Proprietary versus Open – the argument never ends. | IP Convergence: Beyond VoIP, Beyond Cost Savings

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

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auzelac – Tue, 2007 – 08 – 28 14:44

Asides

auzelac's blog

Skype-PC - Lot for less!

Don't know how many MAC users lost Skype or not during the big outage due to Micrsoft upgrades. Anyway, these are the folks that can afford the iPhone (yeah, the CEO is offering $100 off for those who stood in line 24hrs before release to buy the iPhone--not that they need it-- they are not buying PCs--cheaper than the iPhone)! With a junky old PC you can still run Skype and be assured of a quality connection, for free. As for using PSTN--Skypeout is cheaper than PSTN and the pay LECs for terminating the call. If you are like me calling international -- you will see that Skypeout is farout :-) You can call me PCSkypeloser...

MShastri (not verified) – Fri, 2007 – 09 – 07 11:35

I Crossed This Same Bridge December 9th

I had been running a PC at home for many years, but with a failing disk in a mirror and four year old hardware, it was time to replace it. For years I had run many different operating systems, XP, Solaris, Debian, Ubunto without really having a great user experience.

This all happened right before going to the LISA conference in December. (Large Installation System Administration). At the conference I was somewhat surprised to see so many Mac laptops. At a previous LISA conference in 2001 about 5% of the attendees were running Macs. At the 2006 I estimate that 30-40% of the attendees were now on Macs.

I attended classes on security and Solaris 10. Both classes contained labs that 60 students participated in. All 60 students were logged into 60 separate Solaris virtual machines running under Parallels VM on one Mac laptop. It was amazing that not only was it possible, but it also ran very smoothly.

The conference was six days long and during that time I had at least nine different speakers. Only one of them wasn't running a Mac.

I was not only curious, I was sold. I arrived back in Denver late on a Friday night. On Saturday morning, 35 minutes after the Apple store opened, I was now a MacBook owner.

I have had nothing but a positive experience with my Mac. It has become so much more than what my PC was. I still run Solaris for product evaluation, testing and writing scripts, but now I run it under Parallels on my MacBook. My experience has been so positive, I don't think I will ever own another PC.

Wayne Bronikowski (not verified) – Thu, 2007 – 09 – 06 18:37

Proprietary-versus-open argument never ends…

I have been using a Mac at home for 20 years now and have only bought 4 machines. For the most part the only reason I've had to replace one is because of my children spilling stuff on them, but it normally worked out in my favor anyway. Most of my friends have had to replace their PCs much more often. In the end I’d have to say I have spent less on my Macs then they have on their PC devices. With the number of times their machines have crashed (don’t you just love the new Macintosh commercials) compared to mine never (except when pop is dumped on them) crashing and the easy of use that my technology hating wife can use it; I would never buy anything but a Mac.

Chip (not verified) – Thu, 2007 – 09 – 06 13:48

Sorry for the delay in respon

Sorry for the delay in responding ... my wife just called and asked me to help her through a PC crash. All kidding aside I agree to some extent with the comments around reliability and the challenge that presents but as I look it really doesn't happen as often as people say - at least not in my experience. I know I know the obvious rebuttals - the OS is bloated, takes forever to boot, apps take forever to launch, so on and so forth. The fact is that my experience over the past several years is that my MS box is adequate and cost affordable. As an aside I would love to see a better alternative for managing digital photos on my MS box ... something like apples software package would be ideal as a great alternative. One more thing .. I have not replaced my machine for over 4 years and at the time I purchased it I spent 1/2 the cost that the comparable MAC's cost at the time. I guess you get what you pay for.

hobika – Thu, 2007 – 09 – 06 16:15

Right or wrong I look for the

Right or wrong I look for the path of least resistance when it comes to supporting my obligatory home machine one that also takes into consideration the balance needed to achieve economic affordability. A comparative analysis predicated on the fact that as a consumer I too am concerned about near term impact on the bottom line - my pocket book; leads me to believe that while MS devices are satisfactory in functionality and design for my home needs there is always that desire to say "what if" and converted completely to MAC. In the end at a cost sometimes more than 2.5 times what I could purchase a basic machine from Dell for I find myself falling back to the cheaper model. That doesn't mean i don't see value in MACs or in LINUX offers rather they don't meet my personal choice for my home requirements coupled with the balance and needs of limited economics being worked into the equation. While I agree with my peers that MACs are superior in design and useability simple as they are designed to address some of the cognitively ambiguities that exist with other modalities such as MS devices there does still exist a hurdle of cost along can be difficult to justify and overcome. Perhaps if Apple threw in an iPod, iPhone and iTV along with the purchase of the MAC I might be swayed to purchase and be a convert. BTW, I often times find myself consulting to family and friends telling them MACs but invariably I am faced with the challenge of answering "are they worth the extra price?" This posture doesn't make me a MS-o-phile rather I guess a stingy guy similar to VoIp LoSeR.

hobika – Thu, 2007 – 09 – 06 09:58

As has been said, in an ideal

As has been said, in an ideal world the move to Linux would be painless but alas it isn't. I run both Vista and Fedora desktops at home (as well as a Fedora server) and as much as I have tried to eliminate the Windows machine it just won't give up easily. I'm not a huge gamer but the games I play (WoW, LOTRO) won't play well under Linux and music recording software is incomparable across the two OS. My mobile will not sync properly under Linux either, although *most* should do so.

My wife tries her hardest on Linux but it's just "not quite there", it's still a little too techy (fine by me) but your average user/children may have problems?

Either get a new machine and dual boot or stick with Windows, the time isn't totally right to ditch MS support :(

marc – Thu, 2007 – 09 – 06 09:45

The realities of the decision

No matter what you buy, you're going to be stuck supporting it.

If you get Linux, think about all those times when you'll have to explain why your son can't play that online game he wants or why he'll need his teacher to provide the microsoft word document in an "open standard format." Indeed, even for the short time that we did not have MS Office on any of the family computers I had to hear about it constantly...I broke down and spent the money for it.

As much as I would love to ditch the Microsoft OS completely, the realities are harsh. I have to keep my systems on MS OS's and Microsoft Office so that my family can use the computer for the everyday tasks that they have to accomplish. My FreeBSD system is relegated to a headless server that happily purrs away in my laundry room, invisibly providing services such as personal email and a family server.

That's just the way my family likes it, even if I don't.

dsiegel – Wed, 2007 – 08 – 29 11:31

tech support data point

My sister and brother-in-law got a Mac laptop on my recommendation. I haven't had to do any tech support for them since.

Now if only my parents would get Macs.

lippard – Wed, 2007 – 08 – 29 08:01

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