Pro or contra, Open Source

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[Quantum]

[MiniMe]

[PDAFantast]

Right, agree with you both. OSS is great, just because it's so easy accessable and if you depend on it (application or whatever) you can easily fix any problems and still make the deadline.

What I'm worried about is that OSS will bring the quality of the source code down. I mean, from the thousands of the programmers outthere that embrace OSS, not really all of them have the talent to really program big solutions. Good software writing requires years of experience, excellent software writing requires even more than that.

Also, I'm pretty much ostentative against people that think that OSS would be great if it would become a de-facto standard in the software industry. That would be disastrous. If all software would be free (which actually is an utopia) then you would no longer have any developers left Seriously, I'm not sitting down 12 hours per day and write software, ruining my health and sight, just to not being able to pay my bills. The people that say that are more certainly still living at their parents house and don't have to pay a dime for their living. No sane human will ever say that and at the same time kill his financiary safety.

Having said that, OSS has it's uses in certain areas: If quite a lot of people is using a piece of software, of which they are more or less bound to, then that software ought to be OSS. Operative systems come to mind. Everybody uses it, everybody is dependent of it. In other words, if a company threatens the market by becoming a monopoly, it's software should be open software They should add that to the anti-trust laws, hehehe...

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[Quantum]

I would say that both of the above are right... well my point is that the competition is what governs quality not one or the other.

[MiniMe]

What I'm worried about is that OSS will bring the quality of the source code down. I mean, from the thousands of the programmers outthere that embrace OSS, not really all of them have the talent to really program big solutions. Good software writing requires years of experience, excellent software writing requires even more than that.
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nah, it's just the same as closed source. Bad code can enter to the built too.

what you are worrying is just the mechanism to integrate and clean up new code that are different, and in practice has nothing to do with the philosophy of Open Source.

Just like closed source, Opensource are individual projects, run by people, with some sort of organization and decission makers. Just like any other project, there are great project leaders in Opensource, and there are dumb closed source manager.

Just because you have a great team writing code in the secret basement doesn't automatically guarantee great code, and tossing out Source code into the open also won't produce anything if nobody is interested, let alone somebody come and ruin the code. But over time, open source code that is well maintained will win in quality, features, and usability. Simply because of the massive peer review and eyeball it received.

Note: I have to agree tho' It's time for open source to think about integrating some sort of economic idea to the philosophy, to help OS become more self sustaining. You can't feed on idealism alone, but at the same time I don't believe further evolving the idea of OS will ruin the core value.

Somebody will find a good idea soon on this department I suppose. Auctioning source code to be opened seems to be one starting idea.

I also think political solution is the best. (ie. a small country grant a legal foundation to the open source, and also give some sort of financial status to the OS works)

think about it, in real world exist such thing too, academic works, tax deductible R&D, private grants, public domain arts, public service, etc...

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