Opensource Vs Closesource??
 

Since my second year of the university, Opensource for example PHP has been always my hero. The things that suck now is that all requirements for the job in my country, Cambodia, are always involve with the ones from Microsoft; generally the .net family. Is it serious?? what about in your country?? Really wonder the reason those (.net) are very popular there.. ideas??

It is the false perception by many companies, that if something is free (or even low cost) it is not enterprise grade.

Or that something that is "open" must not be "secure" ...

Or my personal favorite: Risk of system failure and downtime can be mitigated by paying large sums of money for recurring licensing and support contracts.

At the end of the day this is really just an issue of public awareness to alternatives, and moreover education.

Excellently put, bmicallef. I remember doing a consultancy with some potential clients at my old work place, when asked which programming language they'd prefer, they almost immediately responded with "ASP!". I was taken back a little by this, but determined to get to the bottom of it I politely and inquisitively asked as to why they were so intent on ASP. Their response was unsurprisingly a combination of the points made above.

Needless to say, before the end of the consultancy, they were over the moon that I'd showed them what PHP can offer them, and by saving money them money as well, we got a bonus at the end of the project.

It's like a whole new world opened up to your clients huh Wildhoney. They might be ASP Guru's, but your the PHP Guru in that case!

I've done a little bit of ASP in my 'old' days, but I sincerely prefer PHP over any type of coding I've done over the past years. Currently, me and a mate (well, really my boss) are currently working on inter grading PHP with C++ for accountants. We have a pretty advanced Webshop (Shoppa, dutch) CMS system which can be accessed with a type of accountant program. Thus, we decided to smash a buck out of it and create our own!

Anyways, to get back on topic, I perfer closed source, but open source has NEVER let me down.

The last time I spoke to the clients, they were still over the moon with their system. There are advantages and disadvantages for both open and closed-source from a security perspective.

Open-source's code is scrutinised a lot more because people can see the code, and as it's contributed to by many programmers, the bugs are promptly fixed. However, find a security hole anywhere and hundreds of thousands of software becomes at risk.

Close-source, however, costs a lot more to begin because it's often bespoke, and when a bug is found the owners have to discuss with their coder what the issue is, then the coder has to create a patch. As close-source's code isn't publicly available, nobody knows if there's an obvious security hole or not, and where in open-source an obvious security hole would have been identified and patched many moons ago, the close-source version still has the potentiality to have many obvious security holes.

That's a great discussion. I have no idea then coz i have least experience to solve the question i state above otherwise you all have answered it for me. In conclusion, we have to know both closed- source and opensource.. That's the solution..

Thanks all

Being inquisitive always tends to spark spiralling conversations! I think we've had some good input in this thread, and I feel it's no surprise that they both have their advantages and disadvantages.

To exemplify, I don't particularly like the way vBulletin is coded, but because its open-source I trust its security - although I don't trust the security of the third party hacks (aptly named), but whenever a security hole is found within vBulletin, it gets patched very promptly. It's a hell of a lot cheaper of an option than coding a forum package from scratch - although we may well do eventually, when the time's right!