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Time Till Open Source Alternative

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Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#231

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

johnywalks wrote: post #229
DannyBee wrote: post #40

The chart is interesting because it misses the important part - it covers time, but not adoption. For example, adoption of GIMP has not likely materially increased over time (as a relative percent of total addressable market) IMHO, what the author gets wrong what so many people who claim this (they are not the first, or the last) get wrong - open source as a whole sucks at building products , but is great at building…

> open source as a whole sucks at building products, but is great at building infrastructure Infrastructure you can trust. Most close sourced tech will lock you in and you're at their mercy - no thanks.

Because this is, well, the very purpose of proprietary infrastructure: to lock you in. Today, it seems to exist mostly in places where people have no choice.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#233

Post by amelius »

Silverback_VII wrote: post #201

Until Women will get wet when they hear that you are an open source developer this will never be the case. You are better off hitting the gym instead of developing software for free.

I suppose most FOSS developers have passed that level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#234

Post by la_fayette »

omnimus wrote: post #205
la_fayette wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sometimes might be true, but there are many counterexamples. If you look at the web content management systems, the market is dominated by well-engineered open source CMS products, e.g., Drupal, ez Publish, typo3... Even for webshops this true: presta shop, opencart, ...

It might seem like domination but its just the biggest field. The pie is huge, everybody needs CMS. So everybody eats and if you focus on one segment it might see like its domination. I would say if anything every other website now is Webflow. Every shop is Shopify. And highest quality CMSes are commercial products like Craft CMS or Kirby CMS. So serious projects often grab those instead of OSS offerings.

Ok, there is for sure a closed source offering. Although, if you look at the data of the 1 millio top site on builtwith a strong oss share is clearly visible. It goes without saying that wordpress has the overall largest share, which technically might not be considered a fully-fledged CMS...

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#235

Post by amelius »

r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #59
rvz wrote: post #24

> All software will be open source, and no one will make money with software. This is simply a very utopian claim and just isn't going to happen. One example is Microsoft Office which has been replaced by Google Docs / Office Online, etc and little to no-one installs LibreOffice directly. Unfortunately, closed-source software is here to stay and the only absolute here is: There isn't any.

This is only a utopian claim if you are a software developer who does not need to make money to live. Otherwise it's utterly dystopian and essentially reduces the developer to a provider of free labour. I sometimes think that open source is the greatest trick that late stage capitalism ever pulled.

> I sometimes think that open source is the greatest trick that late stage capitalism ever pulled.

Don't let Stallman hear that.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#236

Post by hilbert42 »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #197
hilbert42 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use mainly open source software so I don't use pirated stuff in any of my operational systems as it poses too many problems. So too is licensed commercial software as Adobe's Photoshop licensing scam shows. One of my most annoying examples is UltraEdit a text and code editor originally from IDM Computer Solutions, now Idera, Inc. Years ago I bought a perpetual upgrade license which at the time was quite expensive w…

> If one didn't uninstall UltraEdit correctly the IDM website deemed it to still be installed. In my experience with this kind of DRM, an email is generally enough to get them to reset the licence at their end. Still an inconvenience though, and you'll need to wait until they've done it.

I don't want to mislead anyone here, 'continally' means that was the case every time and that was quite a few but it was over some years - certainly not every few weeks or even months.

On the other hand, another program I purchased for several hundred dollars reqired activation but was much easier to deal with. Despite my vow, it was one of those situations where I needed a quick solution so I purchased it fully expecting the same trouble (note, there was no indication on the website about the activation process).

So to avoid any inconvenience through downtime, I inquired what happens in such circumstances and the almost immediate reply was 'there's no problem reactivating it so long as you don't do so too often within a given week'. Note, there was no need to inform the company beforehand.

From my experience, that's definitely the exception to the norm, so not all software companies are unreasonable.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#237

Post by troad »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #213
DannyBee wrote: post #40

The chart is interesting because it misses the important part - it covers time, but not adoption. For example, adoption of GIMP has not likely materially increased over time (as a relative percent of total addressable market) IMHO, what the author gets wrong what so many people who claim this (they are not the first, or the last) get wrong - open source as a whole sucks at building products , but is great at building…

I'd argue, and think GIMP is a good example, that products can fight off open source alternative adoption by being free to certain groups. Piracy, student discounts, shareware, limited trials. You could still consider this a win for open source, as it stops market abuse and restricts those paying to the people who depend on the software for business reasons and who haven't had their trust sufficiently broken that the…

I respectfully disagree; I think GIMP is a great example of an open source alternative that is both markedly worse than the corresponding commercial product, and yet good enough to inhibit the creation of new open source projects that would otherwise jeopardise the market share of that commercial product.

If I were an engineer at Adobe, and I was asked to make an open source project that would in no way endanger Photoshop - a product no serious Photoshop pro could ever figure out or be satisfied with - I'd give you something very much like GIMP. The fact that open source devs are generally content with GIMP is fantastic (for Adobe): it reduces the risk they'll create something actually competitive among artists and designers. Plus, Adobe gets to point to the GIMP if they're ever accused of monopolistic or anti-competitive behaviour.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#238

Post by dotancohen »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #221
dotancohen wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not a win for open source because reducing payments is not a goal of open source. Assured continuation of availability and ownership of user's data is the explicit goal of the FOSS movement as stated by RMS. That means that it will continue to run on your hardware, and won't lock your data, and you can fix the bugs and suit it to your purpose. Money was never the issue.

RMS is on record as supporting BSD style licences for certain things because without them, proprietary software would have an even stronger stranglehold. https://lwn.net/2001/0301/a/rms-ov-license.php3 So it's not totally black and white, there's tactics and strategy involved. The less money going to Adobe, the less power and control they have. If they can force you to pay, they can force you to do other things. If t…

The corollary is that FOSS-induced e.g. "student versions" of Adobe software entrench vendor lockin, as the students learn only Adobe software.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#239

Post by lrvick »

troad wrote: post #237
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue, and think GIMP is a good example, that products can fight off open source alternative adoption by being free to certain groups. Piracy, student discounts, shareware, limited trials. You could still consider this a win for open source, as it stops market abuse and restricts those paying to the people who depend on the software for business reasons and who haven't had their trust sufficiently broken that the…

I respectfully disagree; I think GIMP is a great example of an open source alternative that is both markedly worse than the corresponding commercial product, and yet good enough to inhibit the creation of new open source projects that would otherwise jeopardise the market share of that commercial product. If I were an engineer at Adobe, and I was asked to make an open source project that would in no way endanger Phot…

I used Photoshop for 8 years, including for web development, before switching to Gimp.

Gimp is good enough for everything one needs in web dev, is free, and has a vital feature Photoshop lacks: the ability to run on a Linux workstation. When developing software intended for Linux servers the value of having a Linux workstation to easily do local development cannot be understated.

Re: Time Till Open Source Alternative

#240

Post by dotancohen »

enos_feedler wrote: post #175
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I have the opposite problem, which could actually explain your problem. I never used to get spam through GMail's filters, but in the last six-ish months I now get a couple every day. They're almost always the same format, too - frequently just a link, and often coming from an outlook.com email address. So a possible hypothesis is that spammers got good at evading GMail's filter, so in tweaking it to catch thes…

I have observed the same thing. I _never_ saw a single spam message in years. Suddenly I am seeing strikingly obvious ones at the same frequency you are. This must be on Google's plate to fix. Surely they see it.

  > Surely they see it.
Do you use the Report Spam button? Because that is how they see it.
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