The Official LQ Poll Series continues. This time we're going to ask two related questions concurrently. In this thread: What are the reasons you use open source software? Click here for the other poll: What are the reasons you use Linux.

--jeremy

I will never buy Apple, so my choices are Windows and Linux, since I'm quite technical, the answer was easy to come by.

Many years ago I had a paid legal copy of Corel Office. One day I opened up Quattro Pro, and it told me that my hardware had changed, and I needed to re-validate. Press this button to re-validate. OK, fine, press button. A minute later - we are sorry, but you can no longer validate your copy of Corel Office, and Corel Office will no longer work for you. WTF??? I was locked out of my own data by a product I paid for and legally owned!

Enter Libre Office. No longer do I worry about getting locked out of my own data, and I didn't even have to pay for it!

I use Open Source software, not just because it is free, but because it works, it works well, it often works better than the proprietary and expensive counter parts, and it never stops working because it thinks I pirated it.

Why do I use Open Source software? NO DRM HELL!

9 members found this post helpful.

I moved into the open source world from Windows. I am a programmer by trade, and always had to keep my programming tools (mainly Visual Studio, but also Borland Delphi and C++ Builder) up to date. I branched into Java programming in mid 1997, and collected a plethora of Java IDEs as well (because nobody, I mean NOBODY used Visual J++!). It became too expensive to continue to upgrade my development tools and office tools.

In late 1998, I started working with Linux and open source software. At that time, there really weren't any decent open source office tools available, so I did have to buy Word Perfect for Linux, but I did find a ton of great open source development tools available. Over the years, I've migrated all of my personal office needs first to OpenOffice.org, and later to LibreOffice. These work fine for me, giving me all the tools and utilities I need, in an open source package.

4 members found this post helpful.

is the main reason of my addiction to open source

2 members found this post helpful.

There's so much less fuss & drama.

1 members found this post helpful.

I come from, in 1961 while a senior in high school, IBM tabulator equipment -- punch, tabulator, sorter, calculator (what a monster that thing was). Card decks, programming with jumper cables, the whole bit. A brief foray with 1401 and, thankfully, went to the Navy (ours) with 10 months worth of school learning aviation electronics (to become an aviation fire control technician [fire control is not putting them out, it's starting them]).

Went from there to American Motors (in 1972) working in safety, emissions, fuel economy in the labs. First "real" computer system was a Honeywell mainframe GECOS operating system recently inherited from General Electric -- the General Comprehensive Operating System turned out to be quite similar to Unix. Nice machine, nice OS, worked on a Teletype ASR 33, tape punch (to store programs and data). Contrary to what IBM was making, the Honeywell was a joy to work on.

In the early 80s (I think) here comes Popular Electronics with a real programmable operating system (that would be Digital Research DOS) that you programmed with flipping switches. Actually added a keyboard with a lot of fooling around along with storage (ala ASR 33) and got down to assembly language. Later added BASIC. Later added an actual terminal (A Beehive) and replaced the original S-100 board with a Cromemco board and more RAM (on the order of 32M).

One thing led to another, I became a VAR for Cromemco, learned their multiuser, multitasking Cromix OS for which I learned C right out of the 1978 K & R. Cromix was a Unix Look- Work Alike OS. Couple of years later Cromemco released a dual boot OS system, Cromix and Unix (System 3) running on a 50M hard drive, 64K of RAM and it was off to the races.

I got a source license for System V R4 (on 9-track tape), ported it onto a bigger, better, faster Cromemco box and was a happy camper. I did branch into data base (Informix) originally on the Cromix system, later on the Unix system and did a lot of work designing data bases (still do). Informix was developed on Cromemco (and other) 16-bit boxes and worked just fine then worked just fine when it went SQL (IBM still markets it).

I also branched into teaching a Unix course offered by Marygrove College; eight weeks, full time (like 40 hours per), best training material I've ever seen and, dang, did I learn a lot more that I thought I knew. Everything from logging in through shell programming to C programming to system administration primarily aimed at folks in the business looking to offer a more complete skill set.

Right about that time there was this kid in Finland that came up with an operating system and somebody made up a set of floppies with the OS, utilities, documentation, the whole bit. I learned a lot.

