What is Digg?275 Comments
- tastypickles, on 10/12/2007, -33/+139Because not enough companies are run by teenagers.
- bluenullity, on 10/11/2007, -15/+106Lack of 24/7 support, lack of time tested features.
- heartcoldfusion, on 10/11/2007, -7/+45Ding ding ding ding we have a winner. Anyone who's ever had a deadline where they have 8 different people breathing down their necks and they can't get it done because they don't have support on a piece of software they neither chose nor wanted knows how bad it sucks. At least with proprietary, you know you have support on the software you didn't choose.
- 4degrees, on 10/11/2007, -4/+34The company needs an actual physical being/entity to blame when the software fails. That is the REAL reason. Companies are about maximizing profit while minimizing liability.
- GorfTron, on 10/10/2007, -3/+30Managers want to have CYA for when something breaks. Nobody wants to explain to the VP that their freeware application crashed at 3AM. Better to blame Oracle and IBM and get them on the phone.
- oSiBo, on 10/10/2007, -2/+28Open-source is insecure heh ?
"As a cryptography and computer security expert, I have never understood the current fuss about the open source software movement. In the cryptography world, we consider open source necessary for good security; we have for decades. Public security is always more secure than proprietary security. It's true for cryptographic algorithms, security protocols, and security source code. For us, open source isn't just a business model; it's smart engineering practice."
Bruce Schneier, Crypto-Gram 1999/09/15 - notthemama, on 10/10/2007, -2/+27The title is a bit misleading. I'm a fan of open source, but I thought I was going to read an article about valid reasons a company might choose against open source. It came across more like a sales ad.
- dynacrylic, on 10/11/2007, -7/+30"Uhhh... Actually, I'd like to jump in and take that one Jimmy, If you don't mind...
Recent research has shown that empirical evidence for globalization of corporate innovation is very limited and as a corollary the market for technologies is shrinking. As a world leader, it's important ... to provide systematic research grants for our scientists. I believe strongly there will always be a need for us to have a well articulated innovation policy with emphasis on [open source]. Thank you"
Earmuffs! - JakeBo, on 10/11/2007, -4/+26The way I see it companies shy away from open source software for a few major reasons. Number 1 being qualified admins. Almost every college and university has programs that are built around MCSE and proprietary software products. The other major reason is interaction with suppliers and clients. If you and your client are using the same software it becomes easy to transfer information back and forth, this builds stronger relationships and generates more revenue.
- sacherjj, on 10/10/2007, -2/+22Can you tell me where I find those free employees to support and maintain things, because I have a kick ass business model where I get paid and my workers support systems for free.
- kahrn, on 10/11/2007, -2/+19Correct me if I'm wrong, but the article states that the main driver for open source is the price tag. Yet in the Enterprise, open source software is mostly paid for, no? (RHEL, Novell, etc..)
- WakeUpToFreedom, on 10/10/2007, -7/+24Blame....you cant blame the makers of free software.
- boxybrzown, on 10/10/2007, -3/+19The opposite argument is also true. Closed-source code is more likely to be insecure because it is not open to public scrutiny.
Diebold has proved this a number of times. - Treshnell, on 10/11/2007, -4/+19I would guess that if something goes wrong with your software, you have someone specific to sue when you use proprietary. Who do you sue if you use open source? SourceForge?
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -3/+17MS doesn't make the only proprietary crap in the world. Ever heard of Apple, or Adobe?
- techik, on 10/10/2007, -9/+22Actually, most companies would be better off if they were run by teenagers. They would have a clue about where the future is going to be. We were forced to move from UNIX/Oracle to Windows/SQL server because we got a new CIO. Even the consultants said it was a bad idea and costly since the whole dept had expertise in UNIX/Oracle. The company will never recoup the cost of retraining us and the expensive migration project or the $ we spent on the most expensive SANS $ can buy because the idiot was scared his plan might backfire in terms of system performance. So give me a @##@ teenager any day. Probably easier to reason a with teenager than a MS whore.
