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Imagine a pipe in your new house sprung a leak. You contact the builder, but they don't answer your calls. Dammit, you need it fixed now! So you go into the ph
by windsurfer 18y ago
Imagine a pipe in your new house sprung a leak. You contact the builder, but they don't answer your calls. Dammit, you need it fixed now!
So you go into the phone book and hire the first plumber you see. He comes over, fixes the pipe. Sweet!
Except now, two months later, the builder [i]does[/i] answer your call. And when you tell him you got the pipe fixed by someone else, he slaps a lawsuit on you, saying you're not allowed to disassemble or reverse engineer your house.
I think the biggest benefit for users is that you are free to do what you want with the software. You can get plug ins, pop it on LiveCDs, share it with friends, anything. Yes, "freedom" may not be a great piece for marketing, but when it comes to a users true benefits, freedom is the best thing Open Source has to offer.
- wyday 18y agoI know I'm walking into a field of landmines in replying to this, but I'll try to tread carefully: The plumber/pipe metaphor is better suited to consulting & custom corporate apps. For wide-release software (like Adobe's software) it's in the company's best interest to fix bugs and keep the user happy. And I think pierrefar made a good point. The only reason I use Firefox is that it's a higher quality than IE and Opera. This might be a result of the openness of the software, but the openness of Firefox wasn't the deciding factor when I started to use it.
- windsurfer 18y ago[quote]but the openness of Firefox wasn't the deciding factor when I started to use it[/quote] Of course! That's exactly what I meant. Freedom is not a great marketing fact. Being Free is.
- access_denied 18y agoI think reliability in terms of (long-term) availability is also a big plus for OSS.