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Monday, March 22, 2004
Open Source According to Marc Andreessen:
Internet whizz Marc Andreessen took the 3rd annual "Open Source in Government" conference by storm last week, at George Washington University in Washington DC, when he came up with his personal top twelve reasons for why open source will boom over the next 5-10 years.
The 12 reasons Andreessen came up at the conference with were as follows:
"The Internet is powered by open source."
"The Internet is the carrier for open source."
"The Internet is also the platform through which open source is developed."
"It's simply going to be more secure than proprietary software."
"Open source benefits from anti-American sentiments."
"Incentives around open source include the respect of one's peers."
"Open source means standing on the shoulders of giants."
"Servers have always been expensive and proprietary, but Linux runs on Intel."
"Embedded devices are making greater use of open source."
"There are an increasing number of companies developing software that aren't software companies."
"Companies are increasingly supporting Linux."
"It's free."
So these are the reasons OSS will be successful - the Internet, security, altruistic respect, status, cost, and ubiquity. All of this sounds nice when you're preaching to the choir, but there are several issues to consider.
Security - I'm not yet convinced that an open source product will be more secure than a proprietary one. The OS has to be designed with security in mind. And as OSS continues to grow, the viruses that attack it will, too. Microsoft suffers from some poor design flaws, to be sure. But it also suffers from being the big kid on the block. Lots of script kiddies out there try daily to see what hole they can expose next. Being closed source, though, is not their problem. Also, if users patch their systems, they remain largely secure, as much as can be expected. Who is to say that the average user will maintain their Linux distro, when they seldom do for their MS install? Systems are only as secure as the user or administrator makes them.
Cost - Let's not pretend Linux is "free". The RPMs and source code are. However, support is not. Maintenance is not. Development is not. Customization is not. These are the same issues that proprietary software has.
Ease of Use - You're fooling yourself if you think Linux / FreeBSD / etc. is more user friendly than Microsoft, or Mac. The average user doesn't care about security (and I am talking about the enterprise user, too). As long as the equivalent OSS alternatives (OpenOffice, etc.) remain buggy and lack the robust features that proprietary systems have, they will lag behind.
All in all, Andreessen offers platitudes, and generalities for touting OSS, but he doesn't convince anyone, other than those who are already convinced, that OSS has the positive outlook which he foresees.Labels: Archives_2004
.: posted by
Dave
10:52 AM
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