Free software

Some of the other replies may have already addressed this but free software does not mean no cost. One of the first linux developers said "Free is as in speech not beer." There is a documentary called Revolution OS that explains their motivations and how its supposed to work. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308808/

I don't make anything from installing freeware such as AVG, Spybot S&D, etc on a private user's machine, but I do gain respect and a reputation for not "ripping off" a customer.
That way, the work comes in because the reputation preceeds me and I can then charge realistically for other services and the customer is only human after all and they love "something for nothing". Everybody does!
Regards.

How exactly do you think people are making money off patents in free and open source software? I'm a little confused by the inclusion of patents there.

Some don't want to make a living. Programming is fun and is it's own reward. There's a lot to be said for the status and pride of someone who creates something new.

This is part of the "net culture", too.

Some of these developers are doing it as a hobby, some in their spare time, some to buff up their resume.

... the numbers are on the mark and current as of 1/31/2005.

My customers that track these particular statistics are government agencies in Washington State.

The question of browser impersonation becomes more important for these statistics because if a content provider is tuning their site for the most popular browsers, they can only go by the data they've collected.

ie can't handle the current standard for websites.
xhtml ( xml and html )
it craps out.

and xhtml has been the standard for 5 years.

that render a page with errors, is actually a security bug.
those errors are frequently malicious code designed to breach system security.
so go ahead, rave about using a product because it will allow viruses to come in when standards compliant browsers won't.

html is dead.
there should be no html pages anywhere anymore, should all be xhtml

it seems you're arguing for security by obscurity. This has never worked, never will.

The more independent observers are able to verify the completeness of the solution, the better it works.

If you want a great example of this, you can look no further than the encryption system used for GSM phones. The designers were absolutely certain they'd designed the most wonderful encryption ever. Infortunately, they were not experienced encryption designers and the system fell apart very quickly. I understand that once the source was seen, the mistakes were obvious.

Peer review would have ensured this never happened.

Freeware (samples) are most of the time a sample of your work. In other non-computer companies samples are given freely to show just how good you or your company is. IF customers like you samples, chances are you will recieve orders (or job Offers).

I am sure most open source software is excellent quality. However if a business critical or business important piece of software breaks ... I want someone accontable to fix it to keep my business running.

While there may be work arounds to bypass the broken tool, there is also the possibility that my staff has become so dependent on the tool that they don't remember how to do the work without a tool.

How many people can format a document with a mark up language compared to how many people can format a document with a WYSIWYG editor. At one point the only way to format a document was with a GML. I used to use them but I dont any more and If I had to it would take me a long time to relearn it to be proficient. The same is true for any tool that increases productivity. You forget how to do the underlying function and then if the tool breaks you are out of luck or severly crippled in your ability to produce.

Do I want a billion dollar business to stop because a free ware tool broke and I cant find anyone who remembers how to perform the native task and I cant find anyone to fix the tool.....

My guess is it would make for interesting discussion in the unemployment line.

I will pay the pro's for the insurance that is included with a stable supported product. But I would also hire an open source developer because they love their work and are obviously good at it. And I would not let them give their work to my competitiors unless there was a way for me to make money from it.

I'm glad you and david_heath said it so I didn't have to.

There's your problem right there.

You mean there are people still trying to use that horrible, horrible travesty of an OS? How frightening. It's literally the worst OS I've ever had the intense displeasure of encountering. Even Microsoft tends to try to pretend it never existed.

That's the complete opposite of my experience. I do system clean-up for clients whose machines have gotten gummed up with crap all the time, and what I've found is that people running AVG usually don't have any virus issues, but people running Norton are usually swimming in virus issues [b]and[/b] have software compatibility issues with Norton software, pretty much universally.

I'm fully aware of the Gates software snobbery. He's been running around sowing FUD about free and open source software for years now, basically lying about a competing software development model because he's afraid of losing market dominance.

