Open Source Isa Big Tease

OpenSource often seems like a big tease - it'll do everything you want, if you can just afford the time it takes to configure it. But you can't afford that time - in fact it often seems longer than it would take you to write a tool from scratch.

I wrote a tool that automatically configures OpenSource tools to do what you want. But of course you have to configure it first ...--PeterMerel

Most software has this problem. Trying buying a closed-source speech recognition system and seeing how many hours/days it takes to get up & running. In some ways open-source software is ahead with its RPM and other packaging tools. Microsoft only put out a single install (MDAC) for their myriad data access libraries in 1999. Before that it was a nightmare because VC++, IE, Office, and other tools all installed bits & pieces of ADO, DAO, etc. --IanRae

However, as OpenSource projects get more mature (there are fewer new features to add), the amount of configuration goes down. See MozillaBrowser, but also please notice how much easier MoinMoin is to install nowadays.

While OpenSource software may sometimes come with a less spiffy installation program, transparency goes a long way. If the installation fails or yields unexpected results, you're more likely to be able to look at a shell script or log file to figure out what went wrong. ClosedSource software tends to hide those details instead of pushing them out to where you can see them.

Alternately, you could go with the One True Configuration of you-know-who. --PhlIp

I saw an artical on slashdot a few months ago that basically criticized open-source for providing too many options. Companies want PlugCompatibleInterchangeableEngineers, and open-source makes that difficult. For example, one of the complaints against PHP is that it is so configurable that if you do it one way at one shop, it may be configured different at another shop, and this throws one off, requiring time to adjust. Microsoft generally forces a consistency upon the industry, and this helps get one PlugCompatibleInterchangeableEngineers. (Even with version differences, MS is still more consistent than OSS.) Lots of options by itself is good, but it if hinders the existence of strong de-facto standards, it will not be popular with rank-and-file companies. Open-source is capable of providing this, but it may require picking favorites somewhat arbitrarily by companies such as IBM and Red Hat in order to encourage OSS de facto standards. One side may have to "swallow it" in the KDE/GNOME battle, for example, for the larger cause.

Don't see HelpSourceForgeSuck.