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Closed source has it's positives as well. One is quality control. By keeping all the code inhouse, the company is able to control every aspect of their project... they can spend as long as they want on quality testing. They can also keep control of the interface and any features.

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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Microsoft doesn't necassarily have to adapt open source. Many large corporations are (unfortunately) unwilling to grasp open source. Even small companies are unwilling. The last company I worked with i was in charge of IT for a while. I mentioned that I could save hundreds of dollars each new computer by switching to open office and linux for some of the employee that didn't do any more than telemarketing and very small amounts of email.

Microsoft's name provides a (false) sense of security - how ironic is that statement? But it's true, companies trust microsoft.

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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My name is Ahren and I'm an owner of Social Media Squad (http://www.socialmediasquad.com). We do social media marketing online and run our company completely on open source software. As a startup company this was the most viable solution for us for a couple reasons.

First of all, the cost. Open source software is generally free.

Second of all the features. Since open source software is often from many developers it really opens up to new and creative features.

Next, the flexibility. Since the code is available I can do anything i want with it. If i want to make a change or add a feature I can either do it myself or pay someone to do it. This allows us to customize the software however we want to do anything needed.

Lastly - the community around open source. There is almost always a forum centered around the software. People can come here for help in install, help in customizing the skins, brainstorming new ideas, hiring programs to make specific changes to the code they are unable to do themselves. You don't see this kind of community around closed source software.


Also, it's nice to be part of the community, giving feedback helping solve problems... creating a better free solution to inferior expensive programs.

We used to use Active Collab - project management solution - that was open source, it had an awesome following but then the creator took all the hard work of the programmers and turned it to a for profit model. This was an insult to everyone that had helped him. It's the only case i'm personally aware of but it's things like that that could ruin the communities behind open source.

One of the drawbacks to open source projects is that since there is many developers, sometimes there are too MANY features. everyone wants it to do what they want and sometimes it adds too much to the program and gets cluttered.

Also, if people lose interest in the project there be be large gaps in updates, and some projects even just die or go stale with no new features.

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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