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You just said something monumental "Your company wont buy the fix, but that doesn't mean the fix doesn't exist. It means you can't take advantage of it, sure."

You just said something monumental "Your company wont buy the fix, but that doesn't mean the fix doesn't exist. It means you can't take advantage of it, sure." Thats one of the biggest things that Linux has going for it, if something breaks, YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUY THE FIX! You can A. Fix it yourself; B. Get the latest source which probably has the fix (if it's a problem anyone else is having); or C. Filing a bug report and have the community fix it usually within a day, or even hours or minutes for really simple fixes. Sure, Linux isn't for everyone, but for corporations and small businesses looking to save money, it looks better every day!

Splines 18y ago
FOSS has many benefits, but I had always considered the fact that you can "fix it yourself" not to be one. Do any of you fix random bugs in your desktop applications? (Firefox, for example).
- vetinari 18y ago
  You don't, unless it really bothers you for some reason. Consider it 'real option' that is available with Linux but not with Windows or OSX.
- oomkiller 18y ago
  It might not be that real of an option for an average individual, but fixing it yourself in a large business could save you millions, depending on how big your IT Infrastructure is. Think of this example. Company ABC has Windows XP deployed throughout their company. They need to upgrade some hardware, but the new hardware only has drivers for Windows 7 and Vista. Their only option (assuming a lot) is to upgrade to Windows 7 or Vista. Let's say that they have 1,500 desktops that need to be upgraded. I'm not aware of the details of VLK license prices, but let's say this will cost $150/workstation, including labor to install it. Roughly approximating, this comes out to at least $225,000. This doesn't even count the amount of money they will spend battling incompatible software and hardware issues, after the upgrade. -------------------------------- Company XYZ is using Linux Kernel 2.6.17, they have a problem with a piece of hardware that only has drivers that work with the 2.6.28 kernel. Company XYZ is a software development company, so they can just use their internal software developers to backport the driver from the 2.6.28 kernel to 2.6.17. They are already paying the developers a salary, so it won't cost them any more cash, maybe just a bit of productivity on other projects. This amounts to a huge savings over what Company ABC had to spend to fix a similar issue.

Splines 18y ago

FOSS has many benefits, but I had always considered the fact that you can "fix it yourself" not to be one. Do any of you fix random bugs in your desktop applications? (Firefox, for example).

vetinari 18y ago
You don't, unless it really bothers you for some reason. Consider it 'real option' that is available with Linux but not with Windows or OSX.
oomkiller 18y ago
It might not be that real of an option for an average individual, but fixing it yourself in a large business could save you millions, depending on how big your IT Infrastructure is. Think of this example. Company ABC has Windows XP deployed throughout their company. They need to upgrade some hardware, but the new hardware only has drivers for Windows 7 and Vista. Their only option (assuming a lot) is to upgrade to Windows 7 or Vista. Let's say that they have 1,500 desktops that need to be upgraded. I'm not aware of the details of VLK license prices, but let's say this will cost $150/workstation, including labor to install it. Roughly approximating, this comes out to at least $225,000. This doesn't even count the amount of money they will spend battling incompatible software and hardware issues, after the upgrade. -------------------------------- Company XYZ is using Linux Kernel 2.6.17, they have a problem with a piece of hardware that only has drivers that work with the 2.6.28 kernel. Company XYZ is a software development company, so they can just use their internal software developers to backport the driver from the 2.6.28 kernel to 2.6.17. They are already paying the developers a salary, so it won't cost them any more cash, maybe just a bit of productivity on other projects. This amounts to a huge savings over what Company ABC had to spend to fix a similar issue.