Coplan's Journal: The Open & Closed Religious Wars

Honestly, I don't understand the whole "religious wars" as I like to call them. I'm a huge supporter of Linux. Most of the reason is because I feel I can actually offer something in that scene. But I'm not entirely against Microsoft. I have a lot of respect for what both factions are trying to do. I am leaning most of my support towards the linux world though for two reasons: 1) I like to support the little guy and 2) even if Linux were the big guy, the profit to be made from open source is in support, not monopoly. This sorta puts in its own checks/balances -- something that I don't believe Microsoft has the benefit of. What it comes down to is "the right tool for the right task". You're not going to see me doing music on Linux any time soon. Most likely, MAC is still the best for that (throw your bottles now, but it's true from a professional level). For net development and servers, e-mail and so on, I choose linux. Joe-schmoe desktop user won't find home in Linux any time soon. Yes, it's getting there...but it's still far from idiot proof.

A little aside about Open Source vs. Closed Source: There are faults to both, but I believe the Open source model could potentially be much more beneficial to the computer world -- not necessarily to the individual company. That's not such a bad thing though. Anyhow, supposing there's a huge security loophole in a closed source project, the consumer identifies the problem, and the company has to spend time and money to fix the problem. However, that's part of overhead at that point, as the consumer has already paid for the product and a service contract, one would assume. Meanwhile, in the open sourced project, said consumer can report the loophole across the 'net. Someone using the product (not necessarily the company) might be able to fix the problem and offer his code to the company. However, said company should take measures to make sure that the code doesn't open another exploit put in there by the devious programmer (not to say it happens often, but it could).

Meanwhile, the chief benefit of Open Source? Your undies are hanging out in the breeze. So your product is no longer the software...its trust. Redhat, Slackware, Mandrake, SuSE, and so on...how do they earn their money? Trust. People trust them to check the submitted code. People trust their product, no matter how different or similar it is to someone else's product, simply because it's released by said company. That's where competition should lie, in my opinion. Quality, quality, quality. Don't like it? Use some other flavor of the same damn thing. The most will flock to that which has the most quality. Reinstall the uncorruptable medium for competition.

Now say it together: We Love Open Source!!!!

(Coplan needs to go relax now)