Sunday, February 3, 2008

Open Source Software ? Yes, but....



The immergence of the Open Source software led the software industry to a "Boom" of innovation. In fact, as it is said in the article by Tiemann "Software Industry vs. Software Society: Who Wins in 2020?", the creation of open source software gives people the chance, not only to access the information, but also to modify the information, add information and make people feel involve in something that they like. I believe that open source is great, because everything seems more easy and quick. You can change want you do not like or do not agree with (information) and problem solving is faster. What a wonderful thing!

However, that might be seen as a "new great invention", I do not believe that every single person who has a computer would feel comfortable with using that kind of software. In fact, it is different than the usual software people have. Changing of software would be synonym of trying to figure out how it works. It might be easy to use but I am not sure I am ready to change my Windows software (not because I love it) for open-source software because I do not know anything about it. Most people I know don't even know what an open-source is, so they certainly won't change for open-source software. Even if you know the word or some information about it I do not think it will influence people to change their software.

I really believe in the fact that open-source software is good and that we should use them, but I do not think that my "technological" capacities make me feel self-confident enough to use that. In fact, I'm not one of those technology's lover and I can use a computer properly but I am not going to spend hours and hours to figure out all of the properties and modifications possible to do on it. I do my work and that's it. Therefore, open source software might be excellent, but I'll keep on going with my old software and we'll see in a couple of year if I’m ready to change.