The experience you had with Star Office not installing properly is interesting. I'm glad OOo worked out for you, though.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a free help desk / trouble ticketing system software. I'm looking for something with a web front end form that users can fill out or choose options that I can customize with a DB backend and reporting features. Thanks for the help...

Some companies that release Open Source and/or Free Software products offer customization services, training, support/maintenance agreements and such. As someone else mentioned they also offering add on products, etc. So, there is money to be made. Its not the classical "buy my software" scenario, in the new model the software itself is almost a "lost leader". Not all users want the services nor do they have to have them...But some do.

MySQL is a great example, recently SugarCRM is doing the same and countless others.

but the fact remains that usually open source has far fewer defects to begin with, and they are usually less severe. Here is a link where university researchers investigated Linux code.

Linux: Fewer Bugs Than Rivals
http://www.wired.com/news/linux/0,1411,66022,00.html?tw=wn_story_top5

The same thing was in the press a few days ago with mySQL, far lower error rate than the proprietary equivalent.

I had thought a slightly different definition from the title.

one where software as enabler was meant as software that is easily used, with very little learning curve, instad of as is all to frquent, software with a horrendous learning curve and obscure operation style

"I had an Engineering group using a freeware application for 5-6 years in a production environment. It suddenly began failing. We called the author and his comment was "I haven't looked at that code for over 15 years."

So, you had "your" engineers using a freeware product whose release date was already ten years old and whose author you had never spoken to until it failed? I think most folks would agree that this was poor judgement on your part.

But my money goes to SmartDraw.

I loaded it onto a new computer and after playing with it for about 15 minutes I thought I can not inflict this on my customer so I threw the disk in a corner and have never seen it since.

I put 98 Se onto the computer and they where as happy as Larry with it but I never ever considered using ME ever again!

Col ]:)

I too have found AVG works very well.
But many factors to consider:
1.) Volume and type of email and client used
2.) Web activity and type of sites visited
3.) Do they download alot of dubious software?
4.) the list goes on.

I find it quite interesting that you're equating the fact that the creator of something free stopped supporting it fifteen years ago with "poor support", with the unspoken assumption that commercial software has "good support". Keep in mind that Windows 2000 is only five years old and it's getting its support cut this year. Five years. You didn't have a problem with that thing until fifteen years after the creator stopped supporting it, and yet you don't see how that's better than Microsoft abandoning a product after five years.

Keep in mind that fifteen years is basically the age of useful GUI operating systems. All of them. Like, there aren't any GUI OSes that are older than that. Hello?

ME was a really desperate attempt to scrape the bottom of the W9x barrel.

After reading through most of these messages I see there is a ton of concern about future development. Some software I can see the need for development, but I use many OS and Freeware titles (and even some old DOS titles) that do exactly what I want them to do, and future development would be a mute point.
I have friends who spend most of their waking hours getting updates and newer versions of software that has been performing perfectly, and doing exactly what they want it to do. I'm just wondering if this "let's get the newest version" thing is simply a way to fill somebody's time, or the cyberspace version of a pissing contest to tell all our buddies that we have the newest version of 'whatever'?
My point to this is ... if I find an OpenSource or Freeware solution, and it works exactly as I want it to, I have very little concern for future development - remember ... if it ain't broke ...
To the people I've read about in here concerned with future development, I would say: Go ahead and give OpenSource a try - you'll probably find that most of it does exactly what you want it to do. I became a big fan of OS a few years back, and I always look there before I head to commercial developers.

Software per-se doesn't 'suddenly start failing'. Either the installation has become corrupted or you're trying to operate in conditions not foreseen 15 years ago. Either way the software hasn't failed. The fact you've been using it for 5 - 6 years, presumably unsupported, suggests that the software is not to blame.

How doo OS/FS programmers earn their daily bread? Well...

There are companies which *pay* them to write FS/OS. These companies usually plan to recoup their expenses in the services sector.

There are students doing a lot of the coding out there. How students feed themselves has always been open to conjecture.

