Open Source- The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

Whether your just discovering Open Source or your a veteran, you will or have come across some of the gotcha’s, quirks and Wow can this stuff really be FREE experiences. It can be a roller coaster ride of sorts. If you know how to navigate and tread the enormous landscape of Open Source projects then you will have more of the latter experiences; Wow can this stuff all be free!

Open Source is still one of those untapped treasures of mankind (sounds weird saying that). We have been hard coded to think of technology one way and here comes Open Source and it goes against all the grains in our post modern capitalistic society. It says I want to be Free for the good of mankind, I want people to have access as well as options. It says, I will unite the world (developers & enthusiasts) and fight the good fight against big business. I guess me being a user of open source software makes me a soldier in the army of …., maybe not, but you get my point. The simple fact is that free software is slowly eroding the stronghold of proprietary software. On the other hand some old adages still ring true, sometimes you get what you pay for and sometimes if it sounds too good to be true, then maybe it is, in one way or the other. Here, we will discuss the amazing, the disappointing and the aggravating parts of Open Source. Like the Sergio Leone film, let us see which one wins the race when it comes to the future of the computing world.

The Good

1. Freedom to view, change and redistribute the source code.
   no one company can have a stronghold on it.
2. It is Free (Free as in air not as in beer).
3. It makes technology affordable in an age where technology can be a great equalizer.
4. You can build businesses around it (I love making money).
5. It shines light on human nobility and shows that improving technology can also affect people on a social, economical and plain human level. There is hope for us after all.
6. It is secure, when used wisely.
7. Bugs are more quickly found and fixed. More pairs of eyes looking at the code.
8. Server side of things can be found in the computer rooms of fortune 500 companies worldwide.

The Bad

1. There are so many projects that we could get lost.
2. Not always compatible with latest and greatest hardware
3. Can have a higher learning curve than their proprietary counterparts.
4. Lack of documentation
5. User interfaces are not always as intuitive.
6. Not yet mature on the desktop side of things

The Ugly

1. Some applications can have a steep learning curve
2. Projects can be abandoned, your left holding the bag unless you have a developer in your back pocket.

So there you have it a list of some of the good and bad stuff in Open Source out there.

Fell free to add your insight.

I will expand on these in a later post.

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