Open_Source

[Gary Kline]

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 at thought.org   www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
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