Re: Ada is getting more popular!

["Thomas Løcke" <tl@ada-dk.org>]

On 2010-10-25 21:06, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) wrote:
> That is entirely false. Few people audit sources, and open or close
> source does not matter for 98% of users.


Apparently me and my business are part of those last 2% then.

I've been buying and using both closed and open source software since 
the mid 90's, and I can tell you that, in general, the quality of open 
source software is much higher than it's closed counterpart.

Much. Higher.

Let me give you a few examples:

Over the years I've had numerous problems with the Cisco routers setup 
by my ISP. They lock up on occassion. They drop a packet here and there. 
Setting up failover is apparently difficult to do right, as my ISP has 
failed this many times. Still, according to my ISP it's top of line 
equipment. It's Cisco!

Yet after having switched to open source routers/firewalls based on BSD 
(I got tired of Cisco), I haven't experienced a single problem. Not one 
single issue.

An expensive closed Avaya IP telephony setup fails left and right, yet 
an open Asterisk based setup using the exact same network works 
flawlessly. I have used both.

The core software used by my business is closed source (I didn't know 
better when I bought it), and I've had to build my own safeguards around 
it, just to keep it running somewhat stable. This might be due to 
clueless developers, bad code or something entirely different, but I'll 
never know, because I can't get access to the source. It's a blackbox.

The open source RDBMS I'm using is solid as a rock (PostgreSQL). The 
closed source Microsoft database that is a part of the above mentioned 
core software is flaky.

The closed source Windows XP clients I'm being forced to use due to the 
above mentioned closed source core software are unstable, insecure and 
unmaintainable.

The open source Linux clients are stable, easy to maintain and much 
easier to keep secure.

The closed source IE browser is utter crap. The open source 
Firefox/Seamonkey/Chrome browsers are much much better, both from a user 
and developer point of view.

The few closed source Windows servers I'm running are giving me 
infinitely more grief than the open source Linux servers. The two things 
simply does not compare.

The closed source fax server software I'm using (again due to the core 
software mentioned earlier) crashes at least 2 times a week. The open 
source fax software I used a few years back failed me perhaps a few 
times a year, and those failures were due to human error on my part.

Over the years I've run all sorts of closed source Windows based 
SMTP/IMAP/POP3 setups (before I started using Linux), and all of them 
have been fickle and unstable. To this day I often have the dis-pleasure 
of assisting my customers in figuring out why their Exchange servers 
fail. And believe you me, they often fail.

On the other hand, a Postfix/Dovecot setup is solid as a rock.

My open source Samba servers are running 24/7/365 without a hitch. I 
simply don't have to worry about them. The same thing cannot be said 
about the few shares I'm forced to host on a couple of Windows boxes.

Open source matters to a lot of us, even though we don't personally 
audit every line of code. What's important, is that we have the freedom 
to do so. We have the freedom to both fix bugs and add functionality to 
the software we use. We have the freedom to hire one or more programmers 
and add features and/or fix problems.

I've contributed to the AdaCore AWS project, and I've done so because I 
had an itch that needed scratching. If my contribution helps someone 
else do something of value with AWS, then YAY!

If my contribution helps AdaCore earn something from having AWS in their 
portfolio, then YAY!

Had AWS been closed source, I would've never done that. It would've been 
impossible, and AWS would've been a little less feature-complete. And 
more importantly: I would've never considered using it in my business. 
I've had enough of poor closed source products and ugly vendor lock-in.

These are my experiences through +20 years of having run my own business.


> As I sometime say, “Linux did not help to get ride of
> Windows, it instead helped to enforce MS monopole”. Why ? Because it
> helped MS killing any potential MS concurrents.
>
 > [snip]
 >
> The idea that the author as no right at all and only the consumer as all
> the rights, could not ends into anything else. You must have the power
> of a monopole to get a chance to survive in such a context. Otherwise,
> no right for authors and all rights for consumers, simply means you
> better be a consumer than an author. Result : more and more consumers,
> less and less authors (or less and less authors who survive). The result
> is poor authors and poor products, as Dmitry argue.


I'd like to see some hard numbers backing up those two claims.

Open source does not mean that an author gives up his copyright, nor 
does it mean that he can't sell his software.

Open source does not equal free, as in free beer. I pay for each and 
every Slackware release and I often donate to open source projects that 
are valuable to me. I'm sure other users do the same.

-- 
Regards,
Thomas Løcke

Email: tl at ada-dk.org
Web: http:ada-dk.org
IRC nick: ThomasLocke