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[Johannesburg, 19 May 2005] -
Mass-produced software means more money leaves the country, and costs are still prohibitively high in some areas.So says Linux International director Jon “Maddog” Hall, keynote speaker on the second day of the LinuxWorld conference in Sandton.“In China, people are expected to pay around $600 for a certain brand of closed source software. To afford that, the average Chinese person would have to save for months – without eating or buying clothes – in order to buy a shiny little disc.”In his presentation titled “Mass-produced software is holding us back“, Hall noted that software costs had not followed that of hardware.“In the beginning of computing, both hardware and software were both extremely costly. During the 1980s, hardware costs began dropping drastically and is now incredibly cheap. The same cannot be said for software.”Mass-produced closed source software is also inflexible, says Hall, a problem that has become more evident as the number of users increased.In the 1980s, there were around 100 software engineers for every 1 000 consumers, whereas today it is more like 150 engineers to 4.5 million consumers, he says. “So you see the problem: it's not that these companies don't want to give you service, it's that they can't.”Hall says there are a number of advantages to be gained by organisations choosing the open source software route. Longevity is an important aspect, because even the biggest companies fall by the wayside, or merge with another company, he notes.“The problem here is that product lines – which many customers are still using – are cancelled. With open source software you are not reliant on a specific company's continued existence for your support.”Open source and the economyIn an earlier presentation, Microsoft SA platform strategy manager Albie Bester highlighted the company's contribution to the local economy. “Out of a GDP [gross domestic product] of R1.2 trillion for 2003, Microsoft's contributed R9.6 billion. This translates into a 0.8% contribution to GDP.”However, Hall maintains that open source can contribute further to the economy, as proprietary software often means money leaves the country. “Software freedom means less money leaves your country for packaged software. Also, more money can be spent locally on tailoring open source, which creates local jobs.”Another strength of open source is the high number of programmers working on projects in the open source community, he says.If you look at SourceForge.net, there are around 1 million programmers working on nearly 100 000 projects, although Hall concedes these numbers may be slightly misleading.“People often come to me and say ‘oh, but I've checked it out, and there are so many similar projects, others are just stillborn, and some programmers aren't even working on anything'. Well, I don't care. Because if only 10% of those are working on innovative and original projects, then it is still much bigger than any closed source company's workforce.”
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