Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Geek Speak => Topic started by: jimmybrion on 26/11/2013 11:17:11
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Why everyone don't use open source software ? What are some of the reasons ?
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Are you asking why some people don't use any open source software or why some people don't use anything that isn't open source? If the former, I suspect that just about everyone already uses some open source software. If the latter, some of the best software packages are not open source.
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Why everyone don't use open source software ? What are some of the reasons ?
If a company pays for software there is accountability if things go wrong.
Also paid-for software will probably include professional technical support to fix problems promptly.
Paid-for software can include proprietary codecs , (the people who invented the codec get a royalty).
Open-source has to use reverse-engineered codecs, ( which are in a grey area legally (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering#Legality) and may not be as good as the real McCoy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_real_McCoy)), to deal with files in a proprietary format, e.g. LAME (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME#Patents_and_legal_issues).
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It is hard to beat the multi-billion dollar R&D budgets that some of the commercial computer and software companies enjoy.
Although, there are some companies such as Redhat that have both commercial (with support), and free versions of their software.
ATT Unix was largely replaced first by BSD Unix, and later by Linux.
In many senses, the current Linux core is a great improvement over the old ATT Unix, both with vastly better front-ends, an, of course, either better hardware, or at least more power per end user.
OpenOffice/LibreOffice, to a large extent mimics many of the office features, at least up until about Office XP. It is possible there will eventually be a revamp of the OpenOffice menus to mimic later Microsoft versions, although I must say that I still find the old pull-down menus easier to use.
Anyway, it has only been in the last 5 years or so that Linux + OpenOffice has truly been a pretty comprehensive system, and getting easier and better all the time. Unfortunately software, hardware, and driver support for it is still sporadic at best.
I was thinking a bit about my local school district which is wanting to upgrade some of its older computers. If I was doing it, I might configure it so that about half the computers ran Microsoft Office, and half ran OpenOffice/LibreOffice. Perhaps also a few Macintoshes. Force the students to learn and use multiple systems. Also add in a few Linux machines. Some students may complain, but overall, it may be advantageous to teach them some flexibility.
I have wondered why large corporations don't try using more open source software. But, if using open source software would decrease productivity, or increase tech support calls, then it may not be worth it.