Is open source working?

[trinux_bc]

Please elaborate.


I am not familiar with Cassandra, other than my immediate review of the Wikipedia article. A database for the Facebook search - that would seem to fit my concept of providing info for people.


Free market business is not a selfish endeavor - when a business forces anyone to purchase any product, let me know.

I'll use Cassandra as my elaboration, Facebook created it to improve their service, but their business is not based on selling software so open sourcing it works for them because they lose nothing and potentially gain goodwill. The fact that they have switched to something else illustrates the point, they were solving a problem by writing Cassandra that something else solved better. They can switch because, again, Cassandra is peripheral to their business, the problem that it addresses needs to be solved but they don't need to write their own solution, if their had been a solution before they wrote Cassandra they might not have bothered. So, as Koenn has argued, the educating of people is an effect in this case, and not necessarily the motivation.

I would argue that open source is working brilliantly well, but not just because people are being educated. Open source creates a pool of software solutions that anyone, (individuals, businesses, non-profits, etc), can take advantage of. It's an extraordinarily efficient system, but the desire to educate people is just one of many possible motivations, and if education is a common effect it does not mean that it was an intent.

Also, I said nothing about business forcing people to buy anything, I said businesses act in their own self interest just like individuals do (and/or should), which is the basis of the free market. I don't know where you're going with your last point.

trinux_bc

[sffvba[e0rt]

Thread closed for Review.


404