[NTLUG:Discuss] Open Source

[Leroy Tennison]

Steve Baker wrote:
> In the last year or so, I'm finding that the best way to introduce what 
> FOSS is is to explain it by analogy with Wikipedia.  People seem to 
> grasp what that is much better than they grasp what Linux is.  So - 
> OpenSourced software is like Wikipedia for computer programmers.  We can 
> all come along and edit or add to this enormous body of software out on 
> SourceForge (or wherever) - some of which is good and useful - some of 
> which is flakey crap.  As time goes on, the flakey crap mostly falls by 
> the wayside and the great and good becomes such an omnipresent resource 
> that we gradually start taking it for granted.   Joe public can use this 
> software whether they contributed to it or not - just as you can read 
> Wikipedia without writing any articles yourself.
> 
> Given that an encyclopedia of comparable quality to the Encyclopedia 
> Britannica exists for free - online - and there's more of it and the 
> quality is (mostly) every bit as good - why would you ever spend a 
> fortune on a big pile of books that'll be out of date in a couple of 
> years?   Similarly - given that there is a complete operating system 
> which is at least as good as Windows that exists for free - online - why 
> would you ever buy a copy of Windows when it'll be outdated within a 
> couple of years?
> 
> People forget that there was a time when you couldn't answer just about 
> any factual question in 10 minutes flat (Quick: When was Richard 
> Stallman born? March 16th 1953!  12 seconds!)....and people forget that 
> (for example) browsers are free only because Mozilla/Firefox is free - 
> if not, you'd be paying Microsoft $200 for a copy of Internet Explorer, 
> $400 for Internet Explorer Pro and $100 for Internet Explorer Home 
> Edition.  Your computer might come with a copy of Internet Explorer Lite 
> - but that would probably be crippled so it wouldn't run Javascript or 
> support plugins or something.
> 
> 
>    Steve
> 
> 
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To me this is a really good analogy to use, thanks for sharing it.