{"id":135,"date":"2007-07-18T17:01:52","date_gmt":"2007-07-18T17:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ubuntucat.wordpress.com\/2007\/07\/18\/open-source-for-non-programmers\/"},"modified":"2007-07-18T17:01:52","modified_gmt":"2007-07-18T17:01:52","slug":"open-source-for-non-programmers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/open-source-for-non-programmers\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Source for Non-Programmers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On a Linux forum, when you get into discussions of the benefits of open source over proprietary software, inevitably someone will say something to the effect of <i>If you don&#8217;t like it, you can change it&mdash;that&#8217;s the beauty of open source<\/i>. While that may be the beauty of open source for programmers, how does that benefit affect non-programmers?<\/p>\n<p> I myself am not a programmer, so being able to modify the source code of a program is a dubious benefit for me. I do, however, enjoy several fringe benefits as a regular software user. <\/p>\n<p> These are the main ways I benefit from open source: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Low or No Cost<\/b><br \/> Yes, it&#8217;s true. You <i>can<\/i> legally charge money for open source software, but very few people do, and the prices can never be exhorbitant (say, $500 for an office suite), because people can easily compile the source code themselves for less than $500. The cost you pay, if you pay anything at all, is usually marginal and covers the distribution costs, the packaging, the shipping, or support. I&#8217;ve never had to pay money for any of the open source software I use, though.\n<li> <b>Peace of Mind<\/b><br \/> Free? Hm. Does it have spyware? Does it have adware? Is it a virus? Well, I&#8217;ve yet to come across an open source program that&#8217;s installed malware on my computer. I have, back in my Windows-using days, installed freeware (different from open source, by the way) that&#8217;s come with malware or at least nagware (Want to upgrade to the full edition? Your free trial is almost over!). I think this is a combination of open source program creators generally having good intentions and other open source programmers being able to examine the source code.\n<li><b>Community Support<\/b><br \/> This is a double-edged sword, of course. Some open source projects are funded by a company, but most are developed by a worldwide community of programmers and testers, meaning that if the project is successful enough, it&#8217;ll never die just because one company decides to discontinue it. It also means no company can lock you in to the way they want to do things. If a previously excellent open source project starts going in a bad direction, you can bet there are programmers out there who are working on a fork of the project.\n<p> Here&#8217;s where the other edge of the sword comes in, though: <i>someone<\/i> has to do it. If the project isn&#8217;t funded by a company, it&#8217;s usually volunteer or subsidized by donations. So if no one&#8217;s interested in continuing the project, the project just dies or remains stagnant.<\/ul>\n<p> Interested? You may have already started using some open source programs&mdash;Firefox, Audacity, FileZilla, GIMP. <\/p>\n<p> If you&#8217;re not a Linux user, there are still plenty of great open source programs for you to try out: <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.opensourcewindows.org\/\">http:\/\/www.opensourcewindows.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opensourcemac.org\/\">http:\/\/www.opensourcemac.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On a Linux forum, when you get into discussions of the benefits of open source over proprietary software, inevitably someone will say something to the effect of If you don&#8217;t like it, you can change it&mdash;that&#8217;s the beauty of open source. While that may be the beauty of open source for programmers, how does that&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/open-source-for-non-programmers\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Open Source for Non-Programmers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7,12,21,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple-and-mac-os-x","category-computers","category-linux","category-ubuntu","category-windows","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}