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What are some of the benefits of open source software? Do they apply to non-geeks, too?

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For non-geeks, i'll just list out one benefit about Open Source and their eyes light-up like a Christmas tree...

... it's free AND legal.

You go into the other details... AND THEY DON'T CARE.

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+1 to the free bit, always a good thing... oh and legal bit too obviously – kez Sep 9 '09 at 18:20
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On free - penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/4/29 – William Hilsum Sep 9 '09 at 18:51
@Wil : hilarious! +1 – caliban Sep 9 '09 at 19:01
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Open File Formats

Open source programs will save files in a format that other programs can read. (Closed source may or may not.)

Open file formats have at least two benefits:

  • You can change software and still open your old files
    • For example, if you created documents with WordPerfect or Microsoft Works in the 90s, you might be unable to open them now. If you currently use OpenOffice, your files are being saved in the Open Document Format, which is compatible with other programs. This means in the future you'll likely be able to open them with something, even if OpenOffice is not available.
  • You can use additional tools to read or modify your files besides the program that created them

This second point is one I just experienced personally. I need to create a lot of name tags with photos on them. I tried this in a Microsoft Word template, but I would have to manually insert each picture and edit each name tag's text. Each time I do that, I have to make sure the picture is centered and sized correctly, etc etc.

Hoping to automate the process (since I already have identically-sized photos named like "firstname lastname.png"), I opened up the Word document to take a look. Woah! It was completely indecipherable. I searched and could not even find text in it that I knew was there.

I then created a similar file in Inkscape, which is an open-source vector drawing program. It saves in the open SVG format. When I opened that file in a text editor, everything was clearly labeled. I can replace the dummy file names with the actual ones by hand without messing up the layout, or maybe write a Ruby script to insert the correct file names automatically.

If enough people had this problem, there might even be software made for this situation. The point is, I'm not locked in to one program; I can use whatever seems best for the task at hand.

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I got my sis, a non-geek, to read your answer. She read till "... format that other programs can read." and asked what's a format, and she also asked, "will I lose my data because of this format?" - I pointed her to how we are not locked in to one program... and she said she got better things to do - like live a life - than to learn how to use another program. I smiled at her excellent rebuttal. :) – caliban Sep 9 '09 at 19:15
And everyday I get down on my knees and say a prayer to the great IT gods living in the Super Nano Silicon land - oh lords, please keep thy knowledge from the masses, for this gives me my daily bread... – caliban Sep 9 '09 at 19:17
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@scoopdreams - "sure, and I've got better things to do than learn Word. I already know Microsoft Works!" Ooops, sorry, that was me from 1993. Now why the crap can't I open my old letters I wrote back then? Like many technical issues, this one will matter to non-geeks the minute it bites them in the butt. – Nathan Long Sep 9 '09 at 19:46
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@TomWij - are they truly open? robweir.com/blog/2006/01/how-to-hire-guillaume-portes.html says "not only must an interoperable OOXML implementation first acquire and reverse-engineer a 14-year old version of Microsoft Word, it must also do the same thing with a 16-year old version of WordPerfect." And exporting to another format often screws up the way things look. It's nice if you can just tweak what you want to tweak directly. – Nathan Long Sep 9 '09 at 19:51
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@caliban: The next questions to your sister: "Are you sure that your program will always be available for any computer you have to use for the rest of your life? Are you absolutely sure that you'd never learn another program in your life, no matter what the advantages might be?" Realistically, I might be able to find a copy of LeScript (the first word processor I really liked) for the TRS-80 Model 4 somewhere, and if I could I could probably wangle a way to run it. I doubt your sister could. – David Thornley Sep 16 '09 at 14:00
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Choosing open-source is not much different from buying a product (except the cost). Once you invest time and effort in any product, you're just as locked to it as if it was bought. For me, these are the two most important differences:

  1. Open-source normally evolves much faster (however - or because of - compatibility with previous versions is a secondary issue),
  2. If a community exists around the product, and if the original developers are still around, the support is very good (but not always polite).
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Most notable Open Source projects take compatibility (or at least smooth migrations) seriously---they have significant, opinionated user bases who can and will fork if sufficiently annoyed. The thing they don't care about is indefinite and transparent back compatibility: they will mark things deprecated, give you a couple of versions to update, then take the old stuff out; and they will make big changes and provide a migration tool. – dmckee Sep 9 '09 at 18:37
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You can use the bleeding edge version if you need a feature or want it for any reason.

