in my contract).

The legit OpenSource and GNU/GPL projects do their best to ensure they don't use patented code. This does highlight the down side of patenting code.

davecs