"Open source copies from commercial software." "Without commercial software spending so much money on research, open source software would have no new ideas." "Open source needs commercial software to survive." These are some of the statements about open source software made by those with a vested interest in seeing it fail or flounder - but are they justified or merely FUD?
While there are several logical arguments against this, and we will touch upon a couple, the best argument is real world evidence: cases where open source developers have been the innovators, and often where commercial software has followed.
The first thing to get out of the way is that following the examples of others, and drawing on their experience is not a bad thing. If there is a good idea out there, don't ignore it just because someone else thought of it first. Competing products from different suppliers, in any field, have far more in common than they have differences. User friendliness is also a factor: there is really no such thing as an intuitive computer interface.
What we call intuitive is really only familiar; no one is their right mind would design a car with all the controls in different places to the accepted norm, so why expect anything different of computer interfaces? That's why all mainstream GUIs are based on the original WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer) interface conceived at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC). PARC also came up with Ethernet, laser printers and much more, so they knew their stuff.
So where have open source developers led the way, breaking new ground? Here are a few examples for various fields.
Love it or hate it, eye candy is here to stay, and it sells operating systems. Whether it's MacOS's Aqua look or the translucent (and thus unreadable) window borders in Vista, operating system developers strive to make their desktops "attractive". The open source community is a real innovator in this area, with Compiz Fusion taking the whole desktop eye candy thing to a new dimension - literally in fact because it has 3D effects. While some of the features provide visual effects at the expense of usability, others are capable of providing a stunning interface. Try booting your Windows-loving mate's PC from a live CD that uses Compiz Fusion and watch his jaw drop. 3D desktops can only get better as the natural evolution of hardware enables them to run effortlessly on what will soon be entry level systems, and a 3D Linux desktop still needs less grunt than a 2D Vista.
Incidentally, the name Compiz Fusion has a story that dispels another myth about open source: that projects are always forking and fragmenting. Compiz was forked into Beryl, but the two projects came back together, combining the results of two development efforts into a much stronger project.
One of the great advantages of open source is that a coder can take someone else's work, repackage it and release it. This is what Klaus Knopper did with Debian when he created the Knoppix Live CD. The Knoppix discs have advanced hardware detection and auto-configuration, something that could be considered innovative in itself. As it boots, the disc configures itself for most hardware completely automatically. While Knopper did not come up with the Live CD concept (SUSE had a demo CD before then), he was the first to make the concept workable, with a disc that would boot and run a complete OS on the majority of hardware. Now a Knoppix like Live system forms the basis of many distros' install discs.
Because of open source, Knopper was able to build on the work of the Debian community instead of having to develop everything himself. Imagine trying to make and release a Windows live CD, just because you think it is a good idea. The only people that would really like the idea would be the lawyers.
When the web started, it consisted of static pages where the content of each page was an HTML file. Then dynamic HTML came along, using server-side includes and various programming languages, but the content you got was still the content the webmaster provided for you - you could read it or print it, but that was all. The WikiWikiWeb changed all that with the concept that a web site could be edited by any visitor. Now anyone visiting a wiki site could add, edit and delete pages. This seemingly anarchic idea worked well, as now a site could be improved anyone and owned by no-one - the open source web site.
The internet was a nicer place in 1995 when WikiWikiWeb appeared, being largely inhabited by benign geeks and academics. Nowadays, defacement can be a problem and many wikis require registration before editing, but that doesn't detract from their open nature. Open source is not about using anonymity to avoid responsibility; it is about sharing and recognising the contributions of others, so the wiki is not only an innovation form the open source community, it is also an example of much that is good about the concepts of openness.
VNC is the sort of innovation that could only come from open source. VNC lets one computer view and, optionally, control the desktop of another. This is useful for accessing your own computer when away from your desk, and also very useful when providing support for a remote user, as anyone who has had one of those "Press that button and tell me what happens next" phone conversations with their parents will tell you.
Allowing another computer to control your computer from across the internet should ring alarms bells for even the least security conscious. Even if you trust the user of the other computer (it may be you) there is no way of knowing for sure what happens to the data when using a proprietary system. Open source has not only provided innovation here, it also provides security: you can see the source code and determine that your session data doesn't end up in a secret underground bunker.
Copyright 2006 - 2010 Future Publishing Limited
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