Lastly (and largely) there are people who write software in their spare time. Instead of playing solitaire, "reading" Hustler, watching football or the thousand other things most people do with downtime, they drive a keyboard and thus do their part for the greater good.

Narf,

Russ Bixby, geek of the plains

Power without wisdom is akin to an adze with a ruined edge, suited more to the vandal than the builder.

Try Intelisys - it's commercial but less expensive AND better than MS Project.

There are some good free PM tools in OS/FS - try building one with CYGWIN.

Bix

If you had the floorplan for Fort Knox, would that make it any easier to get past the Marines?

If I give you the X-ray micrographic structure of an anvil, does that bean you can find a cleavage in it and break it over your knee?

Knowing how a thing works is hardly equivalent to knowing how to break it, with the exception of things which are badly built and thence highly breakable.

AVG is not poorly written. While someone *might* craft a virus which would hide from one test, they'd not evade them all - at least for long.

At the end of the line, pattern recognition is not defeatable. You can get a false positive but NEVER a false negative.

Bix

I have noticed from the postings here, that people are consistant in their either, or, policies of running AV apps. I am curious as to why you wouldn't attempt a combination of AV apps. My home computer is (still) running WIN98 First Edition and I have Norton AV (Systemworks Pro 2003) running along side AVG 7.0. They both autoupdate and are both set to run automatic system scans at different times. I have yet to have a conflict running both AV's. I also have Winpatrol and Spybot S&D Resident running to catch spyware, adware, malware. Notice that three of these are freeware apps. My hat is off to the people and companies who make these free security apps available to everyone. I view free AV and Spyware removal software as a public service. I believe that the only way to rid the internet of these baddies is to make it impossible for them to propagate.

a lot of the people that I know that do that, do it in their spare time.

they do it for the love of doing it. Kind of like professional sports players used to do back in the 30's-50's...

I personally don't believe that it's right to sell software, you do it for the betterment of the world. That's why.

I can tell you, I work my job and when I go home, I help to keep servers running, admin chans and help forums and sites up for free on my spare time. Because it helps everyone in the long run.

I also donate my time and bandwidth to sites that may need it if I can help them.

what comes around goes around. you can't always just take...

There are indeed several free programs similar to
Quicken out there. Check at the Pricelessware site: http://www.pricelesswarehome.org under
Business-Home with a subcategory of Accounting-Personal.

It's a good source for all sorts of freeware as
is the group al.comp.freeware (read it through Google Groups).

We do use freeware at the College for a number of
purposes and some of it has come through these sources.

Did you take the time to ask yourself what happened?

If the software worked properly for 5 or 6 years, the software is NOT the first place I would look for the cause of your problem.

Did you move the application to newer, faster hardware?
A lot of software code will not run properly on PCs that are a lot faster than the PC they were written on.
Also, a newer PC might have hardware that the software calls cannot access.

Did you upgrade to a newer OS?
This is another major problem with old software.

If this software stores records like a database does, when was the last time you purged the files?
It is very possible that you have exceeded the number of items or records allowed.
This may not even be a true software bug. Just a limitation from the hardware and OS the software was written on.

I have to agree with a couple of the other comments.

First, you got very good functionality out of this software.

Second, it is penny wise and pound foolish to risk a production operation on software that does not include support.

Take a look at what the downtime cost the company.
That provides a clue as to the value of the application to your business.

Chas

When I write software for my own use, I make it open source. When I write software for a client, and the client doesn't pay for exclusive rights, I make it open source. Of course, the "open source" license I use isn't the usual (the license I use is called the CCD CopyWrite, at http://ccd.apotheon.org for public display), and is as suitable for text licensing as it is for software licensing.

That was a very good post. Thanks for raising the bar 'round here with that one, KaceyR.

to use his purchase any way he wants to"? Ha. Try selling that theory to Microsoft and Symantec and ...

