Main Issue Regarding Open Source Software

From: Abdallah Ramsing <yashircr_at_gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2015 10:27:16 +0400

Hi all,

A software being free or opensource does not mean that we can ignore the
fact that it crashes often especially at important moments. This is one (
and only) issue I have seen with many open source software nowadays. I was
just writing a document on Librewriter and while adding a text on an arrow,
the latter crashed. Fortunately I could use Recovery Option. However it did
only recovered until the last save point.

Perhaps that might be a major reason why some business folks still prefer
using closed source software. For instance for general use and software
development I prefer Linux distros by a mile because of the speed and the
ease of adding software, apis and libraries using the Terminal only with a
few keyboard strokes. However for video production, the likes of Openshot
and Kdenlive start crashing as soon as complex editing is involved
(splicing a track into two). The graphic card driver might be the culprit
but like mentioned above sometimes even trivial tasks seem to crash the
respective software. There are exceptions in the community though. For
example the outstanding PHP Laravel Framework from my perspective is one of
the best built and maintained application out there.

To conclude, I personally think that is the main problem with further
adoption of open source software particularly for the desktop world. To be
honest I do realise that I am not helping much in that cause. The best I am
doing right now is using those software and sending error messages and logs
to those concerned. I might have help in the development and/or testing
processes as well.

What are your opinions on that?

Disclaimer: This is not a rant but rather a way to share our experiences
and knowledge on that aspect because not everyone can afford closed source
software and cloud solutions (e.g. Adobe Creative Cloud) and somehow we can
help making this community better as well as promote it further in
Mauritius.

Regards,
Abdallah
Received on Thu Jul 09 2015 - 06:27:30 PST