Comments on: Open Source For Efficient Markets

By: Ralph Hyre

Ralph Hyre — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:50:54 +0000

I prefer open source because of two factors

experience: open source software has improved at a greater rate

optimism: I believe open source will improve faster than closed source in the future.

The software will get better not because of a promise of one company or copyright holder, it will get better because everyone has access to it.

By: Abhijit Nadgouda

Abhijit Nadgouda — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 09:00:12 +0000

Good point Greg.

By: Greg M

Greg M — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 04:53:57 +0000

I do not think open source is anti-copyright, credit should always be given to the deserved. Open source discourages using copyrights and patents to exploit and manipulate the markets.

A perfect market assumes perfect information, so correct attribution (crediting the author for his effort) is necessary. The other part of copyright/patents – the part that creates restrictions on what others can do with the _product_ of that effort – that goes completely against the principles of the free market, so the GPL for instance nullifies those kinds of restrictions.

By: Abhijit Nadgouda

Abhijit Nadgouda — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 02:42:44 +0000

Dave, you almost made me rethink everything on open source Thanks for your comment, it is quite valuable.

I completely agree with you that only the user can suggest which is better. The reason I said this was was to highlight that Linux is not about being cheaper. In many places, cost of Linux being free is touted as the biggest advantage. Which I think overshadows bigger advantages like freedom from vendor lock-in.

Regarding the community, I will stick to my thought that it makes a lot of difference to the user. Projects like Firefox, KDE, Gnome or OpenOffice benefit more from the community. The extensions, the bug fixes, the help and more importantly the community contributes to how it evolves. Even if I do not actively participate in the community, you benefit a lot of from it, and a lot of times without explicitly realising it. Open source, like efficient markets, is really beneficial to the end user, not just developers.

Open source is not about collective intelligence, it is about taking feedback from many and availability of the code to many which increases probability of better quality. Everyone’s code might not be accepted, but many more good contributions get made because the code is widely available.

I agree that which of the two is better is to be decided by the user. But if Linux is better than paid Windows for you, I will suggest that it is better than even that Windows copy was free.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:17:22 +0000

Interesting post, but I just can’t resolve in my mind the reasons you give for a free-of-charge copy of Linux being better than a free-of-charge copy of Windows… I don’t think you’re really taking into account the users of the software when you say that… possibly if you define who your subgroup of users are you could make a claim like that, but what makes software a better or best choice for someone is not that it’s open source–in fact I think that’s irrelevant to the majority of everyday PC users out there–it’s that the software does what the user wants and that they’re happy with it. I think you started out making the case that open source is better for the developers, and I won’t argue with that, but the jump to “a free copy of Linux is better than a free copy of Windows” because of the community, from a user’s perspective, doesn’t really seem to hold up. I don’t think most of us purchase anything based on the community it was created in–yes it does happen–and good examples are people’s name brand preferences. And the reason we choose specific brands over another is because over time they’ve proved that the product they sell “satisfies” some need we have in a better way than the other products. If the quality declines in a product line, we find something else… I’m not sure that the collective always knows best and that just because software was developed by thousands of people that it has any better measure of “quality” than something developed by a small shop (or behemoth company) with tightly guarded source code… I think ultimately, quality can only be determined by the user and how well the software meets their needs… anyways, I don’t mean to pick, I always enjoy reading your posts… it just seemed this claim was made with more bias than anything… and for the record, I’m not a Windows advocate… I enjoy using Linux far more often, and at home, more often than not, I’m using a MacBook Pro with OS X (Tiger)…