The mapbutcher thinks it's OK to get hooked on proprietary software:People are interested in the ‘express’ editions because on the surface of it the marketing works on them, they’re familiar with the brand and are attracted by the ‘free’ carrot dangling from the end of the stick. Open Source software starts from that position – it’s already free so open source projects need another carrot to get us hooked.To which I can only say "Simon! Look at yourself in the mirror, man! Do you want to end up whoring yourself down on Dalgety Street to pay for your ESRI habit?"
OK, metaphor is tricky and fun, because there's so many ways to approach a metaphor. And for this one, it's easy to get distracted by the "drug" side, but the point of my metaphor is not that addictive drugs put you in a subordinate relationship to the drug (though some do) but that they put you in a subordinate relationship to the dealer.
The reason we can all survive and function in society despite our crippling addiction to oxygen is because oxygen is free and plentiful. The pusherman isn't trying to hook new customers because he believes that drugs are wonderful, he's doing it because he wants their money.
Software is "addictive" to organizations. Once you choose a piece of software and implement it, you're going to be "addicted". It's going to be hard to change. There will be withdrawal symptoms. Given that fact, what kind of software do you want to use? Software that is as free as the air you breath? Or software that is only available on terms dictated by someone else?
Your choice. Your future. Your life.
9 comments:
It sounds like people are worried that OSS takes up time; while commerical software takes up $$.
They say time is money; but anyone playing this game correctly is payed at least market value for their time. Therefore, your angle ought to be "use OSS, bill for software + time". That *must* be the real deal.
Wait, don't you do that? So in theory, you should be able to overpay me to work with OSS software? I'll bite; send me an unreasonable offer.
Your argument is well-reasoned, and therein lies its problem. It is based on the flawed assumption that decision-makers always make decisions based on reason.
The “dealers”, on the other hand, know this to be false. So they employ (I speculate) psychologists to design sales tactics (such as FUD) that identify and target decision-makers’ *emotions*. They sell the sizzle, not the steak.
How many times have you had to remake a perfectly accurate map just because someone didn’t like the colors? If everybody was always perfectly rational, your answer would be zero. But we know it is not.
The other point to worry about is vendor lock in. Does your software use open standards that allow me to switch to another program next year or am I hooked to a conveyor belt of increasing license charges year after year?
I think that in my case sometimes religion is a much better metaphor. Many of our commitments and needs of information relies upon standards that changes at a non-regular base. In my case you need a company as an oracle to act as a kind of spokesperson between yourself and the underworld that is national government. A totally open source environment isn't possible but combining the two worlds might just be what brings the fire to humans and start on the road to enlightement.
"Software vendors act as a natural monopolist does: focusing their efforts not on competition, but rather on raising barriers to entry. They have all sorts of insidious ways of doing this: proprietary data formats, complicated interdependencies, deliberate incompatibilities, etc"
http://blogs.sun.com/bmc/entry/the_economics_of_software
http://www.kyngchaos.com/software/grass ... http://download.osgeo.org/ossim/installers/mac/ ... http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Application:/Geo/ ... http://www.gvsig.org/web/projects/gvsig-desktop/official/gvsig-1.1/instrucciones-de-instalacion/mac
Devil's advocate again, but I can't find a "simple" installer for a single OSS desktop client. Maybe money-managers are more worried about personnel lockin than vendor lockin? How often does your IT guy document a software install?
@Bill, are you implying that proprietary software doesn't take up time? Always works with no effort, no bugs, no workarounds, no frustrating searches for answers? You have lived a blessed live.
@Bill, perhaps you are just looking for love in all the wrong places.
http://www.qgis.org/en/download/current-software.html
http://udig.refractions.net/download/
Where's the free download link for ArcGIS? I searched all over the interwebs and I couldn't find a thing.
@Paul the free download is on Bittorrent
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