Opensource

All the stuff I do at work uses stuff that's relatively "open source" (quotes because some people get argumentative about the precise meaning of the term). Our servers run Linux, Apache, a Perl-based open souce online-shopping system called Interchange, and all the other usual stuff such as sendmail, bind, etc. My workstation and my home machine, likewise, run Linux and various open source applications.

I have thought about coding for open source projects, but have always been too lazy to make the effort of getting to know a project's existing code well enough to be able to contribute something useful.

Actually I have been meaning to ask you: Do you know of a linux based POS system that could be integrated with an online store?

Sadly, no. We don't do any POS stuff here; we just email buyers' details to our clients and let them handle it. Encrypted, of course. I believe Interchange has add-ons to handle that sort of thing, though, but I've never looked into it.

In the record shop I work in I set up a EPOS there using a piece of windows software calle retailICE which was free and pretty good, it was just set up around selling clothes rather than records and it would be great to use something a little more suitable.

To answer my own question.

Vast bits of the Mac OS are opensource, its based on freeBSD and some other bit are semi opensource release under Apple's public license. I use several little unix things but nothing major has enetered my workflow yet. I'm waiting for the full aqua/Cocoa version of open office because under X11/Darwin its just too slow as was koffice.

use linux at home for everything apart from internet access (i have a winmodem at the mo) and ripping and burning cds (via motherboard loses interrupts when ripping cds, haven't got around to setting up cdrom as a scsi emulated device for burning on the new machine yet)

and thinking about it, all i use win2000 at work for is as a platform for toad to update oracle on a solaris server, putty for telnetting to another solaris server for, erm, haXoring, winamp for playing cds, mozilla for reading ilx, vim for editing files and, er, outlook to pick up mail, nothing i couldn't really do with mandrake.

(except, i seem to spend 50% of the time at home updating various bits of software / tweaking desktop settings rather than using the pooter for something more constructive)

andy

I use nothing but Linux and OpenBSD systems at home and at work. I've never contributed anything to open source projects, but I've been known to tweak around on existing code for my own purposes. It's never anything spectacular, and therefore not CVS submit worthy. Currently, I've got a uni project where I'm cracking open a open source software program called gstreamer. It's an audio/video streaming framework. I'm converting it to stream large amounts of data coming from a computer simulation of nuclear waste run-off at some South Carolina facility. The simulation is going to run for about two years and people can get updated data through the stream at any time. That's the cool part of open source. I'd never be able to rapidly develop the whole project without open source.

I don't have much faith in Apple, Sun, IBM, etc when it comes to them and open source. It is much more about giving Microsoft the finger and using free, proven software to add to their selling points than embracing any kind of open source philosophy. Apple used BSD code for Darwin instead of a Linux-based system because the BSD license let's you resell it for profit. Of course, I can't really tell you any of the company's motives, but I'm sure it's a lot less glamorous than the press releases would have you believe.

For all the hype about open source, the biggest thing that people seem to miss is that the learning curve is incredibly high. You have to invest a lot of time and energy to make it do what you want to do. Most people are just not qualified to make open source stuff work for them. That being said, I like it's great just the same. It's not going away, and the more people that put time into it the more everyone benefits.

A pedant writes: The GNU license that most Linux software is distributed under also lets you sell it for profit. However, it forces you to allow all of your customers to give it away, sell it or whatever too.

Therein lies the rub.

Its a great idea but for the love of god I hope the term copyleft doesn't catch on or else it will identify computer geeks with the treehugging hippies.
The shoddiness of documentation is sometimes a bit of a pain. Im thinking the broken link to php.net's documentation in PHP 4.3's installation doc or apache's tendancy for sarcastic (though well placed) warnings like at the top of the http.conf file.
GNU, apache, php, MySQL are all great open source projects. I still havent found a use for PERL where AWK and C will do.

I like people earning off intellectual property (cz it's my skill), so I'm upset by this giving the idea software should be free. But I like a lot of the stuff, although shoddy documentation/ideas/strategies abound, and probably Apple's way of mixing the two works best.

I know nothing about computer programming but I love the idea of the opensource movement. You people are my gods.

I don't think that opensource is going to kill paid for software or put programmers out of work. It takes skill to manager servers wether they are free or not and it takes skill to use a lot of the opensource tools so I wouldn't worry about it threatening your future income.

Documentation can be terrible, but even worse are the User interfaces that where a lot of X11 programmes fall down; really shoddy, unfriendly and ugly User Interfaces. That's why things like Safari, OS X etc. which take the best bit of opensource and repackage them into something which is attractive, functional and easy to use are some of the best offerings out there.

Didn't someone link recently to that article trying to say opensource was a terrible thing because it might reduce Microsoft's profits? That was funny.

Its hitting their low end NT server business and stopped them from getting much of a hold on the web server market.

Lindows is really trying to hit them where it hurts and may well do when Palladium comes along.

People interested in trying out some opensource programs can get a good selection of em at this site http://theopencd.sunsite.dk/

"wide assortment of useful open source applications(for windows), from professional software such as OpenOffice to internet apps such as Mozilla to various utilities for privacy and file management. Not only are they free, they're open source ."

You'll have to download their file then burn it to a cd to install those programs so if it's too much trouble or if you already have some of em or whatever, you can use google to find the specific programs that interest you, like I got myself YASC from this site instead
https://sourceforge.net/projects/sokobanyasc/
http://theopencd.sunsite.dk/programs-v1.2/thumbs/yasc_thumb.jpg
looks good, plays good too :-)

opensource hardware, opensource biology, opensource democracy, opensource everywhere. I think it's a good thing.