- strictnein, on 10/10/2007, -2/+15"Support and maintenance of Open Source is also free."
Searching newsgroups and google != support. - vault, on 10/10/2007, -5/+18No it wouldn't. Cost is the TCO (total cost of ownership)...that means support, maintenance, etc. as well.
- norman619, on 10/10/2007, -0/+12I want in on some of that action. Is it me or do many of the Open Source proponents seem a bit naive? Sounds a bit like saying socialized/national healthcare is free.
- jambarama, on 10/10/2007, -1/+13Support and indemnification I'd say are the top two. Support is easy to solve though, buy from redhat, novell, ibm, or another producer that supports the OSS. Of course this usually negates the cost savings, but so it goes.
For indemnification - this is more about support. if a piece of OSS fails in a way that causes damage, you can't sue the producer (or you can you just won't recover anything even if you win). If Veritas fails you, you bet they'll not only do their best to help you fix it, but they'll often throw some money at you (like free service/licenses) to fix/smooth the issue. Redhat/novell can do likewise.
Of course all eula's I've ever seen have an indemnification clause - the "we are not responsible for anything, even if our software maliciously murders your mother" clause. When the problem was caused by the provider, these haven't stood up in court consistently. - greevar, on 10/10/2007, -0/+12Do you mean to say that companies like to pass blame and liability to others? Truly you jest!
- ElWhapo, on 10/11/2007, -1/+13Not all companies run one or the other. Some run both. Take for instance my company. All of our servers are run on either RHEL, Cent, or Fedora. We use alot of open source software to manage our data, day to day tasks, etc... We run Apache, Tomcat, MySQL, and a whole bread basket full of other open source application. But at the same time, we still run Coldfusion, Flex, and pretty much every other adobe product out there.
The difference between us and other companies is pretty easy to see. We can cut costs where we need to, and still have a rock solid infrastructure while at the same time keeping our applications on the cutting edge of industry standards. - Heavy, on 10/11/2007, -11/+22Reasons i don't look (to hard) for open source alternatives in my designs (Building in production testing equipment among other things).
1: Documentation most (not all) open source libraries/apps have horrible documentation if an of all. psss look at mono they have excellent documentation.
2: GPL license, sorry to tell you but thats a no go.
3: Fiddeling, if it takes 16h of extra fidddeling to use an open source solution i'm better for buying a proprietary one and spending that 16h on another project. The results of that is that I get to make money the "easy" way of the $xxx proprietary one (since i will charge $xxx*1,2 for it) AND get paid for the 16h.
4: Tools and development time. I have to tell you that emacs and make are not an option. Ever used Visual Studio?
5: Hardwaresoftware connection, if you use windows "platform" all you hardware will be supported. If you use linux .. well lets say that you have to be lucky, And please no "Vista driver bull" please.
6: The key to success is to always have someone else to blame.
7: The Open source community annoys me.... smart asses all of them.
8: Nothing is truly finished, most Open source software is in a state of flux.
9-n+1:Documentation is IMPORTANT!! - norman619, on 10/10/2007, -1/+12@solient:
Oh yeah I'd love to have to deal with with in a crunch. I can see it inow...
"HURRY!!! GET ON THE FORUMS AND ASK HOW WE CAN FIX THIS!!!" Yeah tha's a viable support model for mission critical applications..... - elnerdo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11... No.
Support and maintenance includes hiring employees to deal with problems. - Senn, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11So every single company in the world knows and understands the difference between proprietary and open source? I'm not trying to sound smart. I'm just saying that it's a fact that some people are bound to have a lack of knowledge in the field of computing, leading them to think that proprietary solutions are all there is.
One example is a local business I did a job for, which run their entire network on Windows. I asked them if they had heard of Linux, or free/open source alternatives in general, and they weren't sure what I meant.