A piece of code that hadn't been looked at for 15 years would also have been developed over a couple of years as well so it would have to be much more than the 15 years old and I would say I find it hard to believe that it would run on any of the modern computers no matter what the OS was. The fact that it ran at all for 5 - 6 years after it had been discontinued for 10 years is just a testament to just how good it actually was.

But what is the betting that problems only started occurring after a hardware/software upgrade package? :)

Well it worked on my 486 running DOS 1 so it should work on my new P 4 running Windows XP Pro shouldn't it? :(

Or it worked quite well on my Unix Mainframe but when I trashed that for something new with the latest Kernel that piece of critical software that I didn't pay for in the first place no longer works why is it so? :D

Just when was the last time you rang MS with a problem? I've only needed to do it 3 times now and on each occasion I was treated as if I was ringing them as a first option and then when that is exhausted I was just told to wipe and reload. Which was pretty funny in the last case as it was durring the installation of SP1 on an XP Pro P4 that the thing wiped the HDD's and lost the MBR's.

I think it was about the 30 th time I'd installed XP Pro and then SP1 on a clean brand new HDD that I finally rang MS for help and that was the best that they could offer.

Sometimes the knowledge that you have no support is better than the false hope of really having support. Incidentally in the above case it was a DVD Drive which was causing the problem as it wasn't XP SP1 compatible but of course it passed the XP compatibility tests. :)

Col

When people make free software, they do their publicity so they think of celebrity. This celebrity brings people to accept their products and the effects of their software is constated a long period after. During this time, they try to find some occupations to live.

From what i have seen over the years, it has been a pretty good strategy for some software authors to make their software free or at least shareware in order to get a good spread into the market with a quality product before making it payware. This seems to be working for Zone Alarm, AdAware, SpyBot and has worked well in the past for products that are under the gun from these upstart Freeware products.

AVG and Avast are two excellent free programs and both have received higher ratings than either Norton or McAfee. Norton and McAfee catching 90%??Give me a break; these two are over priced and over rated and couldn't catch cold in the Arctic. Run either AVG or Avast and back them with Spybot S&D, SpyBlaster and Ad-Aware and you might want to take a gander at the new Microsoft offering which is in beta. That's supposed to be pretty good. Oh yes; they're all free.

Dawg

Windows ME??? On a network??? Ever here of a little item called Windows 2000??? My ten year old grandaughter is bitching about running ME. Hoooobah! Why blame Grisoft when even Microsoft has dialed back ME support. The only people still running ME are home users, grade schools and prison libraries. Then you want to go to Kaspersky because it gives phone support??? Unreal.
This one is a no brainer but my grandaughter could probably give you tech support but she does insist on being paid.

I'll stick with my no antivirus no anti adware system.

linux does have benefits you know.

some company will push the product's profile and sell the company out to others like wat happen as in one of the antivirus company i can't remember the name. This company is given the antivirus software for free those for personal use. They are bought over by CA few years ago.

I have to agree with the assessment that some of the big name AV's are resource hogs and I do know when my expiration comes up for Norton, I'll be looking elsewhere ( most likely freeware) to fill the gap. I keep seeing good things being said about ClamWin. Until this thread started, I had never heard of it. Guess which freeware AV I'm going to try next??

The Microsoft Beta has already been exploited. I believe there's a TR thread on it too. :D

What do you expect? Sure people can exploit AVG too but they don't bother, MS is a target. Strap on that bullseye and go to work. :)

The trick is to have the right balance of vodka in your lemonade. A fresh lime juice blend works well too.

Evenings are still a warm fire and a glass of Scotch though, you get that romantic glow on the white background, TR's sexy you know. Damn, I need to go out or something! :D

I understand where you are coming from, and am not trying to argue about statistics. I was just a little curious about them since I had been reading some articles from some fairly respectable sources that Firefox had gained about a 6% market share in it's short time in release.

Thank you for explaining how it is that people are making decisions about which browser to support for their products.

Free software allows you to borrow the work of others and improve on it, and charge people for the time you've spent improving it.

