Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:03:14 +0100 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: mysql60-server?? Message-ID: <20091126130314.4f878cfd.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <20091126064106.7fca4f46@scorpio.seibercom.net> References: <20091125185704.GA58709@thought.org> <4B0D8299.6080201@infracaninophile.co.uk> <20091125195906.GA58848@thought.org> <4B0DADF1.1050402@infracaninophile.co.uk> <20091125225938.GC58848@thought.org> <20091126064106.7fca4f46@scorpio.seibercom.net>
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On Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:41:06 -0500, Jerry <gesbbb@yahoo.com> wrote: > BTW, I totally disagree with your statement regarding "commercial > product' vs "open source" and quality. I beg to differ. Bad software exists everywhere - in open source world as well as in the commercial sector. > If that were really true then > Open Office would be equal to or superior to MS Office. In actuality, > it is at best equal to Office 97, and that is even stretching the > point. I've worked for a long time in a cross-platform (Mac, Linux, BSD, Solaris, "Windows") environment where OpenOffice has been used successfully. A MICROS~1 product couldn't work that good when it's about interoperability. There are many things "modern" MICROS~1 office products lag behind open software, be it interface design, conforming to standards, useful (!) functionality or operation speed. On the other hand, I admit that there are often problems in quality with open source programs, but not as you may think: I'm talking about the lack of proper documentation (try "man opera" and "man firefox" for a comparison) and insufficient attention paid to internationalisation. KDE's german language version is a good example. Sometimes, I think it's just "quick quick, add more features, quick quick, and release the whole thing" instead of having a result that is acceptable in every way it claims to serve. (Sidenote: I'm running all my programs in their native language, which is english, with OpenOffice being the only exception, simply because using the german variants is so unpleasant.) > Commercial software is written with the end-user in mind. Haha! Very funny. :-) You meant to say, and I may correct your statement: Commercial software is written with the end-user's MONEY in mind. In order to make him buy incompatible, slow and outdated software, aggressive advertisement is used. This advertisement has taken the place of good coding, or: The worse your program is, the more money you put in advertising it's "greatness". This is the way software is sold. Free software, on the other hand, isn't sold per se. It is used, and so it is created with the end-user in mind, because he doesn't give money anyway. That's quite generic, I know, but it can be summarized that way without contradicting to reality. > Commercial software that does not sell will not be around very long. That's true, and a logical implication of what I said just before. > On > the other hand, open-source software tends to be written with the > developer as the focal point with the hope that others will share their > point of view. Maybe that has been the case, but it's not anymore. Maybe you're true in regards of operating systems, their interfaces and APIs, but that's logical again, because the end-user isn't interested in how to program for a certain OS, but the application developers who write the software for the end-users are - and need to be. The change of this attitude isn't new. > Neither philosophy is inherently superior. Yes, I agree. > In the final > determination the end user has to determine which meets their > "suitability to task" requirements; whether that be "cost", > "suitability" or both. That's the problem: The tasks are adjusted to fit the software currently in use (or promised to to come out soon). Educated judgement, sadly, isn't one of the strengths of the average PC user. "PC on, brain off" is a setting you find more often than you'd like to. In the past, I have mostly used free software, but some commercial products, too, e. g. Solaris and IRIX (and HP-UX for some special cases), and they served well in the places they were intended to use. I would not claim that free software serves better than commercial software in general, because this often depends on supporting various hardware, and we all know that the hardware vendors still are focused on a monopoly of "Windows" and don't care for other operating systems because they don't exist. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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