Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Black Suits or Tux, who makes better software?
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
It seems that every year, more and more people are switching from using proprietary software to open source alternatives. One would think that the reason would be due solely to the fact that copyrighted programs are often expensive and open source software is usually free. In fact it is actually because the open source materials are better. The benefits of a business structure are apparently outweighed by the freedom that open source licenses provide for collaborative developers. The open source web browser Firefox and Google's browser Chrome (which is just an adaptation of their open source browser Chromium) hold 47% of the web browser market share1. Most of the users of these two web browser already have Internet Explorer or Safari installed on their machine, so the only reason they would use an open source browser is because they feel that it better supports their needs.
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I believe with open source, the needs of the customer can be more quickly addressed, and this is why Firefox and Chrome really took off.
ReplyDeleteThis is generally the case, but there is a huge need for developers in the open source community. Few people have the skills, time, and desire to dedicate to open source projects. The one big advantage that software companies have over open source is that it is stable: customers like to know that their software will be supported and updated in the future. The danger of completely moving to open source is that there is no guarantee that the software will be developed further.
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