It prevents people from removing good ideas from the community, so the wheel need not be reinvented unless you feel like it's easier to do that.

Because I can charge someone for my time spent improving a software product, adding a needed feature, simplifying an interface, etc. I can get paid for my labor, I have low market entry costs, I am participating in a free market.

The original authors can sell their software - free doesn't necessarily mean "no money" - but they can't necessarily profit forever on one idea and one chunk of labor.

But the original authors get recognition, reputation, etc. by writing a good piece of software, and this can bring them other business (possibly for more free software)

So it's actually not hard to see how they make money. Obscene amounts of money would be a different story, but a living wage should be pretty easy to earn.

JP

That's entirely different from FOSS. There's no such thing as a dead FOSS program, as long as someone likes it enough and has any programming ability (or has programmers on tap, or the ability to get them). Shareware, on the other hand, is just proprietary software offered under a completely chintzy limited-use license at first.

Yea, I understand that MS was working on a new OS a while back that took the best parts of all three, and were going to name it... appropriately...

WINDOWS CEMENT!

Hard as a rock and dumb as a brick!

Gets it wrong as well. I've had instances where I've ordered something on line and when I get the invoice it tells me I'm running NT4 with IE something but he unit in question that the order is placed from is running Debian and Monzilla. I suspose some software just was not written with the possibility that some other form of OS might be used other than Windows.

Col ]:)

You lobomized a machine with WinME on it? Could you tell a difference afterwards?

Regarding AVG I think that you have missed something as to their income. All European users, like myself (Holland) had to pay for the privilege of using AVG, about $39.- It was only free for users outside Europe. Fine strategy for a European company! I protested against their business policy, but the replay was that somebody had to pay the salaries of the programmers etc.

Ferry

That's hilarious! I've gotta remember that one.

Some people write the code because that is what they love. Others may hope to put the product out there for free in order to make a name for themselves in programming. Others may make money from support. I believe that there are many great products out there like VNC, Some versions of Linux\Unix etc... If it were not for the gifted programmers who wrote this code where would the world of computers be today?

I've seen comparisons where AVG beat both Norton
and McAfee, I don't think Trend Micro was in that
study.
I've run McAfee and AVG side-by-side and twice had AVG pick up things McAfee did not, so I'm
much more inclined to believe you may have read
something sponsored by one of the for-profit
groups.?? What's your source.
Good luck either way, the nutsos are faster than the good guys most of the time, but we keep trying!

I do this all the time with every one of my personal computers and customers what one doesn't pickup the others might and generally that is how things work out.

I've yet to ever come across the perfect product in anything although currently one Linux Distro is driving me crazy because I can not break it. But that example aside we just have to accept that everything needs work and that some things will pick up a certain item while another vendors products may let it by and the same thing will most likely happen the other way around at a different point in time.

I currently have a copy of Leprechauns AV which is an AU written product and has a relatively small sales base compared to some of the others that are around and it tends to be very good but I would think that is because most of the "Script Kiddies" are not aware of it so they just do not customize their scripts to exploit it. So far it has picked up everything that others have let through. I'm by no means saying it is the best product but it is very useful in any AV defense procedure.

Col ]:)

This is the best liist of freeware I've found:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=119821

The problem with running multiple AV products is that they have a tendancy to step on each others toes, especially when the "scan on open" functionality is active.

Most AV products now have the ability to designate multiple directories to ignore so that they don't pick up their own (or some other AV softwares) scanning pattern files, but the detection of other AV software is not automatic.

If you only run one product in "scan on open", and you have the ignore directories set up properly, then it shouldn't be a problem to run multiple AV products side by side.

Each and every incoming and out going e-mail is scanned by at least 3 AV programs and really the only problem that I've run across is deleting the Virus Vaults of the different AV products from each others scanning directories that can cause a problem if it is missed {generally on a rush job at 3.00 AM after no where enough sleep!}

But all of this stuff is getting to be second nature to me now and I just do not seem to have any problems even on the rush reloads.

Col ]:)