Open Source Blog

Is it advocacy or reportage? I referred back to my first post in which I argued the case for Open Source Weblog.

"The fact that I am writing an open source blog rather than a proprietary software blog does not indicate favoritism for one model over the other, but rather recognizes the fact that the open source model is different, and its implications for enterprise computing are perhaps worthy of special attention if CIOs and IT directors are to plan properly for the adoption of open source software, and maybe open source development methodologies," I wrote at the time.

Have I lost sight of that? I like to think not, but perhaps I have begun to take 'assumed truths' of the benefits of open source for granted. Either way, as a New Year's Resolution I have vowed to challenge some of these assumed truths to see how they stand up to inspection.

In the meantime, here's an interesting article by Toby Ward about open source myths, based on a presentation given by Seth Gottlieb from Optaros.

The myths tackled (some of which I will follow up on in more detail) are:

- Anti-open source myth #1: Open source will cost more
than commercial.
- Anti-open source myth #2 and 3: open source programmers
are hackers and hobbyists.
- Anti-open source myth #4: open source software is not
supported.

- Pro-open source myth #1: open source will cost you
NO money!
- Pro-open source myth #2: open source makes software
better.
- Pro-open source myth #3: open source = open standards.
- Pro-open source myth #4: With open source you get a community.

Unfortunately there appear to be some formatting issues towards the end of the article, but Seth's original slides that fill in the gaps can be found here.