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Open Source needs to evolve in such a way to attract corporate entities to fund research via donations or investments. Right now there are a few operating syst

Open Source needs to evolve in such a way to attract corporate entities to fund research via donations or investments. Right now there are a few operating systems not based on BSD Unix or Linux called ReactOS, Haiku, and AROS that were created via open source and need funding or corporate investment to make them reach Windows or OSX level quality and marketability. Modern apps need to be made for these operating systems that is the weakness. Modern apps that can use the DOCX or ODF files or whatever the standard Windows and OSX systems use. OSFree is an OS/2 rewrite that really could use help, I think it is a good idea but it isn't even ready for prime-time. Businesses only see money and how to make it, by having IP. So they don't want to develop for OSS and give away IP and take a risk in being sued if the code goes wrong and deletes files (Like the Windows 10 October 2018 update did). The Open Source organization doesn't see making money and only wants to write the best code on a budget and have quality results. Businesses want cheaper programmers and lower quality code as long as deadlines are met. Yeah Oracle buying out Sun and dumping OpenOffice.org and trying to downplay MySQL to promote their own database are two examples of how a business can mess up OSS. Yet still VirtualBox is a good VM in my opinion and I am glad they kept that. Open Source organizations I believe do a better job at quality with a benevolent dictator accepting patches like Linus with Linux. I doubt a company can make such a good quality, but Linus does it without the billions of dollars of funding in R&D. He does it with hobbyists and volunteers.

flukus 8y ago
> Businesses only see money and how to make it, by having IP. So they don't want to develop for OSS and give away IP This is only true of tech companies, there is a lot of potential funding out there in non-tech companies, OSS has been huge for them but they're generally not great at contributing back. If we could somehow bring them in and divorce OSS from tech companies that would be a huge win.
- RickSanchez2600 8y ago
  Non-Tech companies barely know how to protect themselves from hackers and ransomware than know how to program and contribute to OSS projects. In my experience in working with non-tech companies IT departments the managers don't know how the tech works so they cannot properly manage it. A tech company has managers that know how to manage technology and programming. So you need that for the non-tech companies but managers don't want to learn or be replaced with managers who already know.

flukus 8y ago

> Businesses only see money and how to make it, by having IP. So they don't want to develop for OSS and give away IP This is only true of tech companies, there is a lot of potential funding out there in non-tech companies, OSS has been huge for them but they're generally not great at contributing back. If we could somehow bring them in and divorce OSS from tech companies that would be a huge win.

RickSanchez2600 8y ago
Non-Tech companies barely know how to protect themselves from hackers and ransomware than know how to program and contribute to OSS projects. In my experience in working with non-tech companies IT departments the managers don't know how the tech works so they cannot properly manage it. A tech company has managers that know how to manage technology and programming. So you need that for the non-tech companies but managers don't want to learn or be replaced with managers who already know.