Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I've heard lots of people try to claim directly or indirectly that OSS 
> is somehow automatically inherantly superior to proprietry software just 
> because it's OSS. Which, IMHO, is untrue.

  With superiority they don't necessarily mean stability. There are other
forms of superiority as well.

> For example, I've written libraries and released the source code. You 
> could claim that those libraries are therefore "open-source". So does 
> that mean they're better than any possible proprietry library? Uh... I 
> don't think so. :-/

  Better in what respect? There is more than one measurement by which one
can compare software.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> On Sat, 17 Oct 2009 10:43:37 -0400, Warp wrote:
> 
>>> I don't understand the subject.
> 
>> He seems to be saying "see, see?  OSS isn't always stable".
> 
>   I think that's the first time I have ever seen anybody claiming (or
> insinuating that somebody has claimed) that OSS is always stable.

He's being sarcastic for taking so long to fix the bug.  A stable bug. :)

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On Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:16:44 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> On Sat, 17 Oct 2009 10:43:37 -0400, Warp wrote:
> 
>> > I don't understand the subject.
> 
>> He seems to be saying "see, see?  OSS isn't always stable".
> 
>   I think that's the first time I have ever seen anybody claiming (or
> insinuating that somebody has claimed) that OSS is always stable.

Same here.

Jim

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On Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:24:20 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> I've heard lots of people try to claim directly or indirectly that OSS
> is somehow automatically inherantly superior to proprietry software just
> because it's OSS. Which, IMHO, is untrue.

The thing that's superior about OSS over proprietary is that because the 
code is released, *if* you have the skills, you can fix it yourself.  
I'll grant that's a big "if".

You can't do that (by definition) with closed-source software.

Jim

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> The thing that's superior about OSS over proprietary is that because the 
> code is released, *if* you have the skills, you can fix it yourself.  
> I'll grant that's a big "if".

  There are other advantages too, mainly related to trustworthiness.
Because the source code is open for anyone to examine, it's less likely
that it will contain undocumented parts which do something the user might
not want it to do, such as compromising his privacy without his consent.
Some proprietary software have got into big controversies because of "phoning
home" without the user's consent or knowledge. OSS is enormously less likely
to contain this kind of code because it's so much easier for people to notice.

  Another advantage is that OSS is often developed by several independent
parties which are not driving their own personal gain with the project,
something that is the rule with proprietary commercial software. OSS is
user-oriented, doing what benefits the users the most. The primary goal
of proprietary software is to benefit the company the most. In some cases
this means putting features and restrictions which benefit the company at
the cost of the users. This is the more likely the more of a monopoly
status the company has. (Think of draconian DRM measures, for instance.
Users don't want nor benefit from DRM, only companies benefit from it,
but users have to swallow DRM because of big company monopolies. This would
*never* happen with OSS.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Jim Henderson wrote:

> The thing that's superior about OSS over proprietary is that because the 
> code is released, *if* you have the skills, you can fix it yourself.  
> I'll grant that's a big "if".
> 
> You can't do that (by definition) with closed-source software.

On the other hand, the number of people working on OSS software is 
usually determined by how "interesting" it is, whereas for CSS software 
it's determined by how much money the company has. If they have a 
crapload of money, they can quite possibly produce a better product than 
an OSS community could come up with, because they can just *hire* enough 
manpower to get the job done.

For example... I know of at least half a dozen packages which can take a 
simple algebraic formula and simplify it, possibly rearrange it, and 
maybe graph it in 2D or 3D. I know of exactly *one* package which can 
symbolically expand, factorise and compute quotients of expressions, 
symbolically integrate and differentiate, symbolically solve algebraic 
equations, differential equations, difference equations, integral 
equations, and simulateous systems of equations, graph implicit and 
parametric equations in arbitrary dimensions with configurable 
colouring, do fast numeric work, do number-theoretic stuff like compute 
Euler's phi or the Reimann zeta, take the Fourier, Laplace or 
Z-transform of equations or data, compute statistics such as [arithmetic 
/ geometric / harmonic] mean, varience, standard deviation, correlation, 
chi-squared tests, compute a specified distribution... would you like me 
to continue?

There are OSS packages that do symbolic calculations. And then there's 
Mathematica. Hypothetically, you can take an OSS package and "fix" it to 
be Mathematica. But unless you have a few million dollars to invest in 
R&D... good luck with that one. ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Warp wrote:

>   There are other advantages too, mainly related to trustworthiness.
> Because the source code is open for anyone to examine, it's less likely
> that it will contain undocumented parts which do something the user might
> not want it to do, such as compromising his privacy without his consent.

Agreed.

>   Another advantage is that OSS is often developed by several independent
> parties which are not driving their own personal gain with the project,
> something that is the rule with proprietary commercial software. OSS is
> user-oriented, doing what benefits the users the most.

Not entirely true.

Counter-example: http://www.xkcd.com/619/

OSS tends to be developer-oriented, not customer-oriented. Granted, that 
can be much better than company-oriented though. ;-) Since the 
developers are users too, they aren't going to deliberately try to screw 
themselves...

[Insert geek masterbation joke here.]

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> For example... I know of at least half a dozen packages which can take a 
> simple algebraic formula and simplify it, possibly rearrange it, and 
> maybe graph it in 2D or 3D. I know of exactly *one* package which can 
> symbolically expand, factorise and compute quotients of expressions, 
[...]

  That's maybe somewhat of a niche market.

  Maybe a better example is video editing: There is good video editing
software out there, and there is open source video editing software out
there. Exclusive "and".

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:16:51 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> There are OSS packages that do symbolic calculations. And then there's
> Mathematica. Hypothetically, you can take an OSS package and "fix" it to
> be Mathematica. But unless you have a few million dollars to invest in
> R&D... good luck with that one. ;-)

Not really a case of "the exception proves the rule", though.  There's 
plenty of decent OSS software out there that competes with proprietary 
software and does very well.

Jim

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On Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:04:14 -0400, Warp wrote:

>   There are other advantages too, mainly related to trustworthiness.

Absolutely, I just mentioned the first that came to mind, that's 
certainly not the only one.

Jim

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