I’m going to talk about open source and proprietary software. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a breakdown:

Proprietary software is owned by a company, and usually, the source code is not shared with anyone. If you’re caught sharing this code, you’re usually in big trouble with the company, and fines and/or litigation ensue. On the nice side, since this company owns the software, they have full control over it, it is usually nicely packaged, and its component parts are consistent in style and functionality throughout. Also, they may have organized help/support for the product, and they usually have a physical office that can be seen on Google Maps.

Yet, this also means that the software itself sports a large price tag, meaning those who can afford it are fewer than those who actually need it. This, of course, has lead to mass downloads of cracked versions of proprietaries, and propagation of a lot of people who think that if the price went down a bit, they wouldn’t be forced into downloading it illegally.

Then, there is open source software. Instead of keeping the program’s source code to themselves, the coders actively encourage the sharing of and/or modification of the source code by all who use the product. So, in complete contrast to proprietary software, you’re actually expected to have the source code for the software somewhere on hand, and be in the process of modifying/tweaking it (if you’re a geek).

On the downside, however, there usually is no centralized support/help for the product. Also, there is no money in it, and overhead is managed solely on volunteer basis (unless another means of covering costs is devised). This usually leads to the inclusion of a PayPal donation link somewhere on the production team’s website. The team also can’t make any sort of living off of this business model.

Of course, even if there isn’t a support team, there are orders of magnitude more people seeing and improving the source code, so bugs aren’t really that much of a problem.

Now, there are those who think that everything should be open source, and there are a few who still think that all software should be proprietary. I feel there is something wrong with both of these views… For those who think that everything should be open source:

It is quite nice to get everything for free. I am a strong supporter of free software. But, as I have mentioned above, there is no money in it. I mean that you can’t live off of it. You can’t quit your job at, say, Microsoft, and work full-time on your own basement open-source file sharer. Of course, there is a simple answer to this: you need to generate the income from something else that you do or provide; you can’t be a programmer all the time. That, of course, brings us back to the time-sharing thing. However, another option is clickable ads on websites. The funny thing is, those of us who think free software is the best thing on the planet, also think that ads are the worst thing on the planet. So, it really is about picking the lesser of two evils at this point.

As for those who think that all software should be proprietary, they are simply uninformed.

Thanks for reading.