[pmwiki-users] Commercialism in PmWiki (was: Google Analytics)

Neil Herber nospam at eton.ca
Sat Aug 26 13:26:39 CDT 2006


At 2006-08-26  12:33 PM +0200, Joachim Durchholz is rumored to have said:
>I've always wondered what these other reasons might be (because the
>ability to sue has always been striking me as a rather weak argument):
>What would these other reasons be?

I have only one concrete example of commercial vs OS behavior, and it 
defies logic.

Initially the client was quite keen on open-source products because 
they were seen as more "nimble" than traditional boxed software. They 
could add features as they wished and tailor the package to their own use.

Open source products were also seen as more secure - because they 
allowed the client to examine the source code and detect or close any 
backdoors or confirm that such backdoors did not exist.

However, the client is now talking about using a commercial product 
because it is "supported" by an organization and is not just some guy 
in his garage. I am pretty sure that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs 
started their companies in garages, so I don't see the problem - 
especially if you have the source!

And of course the security concerns are now buried under assurances 
from the commercial vendor that the software is secure, since the 
end-user no longer has access to the source.


Neil Herber
Corporate info at http://www.eton.ca/ 





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