Comments about Tom Callaway’s blog post

Reading Tom Callaway’s blog post helped clear a lot of questions I had regarding open source and companies. I always wondered if all companies that produced open source software all ran on the same business model. I also wondered how they made money, and how it compares to other companies that sell proprietary software. Tom addressed all the different types of open source business models that exists. The one business model that really caught my eye was the dirty one that MongoDB is running. This raised my eyebrows because I actually had to use MongoDB for one of my projects in my other class, so I actually knew what MongoDB is and what they do. All the other businsses that Tom Callaway listed, like Elementary, Fastly, Tidelift, I never heard of before. MongoDB’s business model is very schemey but also smart. They offer a free and paid service. The free service, is free, but there is a catch. The catch is that the company that uses MongoDB code, has to release every component that uses MongoDB’s code. This scares businesses because they don’t want to release their code. The paid service doesn’t require businesses to release components that uses MongoDB’s code.
After reading Tom’s post, I also realized how much customers can hate or dislike proprietary software vendors. It seems like whenever a business purchases proprietary software, they take a bigger risk, and don’t reap as much benefits as the vendor selling the proprietary software. Most of the time, businesses are forced to pay subscriptions to continue to use the software, or they have to pay to upgrade the software. If they want to change a little feature, they cannot because it is proprietary software. They also can’t unsubscribe and stop using the software because their business has grown so much around this software and rely on it so much. So in a sense, they have trapped themselves. Vendors like microsoft, a lot of businesses rely on windows because it is argueably, the norm. A lot of employees will know how to navigate through a windows operating system, so there is no need to teach employees how to use it. Microsoft word, excel, powerpoint, all proprietary software that has to be paid for.
In one of my media classes, digital design, I am required to meet in one of the CS labs in the 10th floor that has the mac computers because the professor needed to teach using adobe photoshop, illustrator, or inDesign. All proprietary software, that has to be paid for. Throughout the semester, the professor greatly disliked Adobe, but reluctantly needed it. She needed adobe because it was her career and it was how she could make money. She had paid for the software, but she disliked it so much because there would be changes made after each update that weren’t needed. There would be updates changing the menu and layout of the software, making it hard to follow tutorials, beause the layout is oudated. She also had to teach an entire course at Hunter that revolved around this software, which would also pay her. In the beginning of the semester, we ran into a brick wall, when we discovered that every student had to buy their own copy of adobe products. It wasn’t the case anymore that students could just register with their hunter email and be able to use the software. Adobe had changed their license or something, and made it so that students each had to purchase their own individual copy of the software. It was bizarre, and a greedy corporate move.

Would I want to work in a company that only produced open source software?

When I decide to work at a company, there is really only a few things that I am prioritizing.

1. How much I get paid.
2. How the work environment is.
3. Where the office is located

I don’t care about the company’s business model, whether it is a open source company or a company selling proprietary software. I just care that the company is doing well enough that it is able to pay my salary that I agreed for during the interview or paper signing session. In the end it all comes down to the money and how much you can profit. I’m pretty sure a company doesn’t choose a open source business model because they want to make quality open source code, they choose it because they believe it is a model that will make them the most profit.

comments on Election fraud: Is there an open source solution?

Reading this article made me remember just how old our election system is. I still remember when my elementary school was hosting elections, and people voted by going into a box, and closing the curtain behind them, while they make their vote. And now the article is saying how the voting machines are malfunctioning and changing votes. It is hard to tell if these machines are rigged or actually just malfunctioning from being old. Nevertheless, it is definitely the time to upgrade this system, and get a more secure way of collecting votes throughout the country. A lot of technology has been moving forward, and we definitely have been turning a blind eye on the voting system. It is a bit alarming that, they are letting votes be so vulnerable to attack.

Contributions

For inkscape, me and my team were able to make a lot of progress. We were able to get a couple of merge request accepted. Additionally, I decided to make a wikipedia contribution. I added a contribution to the movie “Extraction”. The link to my wikipedia can be found here