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No Arbirtary Restrictions

When you get Ubuntu, you get everything it can give you. You don't have to decide between Ubuntu Home Basic and Ubuntu Ultimate Premium Professional and ten other flavors to get the features you want.

You also don't have to make sure you have enough licenses for all the computers at work. You just install it when you need it.

As Jeff said:

Open source software only comes in one edition: awesome.

The money is irrelevant; the expensive resource here is my brain. If I choose open source, I don't have to think about licensing, feature matrices, or recurring billing. I know, I know, we don't use software that costs money here, but I'd almost be willing to pay for the privilege of not having to think about that stuff ever again.

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Certainly. You and everybody else can examine the code and make sure it contains no hidden features that may affect you in negative ways.

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If you are really interested in understanding OpenSource Software, you should read the Richard Gabriel's book Innovation Happens Elsewhere (available also online, open sourced :-)

As he says:

There are many reasons for people to participate in an open-source project. These include the following:

  • The software being developed helps them to do their work better.
  • They can influence development.
  • They can modify the code to suit their needs.
  • They can interact with and learn from other users.
  • They can be part of a cool project. These are also reasons why you might choose to join an existing open-source project.
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The fact that it's free and legal to make new copies has a lot of benefits. (Besides the fact that it doesn't cost any money.)

You can always get new copies, no matter if it's been discontinued or not. A lot of people wanted to continue to use XP, for example, but had trouble getting it. If this were Open Source, there'd be no problem at all.

You can get new copies whenever you want, with no hassle.

For corporations, licensing of proprietary software is a headache. Either they have to have to maintain licensing servers, or they have to keep track of exactly how many copies they have out. If they mess up, or simply don't keep the required documentation, they can get raided by the Business Software Alliance.

There will be no problems with the vendor dropping licensing servers, or the software deciding for some reason that it's an illegitimate copy.

My experience with support is that it tends to be better for Open Source. Obviously, this varies widely for all sorts of software, and your experience might well be different. One good point for Open Source software is that third parties can support it effectively. With proprietary software, support tends to come from the vendor, who often views support as a necessary cost. If you could contract for support, you'd have more leverage, and you'd be dealing with people who relied on providing good support to make their living.

The fact that the source is available means that you don't have to worry as much about whether something is available. On one project I was on a few years ago, we started using Oracle's C++ interface for their database (OCCI). It worked very nicely, but was only compiled for relatively few environments. We couldn't use it on Solaris, since Oracle only provided OCCI for an old version of the standard library, and we had other requirements for a standard-conforming version. Pity about that, since Sun's compiler seemed to do much better than the old version of g++ we had to use. Note that you don't have to do your own compiling to benefit from this.

Similarly, when moving from 32-bit to 64-bit software, we could just recompile the OS components.

Bear in mind that advantages that might seem to be geek-only can be used by non-programmers, because geeks are usually available to be hired, or can form their own companies and charge you a reasonable amount for support, or because they'll often do something and leave the results publicly available.

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You do realize I hope that most of these "advantages" also exist in closed source software. Meanwhile, other issues like Support also plague the Open Source environment which found an answer not very much unlike the closed source environment. Neither is the 32/64 bit argument particularly true. – A Dwarf Sep 15 '09 at 21:25
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So, it's easy and legal to get additional copies of discontinued closed source software? And keeping track of licenses is never a problem? The best and worst support I got were on proprietary products, and I did say people's experiences vary. The rest of my comments, including the 32/64-bit argument, are directly from my professional experience. On one project, we did have serious problems with using OCCI, and more recently we dealt with migration issues by using open source and compiling. Got any real complaints with what I said? – David Thornley Sep 16 '09 at 13:54
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For non-geeks open source softwares are a revolution cause they can make suggestions to have more control on the software developpement, you can help to traduct it if you really want it in another language, help to fix the bugs by trying the alpha and beta releases ...

I know some peoples that asked for features that are now on the software how they wanted and the best thing if your software die someone can still use the code to make a fork of this software and reborn it maybe way better so you're not stuck when your so loved software die ...

Imagine now that Chromium (open source Google Chrome) will share it's code so open source browsers like Mozilla Firefox may take some source code of it and you will have a Firefox with the best features of both but Chrome as a free software can't use open source software with a gpl license but it can use gpl licensed code ...

Open Source developpement is way faster so the softwares come easily better than free or paid ones, participate and you will have better even faster so you don't like an open source software just tell why on the software project forum and watch the next releases and hope a little ...

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