What is Digg?48 Comments
- coredump0x01, on 10/12/2007, -2/+35Easy, They use pirated Linux.
- MeatBiProduct, on 10/12/2007, -4/+31I feel punished everyday I have to use MySQL, PHP, and Apache - o man since they are free they just feel so cheap and crappy.
//end sarcasm.
only some noob tool that doesn't belong on an IT staff would say he feels undervalued if they didn't pay $50,000 for IBM Websphere and a microsoft active directory server or whatever other software package you can think of.
its all how you apply it.
would i use an open source app instead of photoshop? not until it tops photoshop - would I use IIS or Websphere? Not until it tops Apache. - geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+28If Linux is so terrible then why is Microsoft playing catchup with Google, a Linux shop? With their expensive Linux setup, how do they somehow maintain profitability?
- tapo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18What? Why would anti-americanism drive them to spend years producing a report showing that open-source is better? Not only does it not make sense considering that Microsoft is the employer of thousands of Europeans, but key players in the Linux market (IBM, Red Hat, Novell) are American too.
- schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17Recommendations include:
"Avoid lifelong vendor lock-in in educational systems by teaching students skills, not specific applications; encourage participation in FLOSS-like communities."
"Encourage partnerships between large firms, SMEs and the FLOSS community."
"Provide equitable tax treatment for FLOSS creators: FLOSS software contributions can be treated as charitable donations for tax purposes. Where this is already possible, spread awareness among firms, contributors and authorities." - schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -7/+22It's Free as in freedom. It's a privilege. They should feel like they are being punished if the employer insists that they get shackled to convicted monopolists.
- PhireN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15I Think your seeing things, I didn't see anything anti-american, perhaps you're just paranoid. Besides Europeans make proprietary software too, just because I can't think of any right now, doesn't mean they don't exist.
- honeymonster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Why do some American's get all hot under the collar when the EU says that a repeatedly convicted monopolist, convicted by American’s own courts, isn’t perhaps the best or only choice of software vendor? Hell if you want to be repeatedly forced to spend $400 every couple of years on a new OS/Office suite go right ahead, we’re not stopping you! Due to constant moving around I've switch to OpenOffice as it's only 90MB and fits on a USB thumbdrive. It's actually quite good.
- coredump0x01, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13Because when you're rolling out software for 2000+ systems, free is always better. Closed source usually costs money for both initial deployment and future upgrades, which is not a savory option if you're wanting to keep IT costs down.
- Stonekeeper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9There is nothing wrong with paying for software, i do it all the time. However, free does not just equal gratis. I pay for software I can modify, change, improve and adapt to our organisation's needs. It also has great sustainability. These benefits are worth more than the cost of the software whether that be expensive or free. It just so happens that a lot of people are generous and that you're not only getting all the benefits I just listed, but you are getting them at no cost too (for an extreme example of the opposite of this, I bought Sonar 6 which not only cost me a lot of money, I get none of the benefits listed previously and I had to agree to a EULA that prevents me from even selling the software after I'm done with it!). Price is a secondary issue.
- estvir, on 10/12/2007, -8/+14Here is a serious and honest question:
Why do people 'deserve' free (Open source) software ? Or what is so wrong with closed source ? Or, is it just that people still have the silly inherent hate for Microsoft* from the 90s and therefore and for some reason associate all closed source software with Microsoft and believe that they're the devil and software should be free ?
* I only put in Microsoft so the question sort of makes more sense, I don't really care too much about Microsoft specific and it was just an example so I don't want to hear any of the generic FUD posted on here about Microsoft.
Open source is great and I use many things (Open/FreeBSD for servers, Firefox, Evolution, etc) but I don't mind paying for software, just like I don't mind paying for video games, clothes and books - all of them have various people, who are employed, responsible for these products/services being available to me.
