Start telling your kids they should not share.
[1] “The vice president and chief technology officer of Microsoft Europe has made claims that ’some people want to use community-based software, and they get value out of sharing with other people in the community. Other people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model.’”
Wow. What a bold statement… and so far from the truth. I can’t stop myself from stating the obvious here. Didn’t we all grow up hearing that sharing is a good thing? Now, who wasn’t punished for refusing to share? How can a commercial company develop better software with a limited number of developers than an open source company that has an entire community collaborating?
Oh, I am just talking about commercial closed-source models in comparison to open-source… and *apparently* so was he.
A comercial company can develop better software then a entire comunity collaborating if the few that works for the comersial company are better than the many that work for the comunity. (Of course, if the comercial company do not releases under a free (as in freedom) license and the comunity do, I will still claim that the one under the free license is best based on that quality alone.
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As in commercial, you mean commercial and closed-source I assume.
Of course, a closed-source project will be better than an open source project, IFF they have competent developers that outweigh the competency of the developers in an entire community. From what I have seen, this has never been the case. So, for the time being I will let this be a valid proof for closed-source software suckage.
I can’t share the arguments of Sveinung too, but for other reasons than you. The quality of a software product depends on many factors, the competence of the developers is only one of them. Another important factor is the development process itself, and we know that there are successful open source development processes (that said as an Apache Harmony committer).
Anyway, I think that closed source projects _can_ produce quality software too. Same as open source projects _can_ be really bad (look at OOo 2.0 Writer, it really sucks).
IMHO the way of producing quality software is using a light-weight, agile development process, collaborating with your users and taking their concerns seriously – and in many (maybe not all) cases open source /free software is an easy way to achieve this (that said as CEO of a startup-company).
Yes, I agree with you. The development process is true for any project and can make or break it. My point is that, the quote stated is completely wrong. There is so much wrong with his argument that I can’t begin to figure it out. With that said, a man of his caliber is paid to attack his competition and the open-source community has definitely become competition to Microsoft… and every other closed-source company out there.
Of course the points in your original posting are valid. I was responding to Sveinung’s comment and your answer to him.
I stopped thinking about these Microsoft (or $BIGCORP) statements about linux some time ago because they are basically all the same and you and up saying the same things all over again as a response. But maybe you should never stop doing that.
So: Yes he is wrong. Yes, open source gives people the freedom to choose. And no, a commercial software model _does not_ mean per se that you get reliability and dependability.
I wrote a paper about open source software quality (also compared to closed source software quality) at the university last year, unfortunately it’s not publicly availiable.
But I guess I disgress from the original topic again and that goes too far for a blog-comment-discussion…