Perhaps this is not a common thing, I don't know, nor do I claim to know. I'm just saying it's possible. - loxx500, on 10/10/2007, -3/+13There are plenty of Open Source companies that offer support, of course for a fee. Now we need to determine the value of the OSS support vs the Proprietary support. I am sure there are some better and some worse on both sides of the fence. For a major company to run open source they definitely have to have someone accountable. I know with my company that 1 minute of downtime is unacceptable.
- ConceptJunkie, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10Then you are either very lucky or have used very little software. There are many, many instances of open-source software being superior to comparable proprietary software. The most obvious, perhaps, is Firefox over Internet Explorer. Profit is a great motive for keeping people from switching to the competition... making a superior product is only one way, and often not the most common.
- loxx500, on 10/10/2007, -2/+11That's exactly what we do. Database is running slow. I dunno what's going, tell them it's IBM's fault. It's always somebody else's fault.
- bluenullity, on 10/11/2007, -9/+18My whole Open Source experienced was soured by MySQL. They didn't understand what ACID ment or why it was important. No Triggers, Stored Procedures, FKeys, Table-Level locking. They always sounded like asses when they talked about why those time-tested and priority features were not in MySQL.
I know most of those features are in place now but it left such a sour taste in my mouth I never looked back. - norman619, on 10/10/2007, -6/+14Exactly. It's been my experience that the Open Source offerings, while free, turn out ot be the most costly in terms of time wasted in the long run. Ad anyone with a job knows time = money. Oh, also the Open Source offerings are usually substandard. Lack the functionality I needed to get my work done.
- RedhatRocky, on 10/10/2007, -2/+10Try, just try to sue ANY software vendor. Any EULA says "This software may not work, tough".
Or do you mean literally blame as in "It's their fault, not mine"? You're right, open source folks don't put up with the blame game. - Mier, on 10/10/2007, -5/+13If there's no company to back the software being made then it's viewed as being unstable and unsupported.
- Asianwaste, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9You base this off of nothing.
- yunus, on 10/11/2007, -5/+13There is one main reason and many small ones. Open source (Free) software does not have sales people pushing it on clients and (Key point) taking them out to lunch, golf and drinks.
- willistg, on 10/10/2007, -3/+10"Lack of 24/7 support, lack of time tested features."
This is why companies choose proprietary software?
I don't know about you all, but I have never had a good experience with getting support from any vendor. The stupid bureaucracy you have to go through, at so many levels just to get access to an engineer who might actually listen to what you think the problem is, rather than defending the product you bought. Compared to getting the source and either patching or whatever you have to do, I think OSS mostly saves time(and money). - ronin691, on 10/11/2007, -4/+11The "long tail" of millions and millions of small business around the globe are using pirated/unlicensed copies of XP, Office, SQL Server - so the number one selling point of switching to open source ( cost $0.00 ) is moot. The corner dry cleaner didn't a pay a dime for their three copies of XP, why should they use Ubuntu?
- DeviateSeptum, on 10/10/2007, -7/+14That would explain the 3% that cite price is the advantage of commerical software over open-source.
- Phocion55, on 10/10/2007, -6/+13Someone put this man in charge of a multi-billion dollar company this instant
- bluenullity, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7First off MS is not the only Proprietary software as Linux is not the only OSS software. There are more complicated things in the world than OS.
Second Forums != support. If I had to search all day and waste my time on looking ***** up myself than I am just wasting my companies dime. I can get on the phone with microsoft without waiting cause our regional contact is available at all hours. I can make him work for me and ineffect optimize my time for company relative work. If I can't get someone from MySQL dialed in and into a problem within 30 to 60 minutes then its not worth our company dollar. - vibez, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8Correct. You don't get any indemnity payments with open source. When you are in a global or even just a large national company, things like this really do matter.
