[NTLUG:Discuss] Open Source

[Steve Baker]

In the last year or so, I'm finding that the best way to introduce what 
FOSS is is to explain it by analogy with Wikipedia.  People seem to 
grasp what that is much better than they grasp what Linux is.  So - 
OpenSourced software is like Wikipedia for computer programmers.  We can 
all come along and edit or add to this enormous body of software out on 
SourceForge (or wherever) - some of which is good and useful - some of 
which is flakey crap.  As time goes on, the flakey crap mostly falls by 
the wayside and the great and good becomes such an omnipresent resource 
that we gradually start taking it for granted.   Joe public can use this 
software whether they contributed to it or not - just as you can read 
Wikipedia without writing any articles yourself.

Given that an encyclopedia of comparable quality to the Encyclopedia 
Britannica exists for free - online - and there's more of it and the 
quality is (mostly) every bit as good - why would you ever spend a 
fortune on a big pile of books that'll be out of date in a couple of 
years?   Similarly - given that there is a complete operating system 
which is at least as good as Windows that exists for free - online - why 
would you ever buy a copy of Windows when it'll be outdated within a 
couple of years?

People forget that there was a time when you couldn't answer just about 
any factual question in 10 minutes flat (Quick: When was Richard 
Stallman born? March 16th 1953!  12 seconds!)....and people forget that 
(for example) browsers are free only because Mozilla/Firefox is free - 
if not, you'd be paying Microsoft $200 for a copy of Internet Explorer, 
$400 for Internet Explorer Pro and $100 for Internet Explorer Home 
Edition.  Your computer might come with a copy of Internet Explorer Lite 
- but that would probably be crippled so it wouldn't run Javascript or 
support plugins or something.


   Steve