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svella wrote: Whether a piece of software is open source or proprietary says nothing whatsoever about its quality.
I agree, but with OSS, anyone can be aware of the crap they are using 
But I think OSS opens the door to quality improvement, because everyone can see it and even when they cannot contribute, they can provide feedback.
In the articles I wrote here in CP, I got feedback to improve it and make it better. Without the contributions, the quality would have been worse if I just provided the compiled DLL/EXE.
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson
----
Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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as many other said.
It is quite difficult to compare them or say: This is better or that is crap.
Every program has its pros and cons.
If something fits your needs and works good, go ahead.
If not... try the next possibility until you find the one you need.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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yeah, It Depends was still going to be my answer
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The initial cost may be low but finally the time you have to invest in connecting all the dots scattered around the whole world proves to be costly. And if you get stuck up after investing significant effort/time, you are between rock and the hard place. Only the creator and the GOD can help...Sometimes neither help 
Yes, the innovation is better though
Thanks,
Milind
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One number I'd actually want to see some real research in is if OSS can actually be less secure.
Although OSS can have a lot of good willing people looking for security vulnerabilities, some people with not all that good of an intent can use the OSS concept to actively look for security vulnerabilities to exploit.
All in all, OSS, security-wise is a double-edged sword, what I don't know is which edge is sharper.
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson
----
Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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Fabio Franco wrote: Although OSS can have a lot of good willing people looking for security
vulnerabilities, some people with not all that good of an intent can use the OSS
concept to actively look for security vulnerabilities to exploit.
Ah, so there's so little vulnerabilities in Windows, because people cannot browse the source-code?
So, open source encryption is bad, and proprietary XOR-ing is good?
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: Ah, so there's so little vulnerabilities in Windows, because people cannot browse the source-code?
Don't twist my words please.
I never said closed source software was free of vulnerabilities. What I am saying is that closed source code requires a trial and error approach to find vulnerabilities. Open source code, well or bad written, is there for any malicious hacker to see.
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson
----
Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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Fabio Franco wrote: Don't twist my words please.
I am not yet twisting.
Fabio Franco wrote: Open source code, well or bad written, is there for any malicious hacker to see.
You'd rather have Heartbleed go undetected?
Now I'm twisting
It's a cool question; can code that is public for review, be better or worse than code that is merely seen by a few? The arguments posted are truly baffling.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: It's a cool question; can code that is public for review, be better or worse than code that is merely seen by a few?
That's exactly the point. Which I don't know the answer.
I would love to see some research on the subject. Is Code that is public better or worse for security? One would say that OSS will have its vulnerabilities detected earlier by peer reviewers, contributors and enthusiasts in general. But who can tell that a malicious developer won't find and exploit them first?
I have no arguments to answer this question, but would love to see them.
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson
----
Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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In order to have good source quality and well functioning software you need the following:
- good specifications as you can write clean code only with purpose
- good professionals who write the code, in best case professionals who are not only good but have experience in the given field
This means you can end up with good or bad quality source and/or software in any of these worlds quite easily.
EDIT: If you work with large codebases and/or code that does something non-trivial then you will need support for the libraries you have used in case of serious projects. For this you will often have to pay in both arenas. An interesting thing is that even some proprietary software have licensing schemes that provide the source for you.
modified 19-Aug-14 8:54am.
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Because I cannot inspect Proprietory Software (by definition), I simply don't know.
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For infrequent tasks, especially one-off tasks, open source's price wins every time - and often open source has most of the features of any closed-source equivalent.
For more frequent tasks, it comes down to the individual piece of software. Eclipse, for example, vs Visual Studio or XCode (or, frankly, notepad!) is a no-brainer for me - it's too complex and unstable to be viable.
For everyday tasks, though, I tend to prefer closed-source - and it hadn't occurred to me until responding here that the reason for this is more to do with the frequency of updates than anything else.
Give me stable software with the occasional bug fix over software that adds a new feature every five minutes.
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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I think you defined it! or at least gave me some insight into bending my thinking on the subject.
Well put, and the thinking makes sense to me. In fact, I think you just gave me a new sales pitch for my software versus the open source version.
People use my programs all day long for business.
Thanks
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...would have been, "When is OS software a viable option?"
OS software is often amazing, extremely powerful, and even cost-effective...but it isn't for everyone, or every situation, and in many cases the technical aspects don't have much impact on a business decision.
