Andy’s Proprietary Software Rant
Andy has posted one of the “most amusing rants”:http://linuxintegrators.com/hl30/blog/technology/?permalink=Why+I+hate+proprietary+software.html&page=comments I’ve read in a while over on his blog. It contains such gem quotes as:
bq. OS X is awesome.. However, some things are more annoying than a wicked monkey bitch.
What on earth does that mean? Who knows – it’s funny.
bq. And I want it to freaking “just” work. My server, I want to configure and tune. My laptop is a toaster. If I have to tweak everything to get toast, I need a new toaster.
Now my laptop isn’t a toaster (physically or metaphorically I don’t think) but it is a slick piece of machinery. The 12″ powerbooks rock, easily the best laptop I’ve ever used. For the record, I’ve never had any problems with DiskCopy or burning Windows CDs and I do it regularly – perhaps I’m just lucky?
As for the meat of his post – that proprietary software sucks because you can’t get things fixed – I think he’s sadly missed the boat. (Disclaimer: I work for “a company”:http://www.atlassian.com that, however liberal our licensing, produces “proprietary software”:http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira)
Proprietary software isn’t the enemy. Large companies, crappy support and customer service is the enemy. Andy has a problem with the UI of DiskCopy, but it won’t be fixed for a while (if ever) because Apple releases software every 6 months. Not all companies are like this.
There _are_ responsive, proprietary software companies out there – and why are they so responsive? Often it’s because they compete with Open Source software – where responsiveness and customer service are your two best weapons. I can think of a “number”:http://www.intellij.com of “good”:http://www.jivesoftware.com “examples”:http://www.caucho.com of “companies”:http://www.themindelectric.com in the Java space that are amazingly responsive to change.
Are they proprietary _and_ responsive to change? Yes – all of them.
Do they produce excellent software? Yes – all of them.
Do they compete with Open Source software? Yes – all of them.
Do they all have _reasonable, listed and upfront_ prices? Yes – all of them.
It’s not proprietary software that’s the enemy here, it’s crappy companies. You can find them anywhere 
