If it’s free and you can’t use it, it’s crap!

[admin]

The other day, I was riding the Heathrow Express train from London Heathrow to Paddington. It’s a great train service, fast, reliable, and convenient.* The windows of the carriages carry a sticker that advertises free Wifi service from T-Mobile. Unfortunately, as anyone who rides that train on a regular basis will tell you, this free service is a legend.* When you can get a signal, you can’t get to the login page; and if you get through the login page, the signal will drop after a few minutes.* Bottom line: Wifi on the Heathrow Express may be free, but it does not work and it’s useless.

A lot of free software is like this.* Good marketing will get you to download it; you will have to bear with numerous ads to get through download, installation, and activation. Only to realize that either it does not work at all, or that to do the stuff you need it for, you have to buy the “advanced” version (and you’re so lucky, there is a special discount this week!).

Why is open source different? Well, firstly, open source is not free as in free beer (or free Wifi…), it’s free as in free speech.* A lot has been written on the topic, so I’ll just say this: the most important value of open source is open-ness, not cost-less-ness. Everything stems from there.

• Open source works: precisely because it’s open, an open source project that does not work as advertised won’t stay around for long.* If all you’re downloading is adware or crippleware, the community will soon be aware of it, and make sure everyone knows it too. If it was poorly designed or built, same story. In both cases, the project will simply sink into oblivion.

• Open source is transparent: whether you are dealing with a community-driven project or a vendor-led project, transparency is key.* The 451 Group released a while back their open core transparency test, and out of the 14 open core vendors surveyed, not a single one had failed to clearly indicate the differences between their free and commercial versions.

Many detractors of open source (often the same ones who compete against open source products) refer to their open source competitors with a dismissive “you get what you pay for”. Some of these companies will go one step further and decide to release a free version of their product. Not open source – free as in “free Wifi on the Heathrow Express”.* And in this case, guess what?* The saying “you get what you pay for” does apply. For these companies, “free” is only a marketing strategy.* They have no intention whatsoever to offer any value for free, only to hook potential clients.* I can think of several examples, some of them right down my aisle.

At the end of the day, if it’s free and you can’t use it, it’s crap!

Yves




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