Why I Champion Open Source

I love Linux, and Ubtunu 10.04 is shaping up to be awesome.

I believe, especially with the rise of Android, MythTV, TiVo, and a myriad of others--the time for Linux on the desktop is at hand.

Now this is a prediction that has been declared time and time again, but it's only a few short steps from becoming reality.

Linux is a robust, easy to use, stable, nearly virus free operating system. Some of it's greatest software champions are ubiquitous across platforms, like OpenOffice.Org, 7-Archiver, Transmission, GIMP, and more. In fact, with the rise of Apple Inc. and it's iPod/iPhone line, not to mention it's venerable stable of iMacs and always well selling laptops, Linux and Unix-like operating systems own the majority of computing today.

If you look at purely the desktop and laptop user, then yes, Windows owns a majority. But it's still outnumbered by the whole operating system ecosystem when you compare it to other categories like smart phones, tablet computers, netbooks, web servers--you name it. If you're not using it at home, chances are some place in the day you may just be using some form of Unix-like OS, unwittingly. If you surf the web at all (and who doesn't?), you definitely are coming in contact with Linux countless times through out the day.

People often wonder why those who champion free software (outside of programmers who tend to be older, free minded folk) crave for it's dominance in everyday life so much. And it's understandable that at first glance a rabid open source fan boy would seem rather eccentric. There's always that old adage people feel about computing--if it works, why bother? But most don't comprehend just what's at stake for them as consumers.

Many may have heard of the Microsoft tax for example--ever tried to buy a computer without an operating system? Why exactly is Windows non-transferable, anyway? It's hard to get laptops much cheaper than they are today because there's always the cost of the operating system, which depending on the model and version of Windows can go from $50-150 or so. Not to mention in the past Microsoft had foisted deals upon it's vendors with stipulations that it only shipped computer with Windows, or else.

Because of this tactic there's basically only two "main stream" games in town. Microsoft, and shockingly enough today--Apple Inc., who now has a larger market cap than Microsoft. Apple's operating systems come in two flavors--Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server, unlike Vista and Windows 7 with umpteen editions. Simple, to the point. One price for what you need to do.

I like Apple products. And yes, in theory, certain parts of the Apple operating system are "open source," but name one giant open source contribution they've made? Geeks can give references to, for example, NVIDIA's driver commitments, OpenOffice.Org, etc., etc. Intel has it's own netbook platform of Linux it's trying to hock, for example. And Cisco, not to mention other router vendors, often have open source operating systems for their home routers which allows you to fiddle with a lot of cool stuff. I've done it a lot, it's fun. (Okay, I'm a nerd, leave me alone.)

Apple has really given squat back to the open source community, and Google is on the road to being accused of the same thing. But I still believe Google is playing better cards with the open source community than Apple, and any involvement Microsoft has is laughable at best. The problem now is that we have a major platform raising up on the iPad/Phone/Pod line which is a version of Apple's OS X. It is Unix at it's core, but the lock down of features and having to approve applications from a store is very limiting. Not to mention recently they've told programmers just how they had to create an application for the iPhone, barring a lot of different programming languages from being used. It's really a big slam at Adobe Flash, but they're truly trying to consolidate the platform.

It's bad, in the long run.

And Microsoft will no doubt try to follow suit with it's Zune product. Not to mention how surprisingly large the X-Box 360 user base is, despite hardware failures. If we are no longer able to control our software we'll be going down the same road again into capitalism's most extreme war over software, and not neccesarily new technology. If a lisence free operating system with a full featured office and productivity suite can be released upon a mass public, we as a human species can say "alright, we have a common computing platform--what we do with it is what we do with it, and no one can tell us differently."

If we have certain standards in computing--for instant messaging, web browsing, office work, even mild video editing and photo manipulation--we'll have created a great ecosystem opened up not only for new open source technology, but new capitalist markets. Better yet the computing industry would be more focused on delivering customer service and satisfaction than cracked out feature after buggy feature being hacked on just to make it sound enticing so you'll buy or upgrade it. Not to mention the threat of cloud services, where you'll be paying monthly for access to say Microsoft Office online.

