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Open Source v/s Proprietary Source - Advantages, Disadvantages?

By Janet Ku - Mar. 10, 2008

I'm new to Open Source and have been reading up on the various advantages of OSS over proprietary source applications outside of:

1. The fact that it's free
2. You can copy it, modify it and even redistribute it.
3. Community involvement means constant updates and upgrades that all users can benefit from
4. Security is, supposedly, better

I know this has been a highly publicized topic for several years now and a lot has changed since Balmer's "Linux is a cancer" statement a few years ago.

Other advantages and what are some of the disadvantages of using Open Source over proprietary source products...


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  1. By an anonymous user on Mar. 10, 2008

    If you're new to open source read "the cathedral and the bazaar" by Eric Raymond where he talks about the movement, the beginnings and evolution. And this is where I was introduced to Linus' Law - "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" - great insight into the whole phenomenon.


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  2. By Arjun Chopra on Mar. 10, 2008

    Open Source as a movement has picked up so much momentum, it is difficult to list its advantages without writing a book!


    You've outlined some of the ones on top. The other one is that you typically have access to a lot of innovation that comes to bear from a large community of passionate users. Defects are identified quickly and fixed quickly. You can choose to go with stable releases, or choose to go with the bleeding edge, or choose to make modifications yourself as quickly as you need to and can afford to. Keep reading and checking out applications, and you will see for yourself.


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  3. By an anonymous user on Mar. 13, 2008

    The big disadvantage is the amount of "noise" in open source. Sourceforge, OStatic for that matter, have over 100k projects listed on there but if i had to guess, over 80-90% of them are just crap/defunct. The ones that are good are popular and the community bands around them - creating a cycle that perpetuates the relative success of these projects. So sometimes you can end up wasting a lot of time evaluating a project that is junk - only to have to go back and go through the same motions with another one.


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