foss

Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond are truly the founding fathers and patriarchs of the Free/Open Source movement. The fruits of this movement are well-known even for the non-geek audience. They include the Linux operating system, Firefox browser, OpenOffice suite, MySQL database, plus a plethora of PHP-based content-management systems like WordPress and Drupal which are the driving engines behind the blogosphere... and the list goes on and on.

Despite the fact that the three patriarchs often disagree with each other, their authority is overwhelming enough that when any of them states an opinion, it would be unimaginable for mere mortals like us to disagree with or, God forbid, criticize their ideas. Nevertheless, the "free" in "free software" stands for "liberty", the word that precisely characterizes the Free Software community, a community where any opinion has the right for existance and search for ultimate truth is the path of continued "disrespect" towards authoritative opinions. Besides, we the bloggers are well-known for our arrogance so, the heck with it! We are going to disagree with Linus Torvalds in this posting.

I am a huge fan of Linux. On most counts: code quality, cultural/social, stability, performance and security, I think it is superb. There is no other operating system that I would like to see on my servers. However, there is a huge issue with Linux as a desktop operating system. And it has little to do with programmers, to be honest and fair.

The issue is the look-and-feel of Linux and other free software that come with it. The dreadful graphics a-la Windows 3.0 from two decades ago is not just a minor nuisance but effectively daunts and depresses to the extent of making user less productive. Especially when you have the polished perfection of OS-X interface to compare with. Even Mac's inferior copycat - Windows looks much better than most of the Linux software. If they can't create, in Redmond, at least they try to copy.

Julie Inlow of the University of Maryland has recently interviewed me about FOSS, for her research. I decided to publish this interview in the hope that somebody else may find it interesting, as well. I strongly believe in the open-source. If this posting helps at least one person to consider FOSS more seriosuly, I will feel mission is accomplished.

Why is open source important to you? AKA - why do you care about FOSS?

For me the benefits of FOSS have three equally important facets: business, technological and social.

At the business side, employing FOSS allows organizations to avoid vendor lock-in. Using FOSS, managers substantially decrease dependencies on third parties, and mitigate a sizable risk. Unfortunately, not many executives understand a simple reality - when you build your technology on top of proprietary components you inherently tie project's future to what happens in the vendor companies.

David Geer published an article in the Enterprise Open-Source Journal titled Advantages of Custom-Built, Open Source Enterprise Portals. I think it is an interesting article, but you can not trust me since part of it is based on David's interview with me. So, don't trust me and read it :)

EOSJ has some odd publishing format (IMHO) so you may be better off checking out the  html version of the article online. All the rights to the article belong to respective parties.

enjoy.