Apple doesn't have that option because they're the second game in town, so they have to make you want to buy their products. Locking you in to their own proprietary ecosystem, cloud computing is not even a twinkle in their eye outside of their .Mac stuff.

But they win converts and Mac faithful with not only slick marketing tact, but putting out great software. They're definitely out competing Microsoft, but with Windows 7 one can't help but wonder if a good marketing strategy would help quell the Apple switching masses. Maybe, but Microsoft has never been known for marketing. It's one thing they'll never do right. Honestly, "Squirting" a song to another Zune user? Riiiiiight.

But I digress.

This sounds probably more about haughty-tawty ethical values than anything else, and you're halfway right. But Linux truly is a more useful OS than Windows. I have eye candy, stability, multiple windows, and direct access to OpenGL drivers for my video cards. If Valve can port it's Steam games to Mac, then it's little wonder when the Linux version debuts. The system similarities are quite striking. In fact, when I had an iBook running OS 10.3 I had it booting Gnome at times as the desktop suite, like as if I was running my Linux desktop at home.

It's time to put an end over platform wars and settle on common open source solutions. We have great technology in OpenGL, HTML5, Ogg Theora, PNG, etc. If these open standards caught on then makers of common electronic devices like digital cameras, music players, DVD players, Nintendo DS, you name it-- wouldn't have to shell out cash to pay for a licensing standard.

Businesses would have a universal office suite and or at the very least file format standard, so if you wrote a presentation in one program it would open flawlessly in the other. It just makes life easier, instead of having to shell out so much money a year on new crap. I doubt most people use all the features in Microsoft Office. When you, as a corporate--or dare I say it--as a home user are paying your operating system company just to provide you with support and usability updates, you have a much more mainline bargaining chip in offering feature suggestions then Microsoft's apparent shot-in-the dark approach. They've of course since deviated from this way slightly by the looks of their new ad campaign, but so many of us will always remember how half baked Vista was. Especially since I was there repairing computers and training employees on it at launch. It wasn't pretty, and even today I trust it about as much as I trust my pet rattle snake. Well, let's just say I used to have a pet rattle snake. I had to kill him. I'll always miss you, Samba de Amigo.

My point is it's time for a new technology dynamic, one that grants obvious freedoms to it's users and allows for a tougher competitive market. Maybe tougher isn't the right word--perhaps more fluid, faster. When there are no secrets to what is under the hood there are no limits to what can be accomplished.

And it's only a matter of time, arguably, before hardware makers are forced to look somewhere else to cut out the price of producing an electronic item. Most don't realize each legal consumer electronic device has a cost to it somewhere when it comes to how it captures and replays audio and video. Does that seem right? Or is it the cost of creating such technology? I think that all technology has a marketable shelf life, and many of them are going away at the same time. The people who created the first widely used picture format, JPEG, also created the stuff inside video CDs and DVDs. They begun to think about charging to use the format, and that would make it very costly to freely share pictures across the internet without legal consequences. In response, the open source world invented a better standard--PNG. And it's more widely used today.

With Ubuntu if I need a piece of software I don't generally go on the net looking to download it. All I have to do is open up my application installer (it's the same thing as the Add/Remove in Windows) and search for the application name or type of application. Then, blamo! It finds what I need, I tell it to install--and it does, automatically downloading whatever else it needs to work for it. No endlessly searching for this or that, all I need is right there with one click.

And when I'm alerted to updates, it's not just for my operating system--it can be for Firefox, Opera, cd burning software, you name it. Virtually everything. Now I don't even have to go to Twitter.com or use a client to update my status, I can just type it all from the desktop as a program called Gwibber (interesting name, I know) automatically fetches and sends feeds from Facebook, Twitter, and more. It's an awesome solution to so much social networking woes, and it's getting better all the time.

As Canonical, Ubuntu's corporate sponsor gains momentum with it's new product in new sectors, I think we're really going to see them fix their bug number one--Windows still having a majority share on computers.