[CoLoCo] in defense of open source

[Dave Vanderploeg]

Ringo, that seems like an over reaction to me. This is clearly an editorial,
written from his point of view and admitting that he is in fact a minority
in his belief. That hardly qualifies for in terms of fairness or accuracy,
opinions can be wrong.

Jim, I think you make some good arguments for Linux, but I wouldn't agree
100%. Take the iPhone, first I would argue that we do need it, in the same
way we need other technology. What once we lived with out, we now require.
As for the similar products that are open, they lack appeal, I've yet to see
any phone as cool as the iPhone. Same thing with photoshop and gimp, both
work, but one is far more appealing (and powerful). Windows, Apple and Linux
may all just be polished turds, but Apple often does a great job of making
theirs shiniest.

Dave

On Nov 20, 2007 2:30 PM, Ringo Kamens <2600denver at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have also alerted Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting of the
> statements made by Discover. Here's the letter I just sent:
> Dear Editor,
>
> I was extremely upset to see a distinguished magazine in the
> scientific community such as Discover publish such a poorly backed up
> argument as was presented in the December 2007 issue of Jaron's World.
> The arguments made in this article seem to be fabricated and have
> little or no factual backing.
>
> The main point presented by the author is that the open source model
> isn't right for every situation and that furthermore, by design,
> proprietary development techniques are inherently better at creating
> radical, new, "wow moment" technology. "Why did the adored iPhone come
> out of what many regard as the most closed software-development shop
> on earth?". This statement implies that there was no predecessor on
> equal ground to the iPhone and that the iPhone would only have
> happened with closed-source labs. Before the iPhone, there were
> GNU/Linux-based smartphones and PSP-type platform, we even put
> GNU/Linux on the iPod. The best example of open source trumping closed
> source is the operating systems that they tout. Closed source
> development touts Windows, acknowledged by the majority of the
> computer hacker community to be the most bloated, expensive, insecure
> operating system on the market. In fact, Windows has had the most zero
> days of any OS because of their use of "security through obscurity".
> On the other hand, studies have shown that GNU/Linux systems are the
> fastest, most secure, and cheapest (in terms of original price and
> total ownership cost) systems on the market. The only study that has
> shown any evidence to the contrary was one touted by Microsoft in
> their "get the facts" campaign. This study was funded by Microsoft
> themselves.
>
> I would continue rebutting the points made in the article, but there
> is already a blog posting which does an excellent job at doing so
> available at http://ubuntukids.org/blog/?p=60
>
> Sincerely,
> Ringo Kamens
> Centennial, Colorado
> **phone number**
>
> On Nov 20, 2007 4:20 PM, Jim Hutchinson <jim at ubuntu-rocks.org> wrote:
> > On 11/20/07, Ringo Kamens <2600denver at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Jim: Do you have any plans to submit this as a letter to the editor? I
> > > think that would be the best course of action.
> >
> > I will reply to the article once it's online. I may also send a short
> > version of a letter to the editor with link if I can figure out how. I
> > was going to send it to Full Circle as well. Thanks for the support.
> >
> >
> > Jim
> >
> > --
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