.. or, maybe it's just that my view on people feeling/thinking they 'deserve' to not pay for software is skewed from being on Digg, /. and elsewhere too much. :o - coredump0x01, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I occasionally pay for games too, even though I don't usually have much money to spend on such things it's a way of saying thank you for supporting Linux gaming. Same goes for FOSS projects, I try to donate as much as I can. There's not much proprietary software I use anymore that's not free-of-charge, but if a company made some killer app for Linux and I had the money I'd buy it if I needed the app. What I'm saying is there's nothing wrong with paying for software if you think the company deserves your support, and FOSS users are not just blind freeloaders. There are just more ways to give back to FOSS then monetary support like code, providing support to others who are new to the software, maintaining docs and wiki's, testing software, helping with distribution, and helping spread the word that free alternatives exist. Which honestly is more rewarding on a personal level then just throwing money at some faceless corporation, It's all about how you choose to show your support.
- jcaino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6my job involves working with FreeBSD all day long.
i am tickled pink that i do not have to bother with windows any longer. - estvir, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8You didn't answer my question, I'm not questioning why not paying for something is good (Hell, I love free things as much as the next guy) in relation to finance but the 'ethics' or whatever.
Please read my post though it seems I'm being dugg down by people for an honest question which really makes me want to be more of a FOSS advocate. I thought the question may be un-welcome since it appears anti-FOSS but if you want more people to follow you expect questions like this and simply ignoring the person or insulting them isn't going to work too well for your cause. :( - TwistMyArm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Yep, just like you can sue MS if something goes wrong. Naturally, they'll throw the EULA back in your face and you won't get anything, but hey, at least you can sue.
The 'who will you sue' argument is pretty old, we need something new here! Name me one closed source company that will allow an ordinary person to sue them if something goes wrong and I'll take that back.
The thing I like about support from open source companies is that with a fair number of them if you need 'hard core' help, it's quite possible that you'll end up talking to the actual developer who wrote it. In the company where I work, even the person taking the support call can't talk to the developers directly! - crunchyeyeball, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@PhireN
"SAP is the third largest software company in the world. It ranks after Microsoft, IBM, in terms of market capitalization. SAP is also the largest business application and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution software provider in terms of revenue."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_AG - grumpyrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"Unfortunately I'm in quite a mix up using the .Net Framework for development (which I think is excellent) yet having to use a Windows/IIS box (Apache would be preferable), but you win some you lose some eh."
Or you can win on both fronts. Mod mono should be able to get it running on Apache.
(http://www.mono-project.com/Mod_mono) - bealer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5@MeatBiProduct
Spot on. I'm exactly the same. I use whatever suites the job the most.
Paying for software isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's paying for bad software, when there are better alternatives (free or not). Closed source isn't necessarily bad either, you only have to look at something like Opera to see that it can work.
Unfortunately I'm in quite a mix up using the .Net Framework for development (which I think is excellent) yet having to use a Windows/IIS box (Apache would be preferable), but you win some you lose some eh. - zoxed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3In case you do not RTFA the summary may make more sense if you see a little more of the quote: "Our findings show that, in almost all cases, a transition towards open source [produces] savings in the long-term cost of ownership." i.e. he is talking about the *long-term* TCO, which, of course, greatly reduces the cost of migration and support/user re-training.
- coolmos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Link to the report:
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ict/policy/doc/2006-11-20-flossimpact.pdf
Warning ! This is a pdf !
Rishab rules - sirius889, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Maybe if all that you need is an over glorified word processor?"
What tiny percentage of MS Office customers actually need anything more than a good word processor? Most people buy it because they think they need it, when they are actually just buying into the myth that MS Word is the only way to use industry standard files. - dogStar, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Europeans are not anti-american. We just resent the fact that you guys voted for that idiot of a president of yours twice!
- cryptoknight, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2i don't know i work for a fortune 100 company and almost everything here is OS, as far as support that's why we hire c, c++ programmers and *nix guru's we are our own support and if that were to fail there is always red hat or novel to contact. Staff training is moot actually do you train staff to use every feature of Microsoft office or do you train them how to communicate with your business and systems? hand coded customizations exist everywhere in the form of custom stationary or some silly little program for HR everyone does that OS or not.
