Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again)

In article <433700be$0$30311$da0feed9@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Joe Butler <ffffh.no.spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>"MSCHAEF.COM" <mschaef@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
....

FYI: You may be reading more into my posts than you should.

>That's a propriatory development environment for a propriatary language.
>What exactly are you expecting here?

Haven't I been posting about the perils of closed-ness?

> You got burnt over Visual Basic, didn't you.

Is this a question or a statement?

If it's a question, then the answer is no, I haven't gotten burned by
picking VisualBasic. Personally, I've avoided it for a lot of the reasons
I've been posting in this thread. Now, in 2005, I'm avoiding VB.Net, C#,
and the rest of the CLR-platform for a lot of the same reasons.

> You presumably chose it ...

No.

>...because it gave you an advantages at the time - ...

Not really.

>...now, for some reason, you feel bad about it.

If I had chosen it, yes, I'd feel pretty bad about it.

>Open Office seem to be able to manage Office documents.
>The Office file format (Word at least) is publicly available from Microsoft.

Word is less troubling to me than Excel/Access. Excel/Access might as well
be development platforms in a lot of the common use cases.

>So, if you choose a propriatary development system and language, that's your
>choice. I develop with Visual C - I've never felt locked in, and don't
>recall having any major problems or even any annoying minor problems.

So do I, although I try to avoid MFC and other propriatary things to the
extent its advantagous to do so.

> The
>problem is, that if you chose to use Visual Basic, it's highly likely that
>you didn't have the skills to use any of the non-propriatary alternatives.
>If that is the case, then you actually made a heavy overal win. If there
>were no Visual Basic development environments (or VB programmers available),
>you wouln't have had a $2M system to produce as an example.

Good point.

>If there are freely-available XML and open document format parsers
>available,

http://www.microsoft.com/office/xml/default.mspx


>> Every document developed in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. makes it more
>> expensive to switch away to something else.
>
>Not really so, is it. You probably don't realise that you can output most
>of these documents as alternative formats which can then be read by other
>applications.

FWIW, Export/Import is one of of the features in Office I use most
frequently.

>Also, any entity that really wanted your business would make
>it a priority to seamlessly deal with Office format documents.

True, although once you get past simple documents and move into files with
logic (spreadsheets, databases, word processing documents with macros,
etc.) that gets progressively more difficult.

>So, if it's cheaper to stick with the product, stick with it. If it's
>cheaper to switch to an alternative, switch. I can't see the problem.

I don't think there is a problem.

I'm not necessarily advocating OSS as the end-all-be-all of software
licensing. My primary point is that it can offer real advantages to
people trying to make money. It also has costs associated with it, and a
choice needs to be made, hopefully with as many facts and alternatives as
possible.

>you had propriatary database front ends from open source vendors, you'd
>still have the problem of needing to re-write all the front-ends and tools
>if you want to switch. At least with, say Access (and I think Excel too),
>you've got the ODBC layer that would allow your data to be accessed by any
>application that can make SQL calls.

I'm pretty sure Excel can do that too... Actually, I think you can use
ODBC to query a CSV file.

>So, that's the whole point - do an analysis and find out which is the
>cheaper solution. It's either move or stick. I can't see what all the fuss
>is about.

I think we agree...

>Basically, you are saying, "In the past, we had a real advantage in using
>all of these productivity apps. We got stuff out there and it worked. Now,
>we don't like MS, so we want to switch to something else.

No, basically I'm saying this: "There are advantages to open source
licenses that need to be considered when making software decisions. The
world is better off with a choice between OSS and CSS licensing terms."

That's all.

> Ohhhh... It's all
>Microsoft's fault. They should never have produced binary-type file formats
>when 4MB, 16 MHz PCs were the norm. They should have produced a whopping
>open file format with loads of redundant data to be swapped in and out RAM
>everytime I wanted to quickly see what was in a document".

Well... I would argue for more openness, even in binary formats.
Open!=XML, thank goodness. :-)

>The fact of the matter is: the vast majority of software users are
>technically clueless. The costs involved, for them, of switching from one
>system to another, I belive, may very well be comparable to obataining a
>single satisfactory bug fix for any major problem that does not have a
>workaround accessible to the user.

Yeah, I think it's likely that the organizations most likely to benefit
most from OSS alternatives are either very small companies that can't
afford CSS, but can hire a motivated 'geek', or huge companies where the
costs of the switch are possibly quite high and they have the money to
sink into alternatives.

Software houses, with in house development skills, are also likely to see
benefits from OSS.

>> Closed source restricts you to making possibly impotent petitions for
>> help from someone else.
>
>Perhaps. But this is not the only factor to consider.

No, but it is one of the factors.

FWIW, I do see the other side too. I've spent more time than I should this
weekend trying to find a wireless Ethernet interface for a TiVo Series 2.
TiVo runs LInux, which is cool, but probably is making it more difficult
to find a supported Ethernet card. I'd pay extra for a closed solution
that actually works out of the box.

-Mike
--
http://www.mschaef.com
.