Wednesday, November 5, 2014
"Free Software"
There is some debate in the computer industry about whether open source software is better than enterprise software. Some argue that because it is free it saves the company a lot of money. Others argue that the time spent searching open source forums and asking others to help fix a bug costs the company more time (and therefore money). To me, it does not matter what type of software I am using, as long as I can do what I need to do. When making the decision to use an enterprise or open source software, I look at the initial cost, previous knowledge on the software, size of support forums, complexity of the task at hand, as well as if someone else in the world is doing something similar to what I have done. Sometimes having someone else who has gone before can make things much easier for me. I have had success and failures with both types of software. So the decision, for me, is not open source or enterprise, it is which technology is the best for what I am doing.
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You know, this may sound weird, but I actually think that one of the best ways we could all contribute to open source software problem resolution is by keeping a blog. That may sound crazy, but I think it's true. Imagine if every CS major or IT professional were to have a blog where they wrote down their problems and how they fixed them, and then if they were to take 5 - 10 minutes at the end of each work day to update it. Google would make it possible for all of those blogs to be instantly accessible to the entire world, and thus there would be tons more information available to everyone on how to fix problems of all different kinds. I think this would be a huge advantage in helping others around the world to resolve open source software problems.
ReplyDeleteI like your thoughts. There's absolutely no reason why you have to be strictly for one and against the other. Personally I just like that both options are available to me. I think we all benefit from having a wide variety of possibilities giving us the best of both worlds. It's how I feel about every so-called rivalry in technology (like Apple vs Microsoft). Why not just be happy that competition will breed excellence for all of us?
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