Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 09:55:27 -0700 From: Gary Kline <kline@thought.org> To: Steve Bertrand <steve@ibctech.ca> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, madunix <madunix@gmail.com> Subject: Re: Open_Source Message-ID: <20090602165527.GA23405@thought.org> In-Reply-To: <4A2550C1.6060702@ibctech.ca> References: <4d3f56c90906020812t40c5fcbv178bcd7f702356f@mail.gmail.com> <4A2550C1.6060702@ibctech.ca>
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On Tue, Jun 02, 2009 at 12:18:09PM -0400, Steve Bertrand wrote:
> madunix wrote:
> > Dear Experts,
> >
> > I want to know out of your experience people the following,
>
> > 1- How open source served your businesses requirements?
>
> Our business would likely not exist if it weren't for Open Source
> (and/or free) software. Other than our Windows workstations, a few
> Windows servers, Cisco IOS and a few other specifics here-and-there, we
> are all open source.
>
> Everything is FreeBSD.
>
> > 2- What kind of application that running on Open Source?
>
> Pretty much everything:
>
> - routers (Quagga BGP, OSPF etc)
> - RADIUS
> - web servers
> - email servers
> - database servers
> - backup (AMANDA)
> - infrastructure config management (RANCID)
> - performance graphing (MRTG)
> - performance testing (iperf etc)
> - troubleshooting (tcpdump, wireshark etc)
> - traffic engineering (ipfw etc)
> - communications (firefox, thunderbird)
> - and hundreds more
>
> > 3- General experience with Open Source technology?
>
> Very, very good. I find though that the more you give, the more you get out.
>
> In our environment, things are very dynamic, and very custom. We can
> change software live-time to make it do what we need it to do. Being
> able to look into the source code makes it very easy to write custom
> applications that 'hook in' to existing ones.
>
> Steve
Yes! Like Glen (prev post), I occassionally look at the src to see
how something was coded; this gave my own coding abilities a boost
and didn't hurt the original code a whit. Interesting how muvh we can
learn from one another, isn't it?
The only rationale I've heard for closed source is that somebody could
steal the idea. Or get a jump on creating a clone. My experience has
been that EVERY bit of commercial code could be open; people would still
want/need/demand/pay-for *support*.
gary
--
Gary Kline kline@thought.org www.thought.org Public Service Unix
http://jottings.thought.org http://transfinite.thought.org
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