Putting the GPL on trial. Columbia Law School's Eben Moglen writes that SCO's strategy of challenging the legality of the GNU General Public License suggests a fundamental misreading of the Copyright Act. [CNET News.com]
I admit that I like some open source software. It is an important force in the software innovation and design process but it also has some very pragmatic benefits. Some of my more pragmatic reasons for using open source software are:
- Good quality software for free.
- Software licensing is a pain in the butt.
- For some features it is easier to use open source software than the commercial varieties.
- Some commercial software vendors do not innovate enough.
The last issue is a touchy issue. Most software vendors release a new version of their software each year and many software consumers do not upgrade. Many new releases are not sufficently different from the last version to warrant an upgrade for most people. Some reviewers of the new software deride the new version as nothing more than a bug fix. It is good that they finally are fixing the bugs but really annoying that you have to pay for it twice! When you combine all of these annoyances together, a competitive open source product becomes an attractive alternative. Microsoft has responded by reducing prices for large consumers(e.g. governments and companies).
Having said all of that I primarily use commercial software. I have replaced my use of Notepad with Jedit and ftp with Filezilla. Soon I will install a Linux server as a testbed for web development. I have installed Perl and Python on a Windows platforms but I think a local Linux server running Apache, Perl, Python, and PHP is the best way to test web development. IIS is nice but Apache is still the web server of choice for the Internet. I do not see .Net changing anything.
Finally, I enjoy following the software development process in the open source community and the reactions by the commercial vendors. Although the commercial vendors complain I see the combined commercial and open source software environment as a much more responsive and vibrant development community for the consumers. Since I view most software copyrights and patents as “standing on the shoulders of others”, I have little sympathy for SCO and the others who claim ownership of specific pieces of code. Most of the commercial software vendors I work with produce solid, propietary products that need some form of protection from theft. IMHO, their products might be unique but most of the programming code used to create the product has been around for a long time.