RE: Commercial vs OpenSource

[Bill Royds]

Title: RE: Commercial vs OpenSource

Most closed source products have an End User License Agreement (EULA) that denies any liability, so there is no advantage to buying any Microsoft based product in that respect. The only value is buying a support contract from the manufacturer of software or a separate supporting firm.

But that is also available for most open source software so that doesn't really distinguish them.

   As a matter of fact, the open source support tends to be better because the support personnel can look at source themselves rather than waiting for the development staff to investigate a problem. The liability then can be easily assumed by the support company. They do not have to trust another third party to fix the bugs.

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2000 10:00
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: Commercial vs OpenSource

In my personal view, the biggest advantage to commercial products is not the technical support that you get, but the fact that your legal liability is moved from my desk to another corporation. :-)

Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Metzger [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thu, October 19, 2000 9:40 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: Commercial vs OpenSource

The Biggest advantage to useing commercial products is that you will get tech. support at least for some time anyway. Open Source products don't come with tech. support my nature, but on the flip side, you can always get help on most any open source product from mailing lists like this one. The biggest advantage is on the side of open source, which is cost. From my experance the open source stuff usually works better, mainly because if there is a bug in it, rather than just 1 or 2 people working on it in corporate America, there will be no telling how many people working on the same problem. My advise is to go with open when ever possible. Hope This helps you at least a little.

Paul