The LXF Analysis: Open source innovations
"Open source copies from commercial software." "Without commercial software spending so much money on research, open source software would have no new ideas." "Open source needs commercial software to survive." These are some of the statements about open source software made by those with a vested interest in seeing it fail or flounder - but are they justified or merely FUD?
While there are several logical arguments against this, and we will touch upon a couple, the best argument is real world evidence: cases where open source developers have been the innovators, and often where commercial software has followed.
The first thing to get out of the way is that following the examples of others, and drawing on their experience is not a bad thing. If there is a good idea out there, don't ignore it just because someone else thought of it first. Competing products from different suppliers, in any field, have far more in common than they have differences. User friendliness is also a factor: there is really no such thing as an intuitive computer interface.
What we call intuitive is really only familiar; no one is their right mind would design a car with all the controls in different places to the accepted norm, so why expect anything different of computer interfaces? That's why all mainstream GUIs are based on the original WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer) interface conceived at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC). PARC also came up with Ethernet, laser printers and much more, so they knew their stuff.
So where have open source developers led the way, breaking new ground? Here are a few examples for various fields.
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