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

* Is it really free?

As most web sites of open source software will gladly point out, there are two ways of looking at the term 'free'. Firstly, there is the financial outlook, i.e. not paying any money for it; secondly, there is the concept of being free to use it however you wish. The second definition is, of course, derived from 'freedom', and it is the definition that open source is mostly concerned about. The official definition for open source is available here: http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php.

As an example of free software, I have just completed downloading my seventh operating system - free of charge. That was the Debian Linux distribution, and I have the right to give you or anybody else a copy of it. I can even sell it on, and I can modify it ad infinitum and then sell on that modified version (correct me if I'm wrong, of course). The same is true of the OpenOffice.org office suite, which I am thinking of bundling with the software I provide at my website, of which I will need no permission to do.

Obviously, all of the above information is very pleasing to me - the fact that I can get seven complete functional operating systems for nothing is a rewarding concept.

There are a lot of complications in considering which software is free in this sense and which is not. Many open source operating systems and open source software will have a mixture of both free and proprietary components, which makes things very complicated. Different parts of the software, in other words, can be governed by different licenses. Which brings us to the next issue...


* What is the difference between all the different types of licence - and does the type of licence really matter?

Most software is distributed under the GNU Public License, which states that re-distribution and re-selling of the software is permitted. It also allows modification of the software, the only restriction being that re-distribution of your modifications is compulsory. There are many variations of the GPL, including the Lesser GPL and the Library GPL, all of which are used for different purposes.

The BSD License, I believe, is almost exactly the same except for the fact that you are not obliged to submit your modifications back to the community. This license is used in conjunction with the BSD Unix variants - also open source operating systems.

In my understanding, the type of license used matters very little when it comes to open source software. One way or another, you have a gargantuan amount of freedom with your software. If I wanted, I could parade around London on stilts with a massive bill-board in my hands exhibiting an extract from the Linux kernel (that's the core of the OS) in big bold letters. Nobody would mind. And I doubt that anyone would be afraid that passing London hackers would scribble bits down on their hands, incorporating a security glitch into it that they'd submit to the community when they got home.

The license for certain proprietary software, in contrast, does matter in a legal sense. The End-User License Agreement for Windows is extremely strict, and I would imagine it spends nigh-on 12 pages defining the word 'company'. License agreements that put all their energy into giving great long lists of forbidden actions must put people off completely, although I doubt that many people actually commit themselves to the hours it must take to untangle the legal jargon necessary to reach the end of the document. (Is that becoming reminiscent of this post that I'm writing?)


* Are Open Source applications any good?

I wouldn't use them if they weren't.

You can find a host of different applications developed by people from all over the world and being supplied to you for free, in most cases, and that tackle almost every type of task imaginable.


Can you use Open Source Applications on commercial operating systems?

The open source software that can be obtained for free for use on Linux or a Unix distribution can be used on any distribution, commercial or otherwise. By this I mean that if I download the source code for the GIMP (the open source image editing application), I can use it on Debian (non-commercial) or Linspire (commercial).

Open source applications are not, it must be pointed out, indigenous to Linux and Unix. The Openoffice.org suite, the Gaim instant messaging program and many others all have Windows versions available and they do not need different types of licenses just because they are being used on Windows.


* Are Open Source operating systems as good as commercial operating systems?

Every operating system has its advantages and disadvantages. The answer to that question depends on the commercial and non-commercial operating systems you are comparing.

For example, if comparing Windows to Debian, I would say that the non-commercial OS is as good as the other if not better. But if comparing, for example, Mandrake Linux to Linspire I would probably say that the former is better than the latter. It's all a matter of taste, whether commercial, proprietary, privatised, finalised, formalised, pasteurised, compartmentalised or anything.


* What are the benefits and what are the pitfalls?

Benefits of open source software:-
The freedom and the ability to fix things yourself as described above is a major benefit. The value for money is also incredible. The friendliness and vastness of the community of open source users is also unsurpassed, at least in my opinion.

There are more benefits, but I'll post them as I can muster the energy.

Pitfalls:-
The pitfalls are nearly as numerous as the benefits. Choosing a distribution can turn into a nightmare. Learning to get back into the swing of using command line interfaces where required can be daunting. The countless different package management systems can get messy, and of course the debates you can get into about different distributions and, even steamier, the debates over commercial to open source software, with people from all over the world, can get overly passionate.


