Comments on: Open source: Developing markets look for alternatives to U.S.

Outside the U.S. and Europe, cost is a big motivator for governments to use open-source software--but it's not the only one.
China: Local software for local people
India: Speaking your language
Brazil: The spirit of community

[Captain_Spock]

"a project to translate...

... the OpenOffice.org productivity suite into the 11 official languages of South Africa"; and, quite obviously, this further embraces support for the Open Document Standards... The way to go South Africa.

[dargon19888]

Proprietary vs Open Source...

You have to remember that you get what you pay for...

Not that I'm knocking open source initiatives.
Eclipse isn't as good as Rational's AD 6.0, while both share the same basic code base (Eclipse was donated by IBM.)

Derby re: Cloudscape was also donated by IBM. While its a great all Java RDMS package, feature wise and maturity is not as great as DB2, Oracle, or Informix. A good example is in the SQL optimizer.

Someone has to maintain the Open Source and depending on the licensing scheme, developers lose their IP protection. (Apache Open Source Licensing vs GPL for example.)

The point being is that with Open Source, you need a community that is willing to donate the time to maintain the code and that doesn't always happen or come for free.

[wrwjpn]

RE: Proprietary vs Open Source...

"The point being is that with Open Source, you need a community that is willing to donate the time to maintain the code and that doesn't always happen or come for free."

But that is the beauty of it. No one said Open Source was free. What Open source is that you can see what it does if you have the knowledge. If not then you can pay someone who has the knowledge. Open source doesn't mean "Free" as in Free Beer, but as "Free" as in Freedom.

Also you can pay someone to maintain the code for you or add options. Ask a proprietary software vendor to do that and they will charge you as well. But the question is "Will they do what you ask them?" Only if they feel it is worth their time and energy. With open source you have that freedom that you don't have with proprietary.