[pmwiki-users] Commercialism in PmWiki

Carlo Strozzi carlos at linux.it
Sun Aug 27 08:21:38 CDT 2006


On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 01:51:18PM +0200, Clemens Gruber wrote:
> 
> We hade a commercial software with support, with money for the use (per
> year) and the support. Then we would like to use another software for
> another thing and some people said "oh it's open source, who can do
> reliable support, what is, when the leading guru is run over by a
> tramway". Then - some months ago - the company form the first software
> declare bankruptcy. There was overnight no support. Even if we would do
> changes or bugfixes by oneself, we were not allowed to do this because
> of copyrigh violations. Now the same folks say "oh, open source, great,
> we have support by a community, we can do changes and adapt things, and
> we can reduce expenses".

Clemens,

in fact this is a rather common story. In the past, we as a company have
almost invariably run into troubles whenever we choosed closed-source
software. The alleged vendor support is a fairy tale most of the times,
and not even a chap one. We now have a very simple vision: no matter
whether there is an allegedly better proprietary product, if any
open-source alternative exists and is at least viable we go for the
latter. If it need fixing we fix it, if it needs improvements we improve
it. Fullstop. We have never regretted it ever since (and most important,
our wallet has never regretted it either). And fortunately we have only
a few PHBs among our customers :-) 

Carlo

-- 
Software Patents kill Innovation: say NO to Software Patents!
I Brevetti Software uccidono l'innovazione: di NO ai Brevetti Software!




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