- trogdoor, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6This article and most of the comments in this thread are simply idiotic, you are trying to answer a question which is inherently flawed. That question is " Which is better for what I need to do, the open source solution, or the proprietary solution". If someone came up to you and asked you that question, in those words, with no context whatsoever, I would hope that instead of going on about " the Open Source version is going to be more secure " or " The proprietary solution is going to be better documented ", you would first ask "WTF ARE YOU TRYING TO DO?"
Let that sink in for a second. The majority of the comments in this thread are advocating for the use of Product X over Product Y for accomplishing task Z, without knowing what X, Y, or Z even are. Instead of saying to stay away from Open Source solutions because they are poorly documented, you should simply say to stay away from poorly documented solutions, regardless of their "Openness". There are some very well documented Open Source solutions, and very poorly documented Proprietary solutions, and visa versa, so always using Proprietary applications over Open Source ones is not going to guarentee you good documentation. And that is true of all criterion exept of course those that define wheather something is Proprietary or Open Source, like availablility of code. In short, use the best tool for the job. - MonkeyMCSE, on 10/10/2007, -9/+15you can't blame MS either, it says so in the EULA. You use all software at your own risk.
- IceZZ, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7BOFH2 is exactly right. You think $120 per copy of windows is ANYTHING to a significant company? They aren't going to skimp on $120 x 1000 units just to hire an entire IT team to support FOSS. The salaries of a few IT folks, especially those who can modify the source code to fix problems, is going to cost you far more than any initial sales hit.
- cramd, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7Opensorce vendors who make Enterprise grade software all will provide very solid support. This is their main $$ stream. Proprietary vendors focus mainly on licensing rev, and provide average to poor support for the 18-28% they charge for support.
Examples of these Enterprise open source companies are: Red Hat, Zimbra, Ubuntu, and MySQL. If you do a search on google you should find a host of reviews on these companies support.
Of course if you are looking at more of tools, and fun, open source software, there will be a lack of enterprise support, but does MS support Heats or FreeCell?
I think the article that this story links to is a bit misleading. Barracuda sells anti-spam software, which in the most cases is managed by some hardcore server room people who might demand the need for access to the source code, but when looking at the decision makers in an enterprise this becomes less of an issue. From experience, I would say that the decision makers care most about performance, administration time, do they have skills sets in house to manage the product, and then comes price.
The article lists price as number on item, but I think this is due in part to the fact that Barracuda is selling, what is now, a commodity product. - TargetBoy, on 10/11/2007, -3/+9Right, but when you look for drivers, you just download the installer, run setup and reboot (if low-level) or continue on.
Linux requires a major excursion into configuration, file editing, debugging, compiling, dealing with a lack of fail safe modes, so the possibility of no Internet or no GUI until you get the driver working is there as well. I just *love* that when I install a security patch in Linux that updates the kernel, my NVIDIA drivers magically stop working and I have to re-run the installer from the command-line. - haylcron, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. Companies want someone to yell at, not post a bounty and have Joe Schmoe write a fix when he gets time between scarfing Taco Bell and Torrenting DS:9. Think financial institutions, trucking companies, insurance companies... If there is a software breakdown you can easily be losing hundreds of thousands an hour. Now try to tell management that there is no one to come and fix it but we'll post to google groups and hopefully someone will come to our aid.
Don't get me wrong, open source will do and does do well in the business world. Subversion, for example, is a fantastic file management system. However, when it comes to enterprise capable applications, it won't happen based solely on support.
And before I get bashed, I want to mention that I work in support for a fortune 500 company and deal with multi-million dollar accounts daily. - raindogmx, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6Your comparison doesn't hold up for an enterprise environment, sorry.
- IceZZ, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Yeah, documentation like MSDN is just invaluable. It's like crack.
- Treshnell, on 10/10/2007, -7/+12That and, once the security is compromised, who takes the blame? No one to blame but yourself when you use Open Source. Companies need to be able to blame someone else when something goes wrong.
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