Myths of Open Source
Over pizza and beer the other day, Kevin, Jeff and I were discussing how good or evil Open Source Software (OSS) is.
As it happens often when we discuss stuff, there were 3 different opinions. We had the full spectrum, from OSS is evil and it’s going to kill our profession, to OSS raises the bar for everyone the users will benefit from it (my opinion).
There was no clear conclusion as some of us needed more time to come up with a rebuttal. We’ll finish the conversation next time we go over to Kapp’s or something.
Meanwhile, there was an article on CIO today that sort of reinforces my opinion (hey, this is my blog, I get to quote some articles and ignore others).
The article, as the name implies, talks about the myths of open source, 5 myths to be exact. The first myth is the one we were discussing:
Myth 1 - The attraction is the price tag
Fact: No so:
“It’s about doing our jobs effectively—and we’re willing to pay quite a bit for that. We want stable software that does what it says it will do.”
Or in other words, come up with a better solution than the free one, and people will pay for it. That’s what I mean when I say “raising the bar”.