Conclusory remarks: this topic is simply vast. We could be here discussing different distributions of Linux and Unix and others for approximately forty-two years, by which time the objects of our discussion would be out-of-date and we could go on for another similar length of time discussing the new versions... and so on and so forth.

"Is the software any good?"

as usuall, this requires the rest of the question.

good for what purpose.

For professional musicians, it is still better to use cubase on windows. for professional movie makers, they have all already switched to linnux, or are in the process of doing so.

if you just need word processing, web browsing, and email, you can use mozilla and open office on a number of platforms right away.

It really does require a detailed knowledge of what you want to do, and then buy the software to do it, the operating system tot run it on, and the hardware you need for that.

This has always been the case, but for a while microsoft had a stranglehold so that everyone was forced to play catch-up with their new operating sytems, making all software much more expensive than it needed to be.

"Does the license matter?"

in principle no, in practice yes.

using a related example, project guttenburg. they made their books completely free using something a bit like the bsd license. they are funded completely by donations, but there were a number of companies downloading the entire archive, writing a minimal wrapper around the book, and stripping off the copyright messages so it looked like it was all their own work, and never paying anything to project guttenburg.

A lot of newer stuff is being provided to them under the "creative commons" license which allows genuine people to download and print a version of the wizard of oz, but restricts the write to lie about your sources and rip people off.

", a command line interface!!!"

As to the problem of dropping down to a command line interface, cotrary to popular belief by the uneducated, sometimes a command line is much better, especially when it comes to automating common task you do on a daily basis, or eing an expert.

The gui was deliberately designed to slow things down for the novice user, and present the options in a near idiot proof manner for them. the problem with this is that as you become more expert you wish to automate more of what you do, and you can do things faster, until the gui gets in the way.

The other advantage of the command line basis of open source systems is that under windows you can sometimes find that the video driver breaks for no reason you could have done anything about, often during an update. As the driver tools are gui based, this can leave you with no option but to do a complete reinstall of every piece of software you use.

Contrast this with open source, where you just use the text interface to modify the text based configuration file, and suddenly it all works again, if you know your stuff.

so, that'sa cmplete reinstall verses the modification of a couple of text files... I know which I would prefer.

"indigenous to linux?"

While open source tools are not indigenous to linux, they would not exist without the underlying unix philosophy of small tools doing small jobs very well. see my page http://www.xyroth-enterprises.co.uk/unixphil.htm for more info.

Under a monolithic system like windows you can get individual companies producing better stuff, but they are completely at the mercy of the system provider. this happened in the eighties with hardware suppliers for acorn computers, and happens regularly when microsoft decides if wants an even bigger chunk of the pie to tie you to their operating system.

The most obvious benefit to open source is the release from the compulsory hardware upgrade cycle, where you need an extra feature of a piece of software, but it only works under the latest microsoft operating system, which needs better hardware to allow it to run at all. so a minor upgrade to software can end up costing you a couple of thousand pounds per desk. this doesn't really happen under open source.

"The gui was deliberately designed to slow things down for the novice user, and present the options in a near idiot proof manner for them."

No, no, no, that was the QWERTY keyboard, not the GUI.

A graphic user interface is not meant to slow things down, it's just the opposite. For a person who does not have the knowledge of how to operate the system, it puts that knowledge directly in front of them in an organized and quickly accessible manner. Take for example using a utility that you have never used before, and have no idea how to operate. With the command line, you need to type "man utilityname", spend some time reading, then execute the command and if you did not get it right go back to the man pages, reread (hoping that they are clearly written) and try again. On the rare occasions when I use vi, I need to keep two terminal windows open, one with vi and one with the manual so that I can keep going back and forth to figure out what I am doing. With a GUI, you scan the menus and pick the most appropriate one. The GUI ends up being *much* faster in the case of unfamiliar software.

You're right that for a knowledgeable person the CLI is faster, but you do need to take into account the amount of time it takes to become knowledgeable. One of the biggest obstacles in the *general* acceptance and use of open source software is the disorganized and confusing GUI, or total lack of one. The average computer user is not knowledgeable.

And CLI does not equal open source. MS-DOS was a command line interface but not open source. *nix and it's open source variants has a command line interface because it is old enough to have that heritage. Open Office and Mozilla are open source, but do not have a CLI. A discussion of the benefits or disadvantages of CLI in this context really just confuses the issues that are already confusing enough on their own.

I didn't say that open source = command line.

I said that command line has a lot of advantages, especially when it comes to advanced uses, automation, and configuration.

