Open Source Risks and Responsibilities
Linked by Mark Tolliver on Thu 13th Sep 2007 08:14 UTC
Editorial The widespread acceptance of open source continues to grow as a cost-effective alternative to traditional network deployments. Well-known projects such as Linux have proven themselves to be in the enterprise environment, helping to dispel the fear, uncertainty and doubt preceding open source implementations. In the past two years, the industry has begun to shift from a total dependence on proprietary applications to a desire for more cost-effective, scalable and collaborative solutions.
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RE: Redundant article
by TechGeek on Thu 13th Sep 2007 16:59 UTC in reply to "Redundant article"
TechGeek
Member since:
2006-01-14

You make a lot of good points. I would just like to add that I see OSS development more like art than science when it comes to incentives. There are a lot of reasons to do it. Many people get paid to do the programming. You look at the major projects and you will see that the main contributors are working for Novell or Red Hat or IBM or Sun or someone else. Why? Because it gives that company some leverage into how the project moves forward. Then there are the people who write software that is incidental to their jobs. Some system admin needs a tool that does this. He writes it as part of his job and his company allows him to open source it. Then there are the people doing it for free to make a name for themselves. Many students do this to make themselves more attractive to employers. Then there are the people who do it just because the love it. everyone has a different reason for doing it. However, in most cases I would say that there is a underlying truth that they do it more because the love it than because they expect to get paid. This probably accounts for the higher than average quality of OSS software. The only people that I harass are the ones that use OSS and think that using it is all the thanks they need to give.

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