Monday, April 7, 2008

CS404 Ethics and Computers in Society: Smallish post 8

Open source, or free software, has benefited the world more than most know. Ten years ago, I thought we would never see any notable advances in operating systems. There has been a lack of improvement in operating systems because Microsoft has dominated the market; with the development of Linux, this is slowly changing. Because of Linux, Microsoft has come to grips with the fact that it cannot continue to produce mediocre products. Microsoft does have one hope, however, and that is the innate diversity in open source products. Un-united, the open source community produces many similar products that are not strong enough to stand on their own. If open source distributors would unite in their efforts and be completely selfless, they could create a product that could surpass Windows. A unification of open source participants could result in the downfall of Microsoft. Open source is our only hope to bring competition back into the operation systems world.

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