[school-discuss] More ammo in the battle for acceptance

[Leon Brooks <leon@brooks.fdns.net>]

`Why Open Source Software? Look at the numbers'

    http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html

   `This paper examines market share, reliability, performance,
    scaleability, security, and total cost of ownership. It also has
    sections on non-quantitative issues, unnecessary fears, and other
    sites providing related information, and ends with some
    conclusions.'

    [...]

    CONCLUSIONS

    OSS/FS has significant market share, is often the most reliable
    software, and in many cases has the best performance. OSS/FS scales,
    both in problem size and project size. OSS/FS software generally has
    far better security, particularly when compared to Windows. Total
    cost of ownership for OSS/FS is often far less than proprietary
    software, particularly as the number of platforms increases. These
    statements are not merely opinions; these effects can be shown
    quantitatively, using a wide variety of measures. This doesn't even
    consider other issues that are hard to measure, such as freedom from
    control by a single source, freedom from licensing management (with
    its accompanying litigation), and increased flexibility. I believe
    OSS/FS options should be carefully considered any time software or
    computer hardware is needed. 

    [...]

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    David A. Wheeler is an expert in computer security and has a long
    history of working with large and high-risk software systems. His
    books include Software Inspection: An Industry Best Practice
    (published by IEEE CS Press), Ada 95: The Lovelace Tutorial
    (published by Springer-Verlag), and the Secure Programming for
    Linux and Unix HOWTO. Articles he's written include More than a
    Gigabuck: Estimating GNU/Linux's Size and The Most Important
    Software Innovations.

Cheers; Leon