Hi, Am 08.01.2010 09:46, schrieb Parijat Kalia: > Hey guys, > > Just lighting up everyone's day, would like to get as many as possible > arguments on this. Me and a friend of mine, had a debate last evening, > about open source(PHP) vs closed source technologies(DOT NET).He raised > the following points: > > 1. He feels that open source is not reliable whereas closed source is. > The logic being that, once the application is developed and sold, if it > runs into some kind of a bug or an error, there is support team for > closed source technologies who are going to come and help you fix it, > whereas this is not a guarantee in open source technologies.
Depends. Why do you think there are more apache servers than iis servers on the web? Because they are more reliable and cheaper, and they have a large user base that will help you out for free. Firefox vs IE? Judge for yourself. PHP vs .Net? I think it will take a long time to get a bug fixed in both of them, you will rather do a work around. Where in both products the community will help. But with .Net you can also ask MS. > > 2. Development for a successful open source technology is community > dependent, implying the choice is still on a faithful group of users, > whereas in closed source technologies it is more reliable because it is > being backed by a company (microsoft for .NET and SAP for SAP). Hmm, IMO the costs are lower in some cases. Because all major OS products are quite stable and have a very good QMS. Take for example symfony: In his post http://www.mail-archive.com/symfony-d...@googlegroups.com/msg05854.html Fabien complains that nobody pays for symfony support. [quote] Keep in mind that symfony is an Open-Source project, so everybody can contribute and scratch its itch. The core developers and all plugin developers are all working for free. Of course, Sensio sponsors the framework, of course it dedicates a lot of time and money to it, and of it can even provide extended support for all versions for companies willing to pay. And do you know how many companies, except Sensio customers, signed up for extended support in the last 2 years? None! Yep, that's right, not a single one.[/quote] This shows that all developers using symfony think it is cheaper to ask the community then to pay for support. If you want to make a choice in a real case, try to calculate the TCO. > 3. The third point that was raised is, closed source technologies > enforce quality control as opposed to open source technologies, where > the onus on quality control in case of the latter, is more on the > developer himself. See above. > The reasoning I could offer was that big companies such as Yahoo ( > symfony), facebook (php), and Twitter (rails) rely on open source > technologies, surely they are aware of the above points but still choose > to go with open source rather than closed source technologies. Money is > not the most important criteria for these companies, and there > definitely is a better reason why they choose open rather than closed > source technologies. I think most people decide for OS because * they like the idea of OS * it is cheaper * if they really need additional functionality, they can add it (by themselves or other developers) without having to wait for Godot * the product has a big community to ask Decisions to use CSs are based on * they need/want professional support * it is cheaper * the product is developed for a company that uses CSs only And then there is the middle, usage of open source with professional support, like mysql offers. > However, it is still not convincing me for I found myself agreeing to > the points my friend raised in favor of closed source technologies. Can > anyone shed a light on this? > > Thanks!!!
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