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Sir,
It was really funny to read Dr. Dermot Hogan’s
article "The
Worst Things In Life Are Free".
It was impressive how he could completely miss the
point of having the source-code:
"It's true
that there are all these Linux support forums out
there who will help you. And I'm sure they do – if
the question is of interest to anyone reading. But
the thing about support (paid support) is that someone
is funded to hack through the uninteresting stuff
and get back to you. So what's the difference between
paid Red Hat support and paid Sun support? So long
as I get the bug fixed, not a lot. The point is that
the source code is useless to me as an individual – if
I want something fixed in a hurry, I have to pay
for it. I repeat, the source code is useless."
OF COURSE!!!!! As an individual I wouldn’t
touch the source code even of Notepad. But if my
company relies on a piece of software, I will sleep
much better if I know that if the company supporting
it close the door, EOL the product, etc (Kylix anyone?)
I have the OPTION to contract some guy to maintain
it working until I eliminate all dependencies on
it! It is easy to talk about Linux (a big software,
that probably no one in the world understand 100%
of the source code involved). But let me give another
example: 3rd party software for Delphi. I ALWAYS
buy the source, and probably I won’t buy it
if they didn’t ship the code.
Open Source software isn’t the same as No-cost
software!!!! As innovation, it is clear to me that
community software isn’t innovative as a whole,
but I don’t expect it from them. I like that
they push the commercial software to keep getting
better or else they will be eaten by the open-sourced
one. We have plenty of examples of it: JBoss, Firefox
(it is clear that IE 7 is a response to it), Eclipse
and many others. The message is clear for the vendors:
You have to keep innovating or else you will slowly
die. For instance good products aren’t suffering
from the open-source "threat". I don’t
see any free database coming near to worry Oracle.
Why? Maybe because they are innovating? I don’t
see many OS DBs implementing something like RAC.
Well, all in all I really like this magazine, but
I really think editorials should have stronger argumentations.
Maybe all this anger against OS and free software
is because they usually don’t buy marketing
space in websites?
Leonardo Pasta
Sir,
Your Rants
and Raves column totally missed the point
about CSS. You say that “the only major difference
between CSS and HTML is that CSS layouts are harder
to do.” Only harder to do if you don’t
know what you are doing, I suggest!
In practice, formatting web pages with CSS has so
many advantages that I hardly know where to begin.
For one thing, CSS give you precision. For another
thing, CSS lets you keep the page layout separate
from the page content. If you want to change the
layout of a site without CSS you are probably going
to have to regenerate all pages all over again. With
CSS, you can make the change to one CSS file and
all the pages instantly inherit the changes.
I rest my case.
Ronald Mark
Sir,
Your piece about CSS came like a breath of fresh
air. I wasted so much time trying to get CSS to do
what I needed for a client’s web site but had
to give up in the end. Finally, I realised that CSS
just is not suitable for complicated layouts, which
are usually ‘tabular’ in nature. Guess
what is good at tabular layouts? Yup, tables. Can’t
think why it took me so long to figure that one out!
Moira Garnston |
