RE: [Asterisk-Users] Linux and Windows

[Michael Giagnocavo]

As far as I understand, corporation, and Govt's like commercial products because of the issue of liability.  That is why the Commercial market and Govt market don't accept open source solutions.   Both governments (Germany anyone?) and commercial entities (quite a few people have made money with Asterisk) accept open source. Open source != non commercial. In fact, sometimes they’ll want to have source for even closed source products. It might not be feasible (I’ve had access and looked at the Windows source, and it’s huge… I doubt anyone outside of MS would be able to do a thorough inspection.) What is perplexing about the whole situation is that the licensing agreements with commercial software 99.9% of the time indemnify the vendor of any and all liability. So, what we have is the "feeling" of security...  Perhaps Linus should convince the various entities that distribute Linux to include a nice fluffy security blanket with the licensing agreement embroidered on it?  That way the attorneys can get that "warm fuzzy feeling" they so desire.   Isn’t that what Red Hat is doing?   As far as security, it’s not always just a feeling. A company with a lot of money invested in a product (say, MS), is going to make sure the product suits most of their customers as best as possible. A non-commercial open source product might not always have that goal, instead trying to build “better technology”. Go read Raymond Chen’s blog: http://weblogs.asp.net/oldnewthing/. Read the history category. See the evil, horrible compatibility hacks that are in Windows just to make sure apps keep working as people upgrade, even when vendors do Bad Things? This is the kind of commitment that makes companies feel secure that things will continue to work. Open source doesn’t have anything to do with this argument. The real argument is non-commercial versus commercial. So it’s basically coming down to “companies like to deal with other companies rather than a couple of coders doing something for fun” … well, duh.   I speak from much experience regarding this matter... The U.S. Govt won't accept an open-source solution even if it is the only option to cover their ass.  They'd rather leave their cheese out in the wind than cover it with an open source solution.   So the U.S. Govt has never used linux anywhere? Wow. Question: Why isn't there a commercial solution available in some cases? Answer: What company in their right mind would engineer a competing product to a solution that costs $0.00 ???   Again making the mistake that open source equates non-commercial. -Michael

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