First of all, I am not a so-called “fanboi”. The purpose of making this post is not because I feel that bashing proprietary software companies is the best thing to do in my spare time. On the contrary, I like a lot of proprietary products. This post, for instance, is made with the latest release of Windows Live Writer (which is a great software, by the way) running on Windows XP. Their keyboards are also superb.
However, there are a lot of benefits in using Free and Open Source Software, which I will call FOSS from here on. Cost is clearly one of them. But there are other subtle and less obvious but more important benefits.
One quality of FOSS is that its innards are open to view and inspection. This means that if ever an error occurs, it could be resolved by the user himself without relying on the publisher since the code or the gears that make the software tick is accessible.
Not technically inclined nor capable? No problem. There are a lot of other users in Internetville who eat code for breakfast. Fixes made by these folks are available to all of us and thus, benefits all including the technically challenged among us. In short, availability and accessibility of the code benefits you even if you, on your own, cannot code yourself out of a paper bag.
Malwares like trojans and adwares are some of the risks of living an online life. Any malicious programmer could create malware and distribute it on the internet. If you download a free program (a free program is not always Open Source though most Open Source programs are free) how would you know that it won’t do anything malicious? Even with established proprietary programs, how could you be so sure that it is not spying on your spending or surfing habits? FOSS on the other hand, cannot contain malicious code as that would be visible to users.
Those are great benefits but like what the tv commercial says: wait, there’s more! FOSS catalyzes software improvement. Imagine, for a moment, that the text editor has not been invented yet and Jane needs one. Because of the unavailability, Jane wrote her own text editor and released it as FOSS.
If another user, Jill, also needs a text editor but with a spell check capability, she does not need to make her own text editor with spell check functionality. She can just take Jane’s code and add the new functionality and maybe also improve on some of Jane’s original code. Now, if Jesse also wants a text editor with syntax highlighting, she again do not have to start from scratch.
The result of all these is faster development and better debugging or error correction. Errors in Jane’s original code could be corrected by Jill; and if any slips further, Jesse would handle it. Imagine if you increase the scale.
The FOSS development method enables FOSS to improve at a very fast rate. But supporting FOSS has another beneficial side effect—ironically, it also improves proprietary software. A software publisher is certain to burn the midnight oil to stay a step ahead of FOSS; otherwise, how could they justify the price? In this situation, the users win. Therefore, even if you are a Dreamweaver user, it still makes sense to support N|vu or KompoZer by contributing code templates, for instance.
For these reasons, I urge you to support FOSS even if just by using them. A large user base could certainly help. If you need software, try to look at Open Source alternatives first. You might be delightfully surprised that it is all you need.
Those who cannot afford proprietary software like Photoshop, for example, should refrain from using pirated and cracked versions of the software. Use the GIMP instead. You will be both helping FOSS and avoiding trouble. Even for those who can afford it, there’s no point in shelling out $665 for Photoshop if the GIMP could serve your needs at zero cost. I know that Photoshop has more features than the GIMP; but the latter, specially with the plug-ins available for it, also offers a lot and not every Photoshop user needs all of the features found in Photoshop. So, you might as well use the GIMP, donate to the project a tiny fraction of the price Adobe asks for Photoshop, and save the rest. You will be an agent of change and improvement along the way.
But of course, I am not saying that you should use FOSS to the exclusion of proprietary software even if it does not serve your needs; otherwise, I am no better than a fanboi. It should still be “the right tool for the job”. What I merely want to do is to empower users and inform those who still do not know that they have a choice.
Do I want FOSS to take over the world? No, Not really, but I would like a world with software that are cheap, are free from bugs and do what I needed them to do—nothing more, nothing less. FOSS can bring us there.
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