Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on March 11, 2007 10:43 AM
"...for many applications, it makes more sense for organizations with scarce resources and tight budgets to purchase software from a vendor they hold accountable for keeping the software up to date..."
What is this "accountability" that the bean counters are always yammering about, anyway? The license terms for proprietary software are such that you can't sue them for bugs, up to and including the stuff not working at all or being fit for your intended use. And if the vendor is more than mom-&-pop size, they'll deal with it based on their perception of how important the bug is, and how important you are to them. So any notion of "support" from software vendors is a delusion. And you have no recourse if the product's no good.
Free software ("open source" is a mealy-mouthed term representing an attempt at a political compromise-- let's stick to words that make sense) is of variable quality, depending on the project. In that way it's no different than the commercial stuff. The best have better community responsiveness to bugs than most commercial software firms I've dealt with, and I've dealt with almost all the big 'uns over the decades.
There are niches where proprietary vendors still provide better products. For example I don't think I'd run a semiconductor company's manufacturing systems on free software. But if I were starting a small to medium business, I would have few needs that couldn't be met by free software, besides possibly CRM.
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Re:Excellent point!
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on March 11, 2007 10:43 AMWhat is this "accountability" that the bean counters are always yammering about, anyway? The license terms for proprietary software are such that you can't sue them for bugs, up to and including the stuff not working at all or being fit for your intended use. And if the vendor is more than mom-&-pop size, they'll deal with it based on their perception of how important the bug is, and how important you are to them. So any notion of "support" from software vendors is a delusion. And you have no recourse if the product's no good.
Free software ("open source" is a mealy-mouthed term representing an attempt at a political compromise-- let's stick to words that make sense) is of variable quality, depending on the project. In that way it's no different than the commercial stuff. The best have better community responsiveness to bugs than most commercial software firms I've dealt with, and I've dealt with almost all the big 'uns over the decades.
There are niches where proprietary vendors still provide better products. For example I don't think I'd run a semiconductor company's manufacturing systems on free software. But if I were starting a small to medium business, I would have few needs that couldn't be met by free software, besides possibly CRM.
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