2004-04-27 06:24
by Vasil Kolev(I have a monstrous headache. I’ll have to check why.)
Today was an interesting day – I have flipped my biological clock, I wake up at 5 in the afternoon, after not being able to sleep until 8 in the morning. I did this in one day, there’s something wrong…
The lecture for Stara Zagora is coming good, but there’s still some things in its style that I don’t like, and looks like I’ll optimize it like an assembly code, line by line, word by word, until it stops to sound like a text that suffers a bad form of the ‘politically correct’ syndrome.
Today I had an interesting conversation, with Velin, Albert and Bombe (Lora was there too, but wasn’t really willing to join – she wasn’t feeling well, and I didn’t help with my noisiness – Lora, sorry), on the topic of… something like the free software and the commercial solutions (the debate started from my hatred for one software vendor). The thing that amazed me the most was my own reaction – I didn’t expect, that I’ll be so keen to argue, to defend the free software, and to get so annoyed by the ideas how great was the MS software…
When I got home (and read the book I bought today, “Line of the dreams” (that’s a bad translation) by Lukyanenko, it’s worth reading), I started thinking about my reaction – I hate fanatics, and I almost acted as one (ok, I was outnumbered :) ), so I decided to get this clear for myself – why do I hate so much the idea to use any kind of commercial software or some such solution. I’m not saying that everything can be accomplished by using free software, but I’m a hard opponent of the idea that the place of the free software is out of the datacenters, for small things, like some kind of a toy. For everyone that thinks this way, there are some case studies at the postgresql site, which can change their mind. Everyone willing can find enough examples for a lot of serious applications of such software, with all it’s extras. It’s not a coincidence that a lot of big companies are starting to invest in the development of projects like linux and apache – but I’m drifting off-topic here…
My own reason to use linux, and debian (and such software in general), is simple – they allow me to do my job, without limiting me. If there is something that I believe in, it’s that a person has to do its job, and that’s a serious part of the meaning of life (well, at least in mine :) ). To do a comparison, the commercial software is developed by corporations, whose idea is to profit, and the free software is developed with the idea to do it’s job. I find this an easy choice :)
How does exactly the idea of corporately-developed software obstructs the work? One example is the vendor lock-in, there aren’t a lot of places, that use software by only one vendor, and have no problems with it, like when communicating with other people, like restriction to the abilities only to software of this vendor (and let’s be honest, even if there are vendors with EVERYTHING in their portfolio, they don’t always work, and in a lot of cases aren’t in the limits of the budget even of some big corporations). This practice also gives the vendors the ability to directly extort money from their customers, by making them pay for unneeded upgrades.
And something really important for me – with free software, I can know how exactly does my system work, from the top to the bottom, I have documentation, source code, people, that I can ask, and there’s always google. If I decide, I can bite the billet, and solve a lot of problems on my own, to add some new feature, and whatever I want – I have rich enough choice, and this way I can learn something new. With a lot of the commercial software I don’t feel like an administrator, but like an operator, a monkey in front of the keyboard – I know, that some clicks will do something , but I have no idea WHY would that happen, and what’s going on underneath, and I have no way of understanding it, except if I get the disassembler (I really don’t want to talk about the quality of some vendors’ documentation, which in a lot of cases is an press release, not something useful). Not to mention the fact that a lot of the commercial solutions are _UNDULY COMPLICATED_, to be buzzword compliant, and/or to make up a new buzzword, with which to draw in new customers. And of course, you’re limited to the vendor’s idea of what you need, except if I get to write something from the start.
(an example for the things that’s almost impossible to get to know – the RPC protocols of some vendors. The custom solutions to do stateful inspection of these protocols are another ‘funny’ method for extortion … :) )