Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on March 15, 2007 04:50 AM
While I suspect you are correct about the unaddressed, and serious, issues in many widely used programs, I think you make a fundamental error in comparing FOSS(Free and Open Source Software) to proprietary software on a quality basis. The benefits of FOSS do not primarily lie in their greater security or quality, but in the lack of lock-in and greater verifiability.
With a proprietary program, if the vendor chooses not to fix something, you as a user have no recourse; if the program's data format is proprietary, you may not even be able to use an entirely different program without re-entering all your data. This is never the case with FOSS, no matter what happens. This is a CRITICAL benefit, and one that is unaffected by the quality or lack thereof of the software.
When it is necessary to be sure of what a program does, in detail, FOSS is a big winner; with proprietary software, you can never be sure what it does, or what it might do later. With FOSS, you can hire independent reviewers to examine what you will be running, and ensure it does only what is intended.
Finally, you seem to confuse a common organizational model used to produce much FOSS code with the licensing system itself; they are not the same. FOSS can, and often has, been developed by a small, paid team, including dedicated testers.
(On a side note, (maybe another commenter can expand on this) you don't seem to have considered that the bugs you are reporting, as important as they are, may also be very difficult to solve, and may simply be beyond the skills, or available time, of the developers who have read your reports. The solution to this, of course, is to find developers who do have the skills/time to implement patches for your reports. How to do this? Pay someone, or wait.)
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Comparison is misplaced
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on March 15, 2007 04:50 AMWith a proprietary program, if the vendor chooses not to fix something, you as a user have no recourse; if the program's data format is proprietary, you may not even be able to use an entirely different program without re-entering all your data. This is never the case with FOSS, no matter what happens. This is a CRITICAL benefit, and one that is unaffected by the quality or lack thereof of the software.
When it is necessary to be sure of what a program does, in detail, FOSS is a big winner; with proprietary software, you can never be sure what it does, or what it might do later. With FOSS, you can hire independent reviewers to examine what you will be running, and ensure it does only what is intended.
Finally, you seem to confuse a common organizational model used to produce much FOSS code with the licensing system itself; they are not the same. FOSS can, and often has, been developed by a small, paid team, including dedicated testers.
(On a side note, (maybe another commenter can expand on this) you don't seem to have considered that the bugs you are reporting, as important as they are, may also be very difficult to solve, and may simply be beyond the skills, or available time, of the developers who have read your reports. The solution to this, of course, is to find developers who do have the skills/time to implement patches for your reports. How to do this? Pay someone, or wait.)
--DifferentAnonymousReader
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