- jae1227, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"Secondly it said some workers may feel undervalued if they are required to work with free software."
I could see it if you are a graphic designer and the company you work for gives you GIMP instead of Photoshop. GIMP has less features than Photoshop but OpenOffice can do everything the Microsoft crap can. Firefox is cool because the open source browser is safer than the proprietary one. - diggeasytiger, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6cause people are fools.. they think because something isn't free... it is not as good on some abstract level... kinda like its too good to be true.
Well... folks.... its real! - Misesean, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Europeans have sometimes always been bitter that the American culture took off and now they are the leaders of the world."
What do you mean by that? "The American culture" pretty much up and died in 1861. - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1MS software isn't all that bad any more but it isn't all that good either. We should be working towards OSS in the long run and that starts at school. Apple and MS understand this, schools don't use what is used in business, business uses what their staff have been taught in school. By gaining access to this market we will be in a position to get more widespread adoption throughout business. Then again in Europe we are winning this argument, even the brain dead political system here in the UK is starting to see it.
It doesn't even have to be political, we can and should save tax payers money by moving to OSS. - addicted68098, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1A lot of office apps are moddeled after the microsoft counter part, and for highend things like databases or network management systems open source almost always trumps propreitery software, mostly because of the fact that the source code is open and can be altered for any situation.
- hobbs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@ dankers:
You talk as if the US has never subsidized any of their own corporations. They have and the subsidies even been deemed illegal by the WTO.
pdf I'm afraid: http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2006/february/tradoc_127478.pdf
from the doc: "The EU challenged the ETI regime
before the WTO in 2000. In August 2001 a WTO Panel found that under the Agreement on
Subsidies and Countermeasures the ETI constituted a prohibited export subsidy "
"The EU was subsequently authorised by the WTO in May 2003 to impose sanctions in
the form of duties on up to US $ 4 billion worth of US exports"
"The EU estimates that Boeing has received about US
$1.6 billion in illegal subsidies under the FSC/ETI for the period of 1995-2005."
As I understand it, the airbus subsidies are in the form of repayable loans for development work and actually not illegal (yet?) in the eyes of the WTO.
To say that only European socialist governments try to protect their companies in this way is simply incorrect. - polymorphist, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3"Open source almost always cheaper option"
The title makes me laugh...well, duh...thank you for telling us "1+1=2" - wzzrd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Lobster: millions of *your* money, mate, make no mistake about mine ;)
- Lobster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1While MS are able to spend millions (of our money) persuading us how inexpensive they are . . .
Good penguins are providing real solutions to impoverished communities
For example a 10 PC cybercafe for $50
http://digg.com/linux_unix/Ten_computer_cybercafe_for_30UKP_or_about_60_USD - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nothing wrong with paying for software. There are still areas where we haven't been able to match/better the proprietary opposition and there is nothing wrong with paying for software there where capable OSS solutions do not exist. Hell there is nothing wrong with paying for OSS. The only point is that at least the majority of software is best developed in an OSS environment and no-one should accept proprietary where it does, to do otherwise is just cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Of course there's the retraining issue which is why getting acceptance in education is so important. I know my CS department runs all their servers on Linux on UltraSPARC boxes so that's a start. Interestingly they also support the rest of the Universities servers which the University insisted had to be MS boxes, it would have been easier and wouldn't have cost much if any more to go all MS but they went Linux anyway. - qbyte, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2"OpenOffice can do everything the Microsoft crap can"
That is either an intentional lie or spoken out of ignorance. I don't like Microsoft bloatware but open office has a long way to go before it can be said that it does EVERYTHING that Microsoft office does. Maybe if all that you need is an over glorified word processor?
One example ... Open Office can not share documents and track changes using a share point portal or any open sourced solution.
Another example ... Open Office has no email client that interface properly with Exchange. I hear mumbles saying "that's because it's a Microsoft product". My response is that you're right but where's the Open Office answer to Exchange email? There is none. - lordTalus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It's just like anything else in business/IT. If you have competent IT personnel who know what they are doing, you can save money and time with OSS. If you have one guy in your office who happens to think open source software is neato, and wants to replace domnio/exchange with sendmail...then toby might be in over his head. One guy, no support contracts and 200 people who can't read their email...is not a pretty site. At least with proprietary software you can point your finger at someone else. If you can support it...go for it.
