Aspects of Developing With, and Using, Open Source Software
Many (but by no means all) open source enthusiasts have an attitude to government and big business (read Microsoft and the big media companies) which combines both paranoia and the assumption that these organisations are stupid. This is not a happy combination, because it leads to the gross over-estimation of the significance of trivial matters, and the assumption that the big boys are too stupid to do anything really dangerous. All I can say is that my advice would be never to attribute malice where mere incompetence would suffice! And so... This paper has tried to take a pragmatic look at some of this issues raised for those of us who are likely to be working in a hybrid open/closed source situation, and it has tried to look at both the strengths and weaknesses of the open source movement. As always, there are no quick and no easy answers, but I hope that I've given you a base from which you can do your own specific research and develop your own specific solutions. I believe that open source development is one of the best methods of producing high quality software, and as a reliable platform on which to build your applications. But, and it's a big but, you must know what you are doing to use it effectively.
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