Wojciech Puchar wrote: >> The only rationale I've heard for closed source is that somebody >> could >> steal the idea. > > There will always be both of them. And that's OK as long as you can choose.
Yes, I agree. I use Windows as my workstation, because there are some specific applications that require Windows to run. The rest of the applications on my workstation are open source win32 apps. Visio is the main one. I've been told that there are alternatives to Visio that will run on *nix. However, the alternatives either: - take more time (time * salary) to get configured than the cost of the software - take more time (time * salary) to familiarize myself with the alternative than the cost of the software - don't provide certain functionality that I need ISPs are very dynamic in nature. From my experience in both the enterprise and ISP environments, enterprise need to stay focused on stability, whereas the ISP needs to be more adaptive to new technologies. In the enterprise, I've found that it is by far more cost effective to run almost exclusively on commercial software. The number of IT staff is kept to a minimum, and let's face it, it's easier/cheaper to find an employee with a Windows background than it is someone who has extensive real-world open source operations experience. Being able to modify software to fit our ever changing environment is key, and so is knowing that (for the most part), the ability is there to communicate directly with the developers. Another side-effect of using open source software is that over time, you learn how things *really* work. For instance, if you have garnered up experience running an MTA on FreeBSD (and understand the logs etc), you will undoubtedly be able to fudge your way through troubleshooting an Exchange server, it will just take a bit of time to know where to click. The reverse is not really true (from my experience). Speaking of logging, open source applications do log...properly. Steve
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