h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

as to a volunteer, I know I'll regret this but it was my idea so er... if you don't find anybody more stupid than me ... I'll help

well, I can't do the write-up. I tried it with the big topic of intelligence, and the main conclusion I came to was not to try it again. however I can contribute more stuff for you to work with.

so here goes.....

The licences are important, but only as a defensive measure. for example microsoft grabbed the bsd networking code and integrated it into windows95. no problem there, they are allowed to do that under the license, but they also deliberately removed all of the copyright messages and failed to give a mention to bsd in the license, which they were not allowed to do.

Much more important than licenses is the unix philosophy of small, modular, reusable tools which is embodied in a lot of open source programs.see my page http://www.xyroth-enterprises.co.uk/unixphil.htm for a summary of the philosophy and why each of the points in it is significant.

Another thing we can mention is all the commercial stuff that is being built on top of linux, often without mentionin the fact.

notable examples include the tivo hard disc video recorder, amazon, google, a lot of the more advanced in car entertainment systems, and a lot of support systems used for space projects, including the space station, beagle 2, and the space shuttle.

anyway, post a link to the page after you have created it, and don't forget to start a thread for more stuff, including a link back to this one (or perhaps we can persuade jimster to move this one onto it

another point to add, open source software is cheap.

in an age with rapidly diminishing hardware costs, software becomes the limiting factor in cost. Already 10% of the cost of an average £1500 pc is microsoft and other software licences. if you move to the cheaper machines, the software can cost more than the hardware.

This can be demonstrated easily at both ends of the market. in the embedded sector, as well as tivo's, you have brazilian cash machines, and british and american epos terminals (shop tills) using linux. at the enterprises level you have the altix range of supercomputer clusters which were only designed to use linux and never had a proprietory operating system.

even ibm who pay for 250 people to write code for open source projects say that they can't write an operating system to the same quality with only 250 programmers.

It goes even further, because a company called open cola (see http://www.opencola.com/ ) have created and released a cola drink under the open source model. we also have a lot of books being developed and released under the "creative commons" license so anyone can publish them.

and a company called thinkcycle (see http://www.thinkcycle.org/ ) is using the open source model to highlight problems in the developing world which curently only have expensive solutions and develope cheap alternative solutions.

You should really add a bit about 'shareware' where someone writes a fully operating program and ask any who find it useful send a small payment. I tried this once and after a year got 1 check in the mail--from Canada! I asked for $20 (US) and had to pay $18 a year for the post office box.

I never tried that again, but a mention in the blurb might get others to respond from both sides.

F S

you could mention shareware, but it is a disappearing market.

on the one side, it is getting squeezed by the open source software which is often vastly better due to the number of people working on it for nothing.

on the other end it is getting squeezed by the likes of microsoft and other large vendors who arbitrarily change api's and file formats to break interoperability.

finally, as well as having the problems of both of the other methods, it relies on voluntary contributions from joe public, which they largely don't give.

It is largely being replaced by open source projects with a dual license, where the previous version is open source, but there is extra stuff plus a support contract for the newer stuff.

the best example of this is open office / star office, where community contributions are added to both versions, but the company charges for the few extra's in star office, and adds new features there first.

Xyroth, at this rate you'll have exhausted the topic before it hits the front page! I hope the editors move this thread to the topic's A page so that you don't have to say all this again.

you have got to be kidding.

you can say much more about the impact of open source software than that which I have put up here already.

I have just put up the stuff which was readily to hand.

If I really put my mind to it I could probably generate many times more stuff.

Steady tiger! Let everyone else have a go too.

is it my fault that I've been into shareware since before it became unviable, and open source and public domain for even longer, and thus know a lot about it?

So post an 'A' Number for the entry here so we can all get a jump on the Front Page Challenge all-ready

F S

we are all waiting on happy dude to do just that, as he said he was rash enough to run this project.

yoo hoo happy...

Well, as promised, it's this week's collaborative topic - well done you guys.

I'll move this thread over there now, just to make sure we don't lose any of the fantastic comments here.

Jimster

Editorial Note: This conversation has been moved from 'h2g2 Feedback' to 'Open Source Software'.