Went to work at a health care auditing and analysis company (for the last twelve years before I retired). A Sun farm, Solaris (loved it). And, a sysadmin friend to whom I bitched about Win98 who said, "Why don't you try Linux?" Here's the CDs, either dual boot with Windows or just make the box a Linux box? You'll like it, it's the most like System V, called Slackware (and I do not remember what release it was).

Loaded Slackware, haven't looked back, don't want to. To my great shame I have Win7 running in VirtualBox just 'cause I get paid to do one or two things that require it. Converted most customers to Slackware Linux but there a a couple of holdouts.

My first experience with open source was Star Office on Solaris before it turned into OpenOffice. Also loaded up BASH (although I am a dedicated KornShell progrmmer). Loaded up some software from Bell Labs (still have it, still use use it). Built OpenOffice on Slackware, built a bunch of stuff on Slackware that I use daily, GMT for one (I do maps and geographic analysis with that). Had to abandon OpenOffice for LibreOffoce when Apache said they couldn't support it any more, had to convert customers that liked OpenOffice to LibreOffice (that went well). Tried GRASS for a while, didn't really care for it.

The thing I like about Open Source is that you can try it, if it works for you that's great, if it doesn't, well, no harm done. I pay for what I use -- having been a developer, I appreciate when somebody likes what I do and contributes. I take that seriously but I don't stop supporting a utility if it's not paid for.

All that history stuff is how I got to being competent and I consider it paid for because of the opportunity afforded me (and others) to learn while doing (and going back and fixing or slicking up the early stuff so it works better).

That's why I use Open Source.

6 members found this post helpful.

It's available to everyone
There are no burdensome licensing requirements or DRM
No forced updates, like from win8 to 10 like it or not.
Open standards work across platforms
There are no vendor lockouts
Open source code allows for source modifications by end user
Open source software works well
Open source allows for quicker bug and vulnerability fixes
There is a huge base of code snippets for bash, python, ruby, C online
If you are working on a bash or python script and can't find an answer to get the
outcome you desire, then you aren't looking real hard
Open source developers labor for months and years to create functioning software
then give it away to everyone.
The amount of python modules for example, in linux distros repos is phenomenal
Beautiful soup, lxml, urllib, selenium, PyQt5, gi, gobject,...enough to make your
own web browser or web app.
Can't think of too may reasons not to use open source other than working
somewhere that has vendor lock in

7 members found this post helpful.

I gave more detail about overall reasons for Linux which includes open source in the other poll.

However, even while still working on UNIX there were many open source products (compiled for the UNIX environments) that we utilized. Some of this was because the UNIX vendor themselves provided the open source package rather than building their own (e.g. apache) and some because some utilities simply didn't exist from the UNIX vendors and one had to go to user groups or third parties to get useful tools. Some 3rd party vendors (i.e. Veritas NetBackup) used modified open source utilities (Veritas used gnu tar) to accomplish tasks that weren't possible with the vendor provided utility of the same name. Back in the mid 90s I was introduced to lsof on the UNIX we used and to this day I continue to use that for many purposes on Linux. On transition from UNIX to Linux I found that by and large the open source version of commands had far more functionality than the vendor provided commands. (e.g. ls, vi, tar).

1 members found this post helpful.

Open Source is an answer to the Pareto Principle as applied to Applications; OOTB, a software package ends up meeting 80% of your requirements, and you have to get the other 20% done. Open Source gives you a mechanism and a community to share this burden, putting your own effort (if you have the skills) or money into your high-priority requirements.

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I like the knowledge that I CAN examine the source code to verify that the software is secure if I so choose. I don't, but I like knowing I CAN.

3 members found this post helpful.

Pretty much what teckk said

Kind of the same reason I use Linux; for utility and control. I can do what I want how I want with much more control than in other OSes. The possibilities are really amazing at times. I also find the approach of Linux & open source softwares to be generally very sensible.

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It works as well with less hassle than the paid for programs.

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My reply remains the same in the "Why Linux" poll.

Beer money. Motorcycle parts. Grandkids birthday presents.

Computers are low on the priority list with me.