Also, I commented on command line because someone else moaned about open source expecting you to use it. My reply basically pointed out that in those circumstances, the choice was between being able to get at the configuration files from a command line so that a knowledgable person could fix it, or the microsoft alternative of having to completely reinstall the operating system because it had hidden it all behind a gui, which had failed.

I will now leave the command line out of the discussion.

on your points about vi, I think you are basiclly wrong. I use it regularly, because it is likely to be on all systems (except microsoft), and find that the only commands I need to know are insert, delete, and search. only if you almost never use it do you need the documentation for that, as it is three simple keys which do that job.

I will gree with you that a disorganised and non-standard user interface is a problem, but I have seen enough bad examples in the realms of proprietary software to know that open source is not alone in having this problem, and sticking a gui on it doesn't remove the need for a good interface.

If you think so, try having to look through four layers on menus in microsoft word to try and find fairly important options, only to find that either they are not there at all, or they are in completely arbitrary places in the menu trees.

nobody would think of recoding cdrecord just so it has a gui only interface, so lets code stuff at the right level, unlike some open source and proprietary software I have seen which gets it spectacularly wrong.

also, the gui is only much faster if the application is simple enough to have only a few menus with only a few options. if it has no key-bindings for commands (a common mistake) then it makes it impossible for the expert to use it with any speed.

Firstly, I want to pick up on BB's post at the beginning of this thread. Essentially, the position described is that of the "Open Source" community - licenses are essentially unimportant, just being anything more relaxed from a traditional software corporation has immediate advantages, and so on.

I, however, tend to go with the "Free Software" philosophy - an older and nobler one which says that software development should be treated as sharable knowledge, and certain fundamental freedoms should be not just provided, but *guaranteed*. These are: freedom to use, freedom to distribute, freedom to study the inner workings (open source), and freedom to improve. The problem with saying "oh, just keep the license nice and simple" is that people can come along and abuse the privileges you've given them. This is why the concept of "copyleft" was created - rather than simply giving people the right to do what they want, a copyleft license requires them to play by the same rules as you. So if a program is distributed under the GPL, and somebody tries to turn it into a proprietary system to which users have no rights, they are in breach of the license and can be sued for copyright violation. In contrast, a project which is merely "open source" with no strings attached, could be subverted for someone else's gain, contrary to the spirit in which it was developed.

The GPL, by the way, has only one official variant - the "LGPL", which originally stood for "Library General Public License" but has now been renamed "Lesser General Public License". It is a version of the GPL with relaxed copyleft clauses, for use in very specific circumstances where it would be unnecessarily restrictive to require compliance with the full GPL.

See also the views of the "Free Software Foundation", from whom the concept was born several decades ago, at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy

[IMSoP]

Now, in an attempt to avoid confusion, I'm going to put as a seperate post a quick reply to a point raised by other Researchers:
The key relevance of the quality of interfaces to a discussion of Open Source/Free Software is surely that unlike in a proprietary system it is possible for anyone sufficiently frustrated to improve the interface for everyone else. If Internet Explorer had a useful feature that was irritatingly hard to use, there would be nothing I could do about it; if Mozilla had such a feature, however, I would be able to suggest an improvement, and if it seemed important enough, implement it myself.

In general, I suspect that open/free software tends to start off terrible, but continue improving steadily, whereas traditional propietary software tends to be permanently mediocre, since it tends to be developed in fits and starts, at least from the public's point of view.

[IMSoP]

Their position on the lgpl is that you should only use it where it is impractical to use the gpl, thereby promoting even more availability of free software.

As you have mentioned the "copyleft", as the gpl is sometimes refered to, it needs mentioning that it usually also mention "all rights reversed" at the same time.

'reversed' or 'reserved'

With which, contrast the "Creative Commons" slogan: "Some Rights Reserved"
[http://creativecommons.org/]

all rights reversed.

in normal copyright, you as the author make a land grab over various bits of the intellectual property space.

in the copyleft that is the gpl, a lot of rights normally claimed in the copyright message are reversed.

for example:

in normal copyright I claim ownership of stuff I create, sometimes allowing copying of small peices for "fair use" like educational duplication of small sections.

In the gpl, I claim ownership of the same intellectual property, but insist that anyone may copy it and use it, and more importantly that anyone distributing it must also make any souce code modifications publically available as well.

There are a number of other cases where such traditional rights are reversed as well.

Thanks for the clarification, I'm glad I asked