At 07:21 PM 4/10/2002 -0700, you wrote: >--- Dustin Puryear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > To open up another avenue of discussion.. But can it > > also be said that more > > open source than commercial software is written by > > self-trained or > > hobbyists programmers? Could this result in the > > average open source program > > being written poorly, or at least not with the same > > rigor as commercial > > programs? > >Sure, but nobody should expect the average open source >software to work well "right out of the box", whereas
Why not? Why should businesses or even your average Joe B. Consumer want to use open source software if it isn't ready out of the box? We need to remember that 99.9% of users aren't developers. So if we push open source software then we need to be ready to support users that use it. >it is reasonable to expect commercial software to work >well, since we pay $ for it. We usually test the heck Agreed. >out of it before putting it in to a production >environment. Or, we rely on the reputation of a >specific OSS package. > >Agreed, there are a lot of crappy OSS and OS >programmers out there, but all we can really do is >point fingers and jeer. Given enough programmers|will >power|time, even crappy OSS can get better. Sure. >I don't think it is productive to measure OSS and >commercial software by the same yardsticks. But, I >don't know what the yardsticks are for OSS. I don't either. But I do think that some yardsticks can be used by both camps. Key measurements include reliability, consistency, usability!, and scalability. Regards, Dustin > > Perhaps we should take Microsoft out of the > > discussion and only include all > > other commercial software. It's too easy to attack > > Microsoft code, and they > > are certainly not the major supplier of [all] > > software. Let's consider open > > source vs. commercial-code-without-Microsoft to keep > > the conversation on > > track. And if someone brings up Microsoft I'll bring > > up Sendmail as a > > counter example. > >Good enough. > >John Hebert > >__________________________________________________ >Do You Yahoo!? >Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax >http://taxes.yahoo.com/ >================================================ >BRLUG - The Baton Rouge Linux User Group >Visit http://www.brlug.net for more information. >Send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to change >your subscription information. >================================================ --- Dustin Puryear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> UNIX and Network Consultant http://members.telocity.com/~dpuryear PGP Key available at http://www.us.pgp.net In the beginning the Universe was created. This has been widely regarded as a bad move. - Douglas Adams ================================================ BRLUG - The Baton Rouge Linux User Group Visit http://www.brlug.net for more information. Send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to change your subscription information. ================================================
