if you'd bothered to read what i wrote in the post to which you replied, and the previous one where, before any of you yahoos decided to make the distinction, you'd have noticed that i'd already taken it on by separating the two and spelling out what the acronym meant. as the post concluded, i pointed out to the "two wojteks" that there was a difference between stallmanites and raymondites. and between them and the myriad people, among them kapor and others, who are simply mere democrats.
it is irrelevant, to me, that esr is a hanger on. the original point, as jordan tried to elaborate, is that on this list *and* elsewhere, the famous argument for open source was that it would produce less buggy code and ship the goods more quickly.
it *is* precisely the point that arguments were composed for the corporate world. it was the corporate world that was the target of the polemic because these people wanted to smash redmond -- and cupertino. and, on this list, those same arguments have been used over the years as well.
it is why people likely to smugly point at the numbers on apache servers in the corporate world. See! They like us! They like us! They rilly 'n' trooly like us!~
it is used as a *cough**choke* metric of success by open source proponents in the first place. Hey pa! Fewer bugs! Faster releases! (no planned obsolesence! [1]
quick! without looking, who wrote these posts?
"1) Security - with source code you can know that you are getting what you think you are getting. 2) Customizable - missing feature foo, no need for feature bar? Then change it. 3) Support - I work with open source software, and I work with million dollar enterprise software. Hands down, support I get from the "scene", via irc and usenet and some mailing lists, is more accurate and comes much more quickly than support I pay for. 4) Performance - open source software often (although not always) outperforms closed source software 5) Price - open source software is often free software " http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2000/2000-September/015933.html
"great points, and i will re-emphasize that open source is not just about downloading and using the software, but participating in the community to whatever extent you can. add code. fix bugs. file bugs. write documentation. help other users. etc." http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2004/2004-October/024518.html
"But anyone who wants to can help build one of the free operating systems. Truly, anyone, you don't even have to have any technical skills, only some spare time and a willingless to work. They'll find work for you. They'll set you to finding bugs, if nothing else, and finding bugs is a valuable contribution. That's one difference between this era and 100 years ago. People like us didn't have the capital to build our own railroads, but people like us do have what we need to build our own operating system, if only we all work together. " http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2001/2001-August/016666.html
" 1.) bugs get fixed pretty damn fast. there is little or no face saving (we'll fix it quietly and sell 'em a windows 98 within a year)
2.) friendly help is near at hand. Sys admins at first were reluctant about Linux (memo to Chuck Grimes: okay, freeBSD too) because they thought support was an issue. But they were just too used to calling HP or Sun on the phone (and waiting) for their problems. Now, everyone using Linux|BSD know that all they have to do is post a message on USENET group, and generally, 95% of your problems get a solution within one day (max). In fact, its quite amazing. when i run into a problem, i dont even post for a day, cause i just know someone else out there in the world has likely run into the same thing. and sure enough, withinin a day i find a post which is relevant. if not, i post." http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/1998/1998-August/004780.html