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Proprietary versus Open – the argument never ends.

Proprietary versus Open – the argument never ends.

I come to this topic due to it’s reoccurrence in my professional and personal meanderings. As I mostly discuss my professional life, I will dwell on my current personal life dilemma as a Joe-Shmoe consumer. I need a new personal computer at home for the family. I have a Windoze something box on circa 1912 hardware, and I am constantly being reminded that “the Internet is down” by the users of said appliance. If I were a betting man, I would put my money on this box being riddled with junk-ware, viruses, and other “badness”. The main reason the “home” computer got to this state is that I am NOT the primary user. A matter of fact, I avoid using that thing at all costs. I would rather prick every tip of my fingers 10 times, than apply them to the keyboard of that device. It’s gotten to the point now, that I wouldn’t wish using that computer on my worst enemy.   So it’s high time that I get a replacement for the household.   I accept the fact that my karma is at an all time low by permitting this to happen. I have been a poor technical advisor to this household. I need to grab some positive karma here, and I am going to start by getting new computer.

As I see it, in today’s day and age I have 3 solid choices. 1) I could get another Windoze box from Dell or something. 2) I could get a linux distribution like Ubuntu on new hardware, (also available from Dell now) or 3) I could get a MAC.

Windows and Linux are the most cost-efficient options due to the “open-ness” and variety of the hardware. Apple is more proprietary in their hardware approach, but that’s changed somewhat when they moved to the Intel x86 chipsets.   Now with this cost and option advantages, comes some sacrifice in stability and predictability. And THIS I see as the main argument in the ‘Proprietary versus Open’ argument. Apple MACs have a strong and worthy reputation for it’s stability and ease of use. This can be attributed the confined hardware environments that MAC operating system functions within.   If the HW is restricted to known elements, then the SW can be deliberately engineered with safe assumptions. The same can not be said for Windows and Linux. There’s a price to be paid for that stability and predictability, and the big question for me; is it worth the price?

I have no idea how this is going to end up, and I should also mention that I tend to be a bit stingy at times.   I think it’s time to get the eight-ball out to help me with this quandary.

Now for a little about the proprietary versus open standards argument in the world of telecommunications, specifically VoIP. Excellent examples of both exist, with successes on both sides. First on the proprietary front I will reference Skype. Skype claims millions of users world-wide, and I would venture to guess that Skype has a deeper penetration among the digitally literate folks outside of the US versus inside. I am an active user of Skype and it's functionality along with ubiquity within my peer circles keeps it that way. BUT - there are some downsides, and first and foremost is the fact that if I want or need to communicate with a user that isn't on Skype, I am relegated to using the PSTN (which means it costs me). There was also the rather well documented Skype outage last week.

On the other hand, we have the Gizmo Project (from SIP Phone), which purports on it's website the following:
Founding Principles "At the core of Gizmo Project is a commitment to open standards, which is critical to deliver the true potential of VoIP. SIPphone believes that like web pages, email and IM, calls should be free. And we believe the more people you can call the better. Which is why we use the industry VoIP standard, SIP." I also am a subscriber and user of Gizmo, but much less frequently than Skype. I am a firm believer in open standards, hence the reason I subscribe, and use when I can Gizmo - but at the same time, when I need to talk/chat/communicate/etc with folks online, I find myself using Skype more.   Does that make me a Skype-o-phile? Not really, it's more that I need to "go" where the folks that I am interested in communicating with are.

By the way - if you were wondering, I am voiploser on both Skype and Gizmo.

Adam "voiploser" Uzelac