Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Open Source Mania

A recent thread about Nightly Builds of WordPress has me kind of foaming (darn you, Doug!), and rather than take it out on unsuspecting members of the list (and then get flamed back for it), I figured I would write about it here, where it’s safe, and I can delete comments that contradict me. (Did I just say that?)

Yes. There are dozens of open source applications that will perform a specific function instead of the commercial application that is well-known for it. Indeed, there are many replacements for WinZip (the software in question in the linked thread) that are free, and some are even open source. But there are also dozens of closed source applications that work just as well.

People frequently ask, “Why are you supporting that commercial application, when there is this open-source application that works just as well?” Well, there are a few good answers to that, the first, and possibly not the most obvious, is – Why not?