- dankers, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Europeans have sometimes always been bitter that the American culture took off and now they are the leaders of the world.
Goes on at a lot of old countries where they pride themselves on their past but have nothing useful to provide to the world but living off the fruits of their ancestors and former colonies.
Of course the EU(U.S.A. v.2) with their socialist approach to a lot of things should be expected to compete with anything that has America written on it; its own their own peoples interest to make stronger their government for the people much like it is in the U.S. but we take care of ourselves more of the time without all the socialized programs.
Look at what they are doing with the airline industry with Airbus in the E.U. by all the government funding just to keep the company afloat and spread employment throughout the countries; but Airbus not doing that great and they are losing millions a year if not billions. - ozziek, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I use whatever does the job - if that is commercial so be it. We mix commercial (MS) and open source (MySQL) at work. Open source hacks me off with it's (in most cases) ridiculous install procedures although it's getting better. Why you can't just click setup.exe instead of unzipping files, mounting volumes, running command prompts is beyond me. Also open source developers need to take a course in design. Traffic lights are old and should NOT be used in 21st applications and THINK about the GUI of your applications! Don't try to re-invent the GUI because YOU think it should work differently to every other app out there!
- richwalkup, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I have actually come to find that IIS 6 on Server 2003 with .NET apps performs far better than apache and PHP in my tests. Stability is sometimes questionable but it's almost always related to poorly written code somewhere in the app. I love apache, but setting up and running mono hasn't yielded the same results as using IIS for me.
- fatdog789, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4OS is almost always cheaper...
except when you need support
except when you need to train the staff
except when you need to hand-code customizations because there isn't already a free program to do that.
In sum, OS is always cheaper, except for most business uses...
I can understand OS being used in non-profit, government, and school systems, but OS doesn't work in the business world for way too many reasons, not the least of which is the liability and inefficiency of having to maintain your own software systems. - qbyte, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3Open source is cheaper in the short run but much more expensive in the long run. You don't get as many needed features with open source software and you get poor support that you will likely have to pay extra for from people who did not write the software.
I'm all for open source software as an alternative but it's irresponsible to say that they are better in any way than commercial software. - Dren129, on 10/12/2007, -13/+8"Secondly it said some workers may feel undervalued if they are required to work with free software."
I'm so sad now. - tybris, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2That is... untill things go madly wrong, then you suddenly have no one to sue.
- jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -11/+5Microsofts software isn't that bad, Windows XP has matured into a good product as has Office 2003. It's the cost of upgrading to their new products and training on them that makes Free and Open Source Software a better alternative for business. That said there are some companies that are to small to develop their own software and are running third party proprietary software specific to their industry that makes switching an impossibility... sad as that may be...
- kdehead, on 10/12/2007, -10/+2for the record, i'm a european. just saying that any report coming out of the unelected european commission you should take with an enormous pinch of salt. it is by nature a political body, dedicated to setting up a european superpower in competition with america. it does the open source cause no good to be celebrating the fact that an unelected political body has said that we're better than microsoft. what next? jump up and down celebrating that fact that the iranians are moving to debian?
- Craptain, on 10/12/2007, -12/+3Somebody call the whaaaaaaambulance
- sfacets, on 10/12/2007, -15/+3Did any one else read 'OC' instead of 'EC'? I thought there was actually something worth reading about the OC for once... oh well, maybe one day.
- joepaterno, on 10/12/2007, -21/+3Go ahead and mod down the only sensible comment I've read so far. If you people don't think that the EC has other motives, you are fools.
- kdehead, on 10/12/2007, -29/+3hey, i'm as pro-open source as the rest of you guys, but when i see that the report was written by the "united nations university" , my eyes just glossed over and i just see yet more anti-americanism, which is endemic in Europe. this report is just another way of saying "america bad, europe good".
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