Just this last week I was presented several problems open source could have solved, but in the context of an environment with an enormous legacy dependency on MS Office the proprietary MS brand carries the weight of business acceptance. Too often we in the community overlook that the ultimate decider of what technology comes into play is almost always user preference, user comfort, and user wants. In essence then it becomes irrelevant if OS is better or not, because it is simply not a viable business decision in some arenas.
That said, the comments here on this survey are some of the best I've read of late. It shows the maturity of our field to have people recognizing that free doesn't mean inherently better or worse.
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It's cool when "oh and look it's free!"
But there is no way I am going to release mine for free no matter what the others do.
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"Free software" doesn't stands for "no cost", but for the source code is available and can be modificable.
A good lecture is the book "Free for all" that talks about the philosophy behind the Open Software http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/free_for_all.peter_wayner/portrait.pdf[^]
The final user doesn't care about the software itself, the users care about a service as a final product. The bills becomes of such service. E.g. the most of IT professionals (consultants) charges for develop software (that is a service) and maintenance software (that is a service)
Actually you can make Open Source Software and charge for that. The issue is that the most of companies and people don't found a way to combine both, free code and earn money.
modified 20-Aug-14 19:00pm.
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Proprietary software is often designed to work with specific file formats, specific products from the same company, or "featured partners". It is often written in a monolithic way, tailored to a specific business environment. Data export options may be limited or nonexistent. It is often Windows Only.
Open source stuff sometimes suffers from the same lack of versatility because it is poorly funded. However, there are numerous examples of open source programs that support tons of file formats, that have highly generic and flexible internal designs, and that are multi-platform. I think this is more likely in the open source world because there is no incentive to act anti-competitively or to favor one company's products over another.
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I voted "no" as it is my response in most cases to OS software.
I would lie if I say that all OS is bad and all paid is good. But if there is no money involved there is little interest to keep high standard. Be it stability, customer support or features.
In my case of OS experience, it was not that you CAN fix bugs yourself - it was that you MUST do it because both the license and dev's point of view was "AS IS" meaning "we don't care" 
With all above said, I know some very good OS software that is on par with commercial ones, but their are like beautiful small islands on the ocean of OS crap. 
--
"My software never has bugs. It just develops random features."
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I love open source and I contribute as much as I can. Nothing gives me more joy than giving back what was freely given. I also have been professionally employed, for 25 years in this field of software development.
Ever hear the adage "You get what you pay for". This concept truly applies to open source software.
It is my belief that open source code should only be used if the user understands the code. Using open source code as a black box is a bad recipe.
OpenSSL and Heartbleed exploit is a real world example of getting what you paid for.
MD5 is another real world example of getting what you paid for.
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Quality is determined by skill, not the paycheck. Heartblead has been discovered because it is NOT proprietary software.
Andy Bantly wrote: should only be used if the user understands the code
That goes for all software, but reality is very different.
A lot of people complaining about "open source", because they can see how bad it is. A lot of this crap simply stays hidden in proprietary software.
Aw, keep in mind, most examples on this site are "open source" - and there's enough people copy/pasting it into their proprietary solutions.
Andy Bantly wrote: "You get what you pay for"
how much contribution to this website? How much for this single post? Does that determine it's worth, yes?
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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I have contributed 8 open source projects to this website and my average article rating is near 5. I have been a member since near the beginning. My member id is 22.
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Andy Bantly wrote: It is my belief that open source code should only be used if the user understands the code. Using open source code as a black box is a bad recipe.
I couldn't agree more, except by possibly using a larger font.
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OS software sucks as bad, if not more actually, than commercial products / tools, and as I've encountered over and over again (and contributed to the problem as well), OS software lacks documentation, customer support, and usability (both from a programmer's perspective and/or and end-user perspective.) Now, that's not saying that commercial software is any better, it's just the OS is certainly not better. As to the cost argument, it's also irrelevant because by the time I add up all the hours trying to figure out something in, say SQL Server and compare it to the time I spend trying to figure out something in say, Postgres, the cost of that time at my billing rate is in the noise. Same experience with one of those ridiculous Javascript frameworks for web development, which you can use whether you're using OS RoR or (oh, guess what, it's also OS, gee, I wonder why) the ASP.NET stack.
Marc
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Agreed. Not better. OS may not be worse, but surely not better either; it depends on the individual piece of software.
I find in both cases, it's about the usability and documentation. Most (both closed and open) work pretty well for their "normal" use; however, once you stray from that line, how much time and effort does it take to make some OS thing work for your needs? That never seems to come up when discussing cost/benefit.
"It's the new shiny thing! We should all run down that path!"
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