David A. Wheeler's Blog

Sun, 19 Sep 2004

New release of “Why OSS/FS? Look at the Numbers!”

I’ve made a new release of my paper “Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!” This is basically a minor release, with various small additions and improvements here and there. Here are some highlights:
  1. I’ve noted the substantial rise in Gecko-based browsers, which in some ways can be viewed as a flight from the security problems in Internet Explorer I noted earlier. I include links to w3schools’ data, for example.
  2. Regarding innovation, I note that Torvalds just won an award for innovation from The Economist for his work on the OSS/FS Linux kernel. I also noted an innovation (a virus throttler) that could NOT be deployed on a proprietary system, but worked well on OSS/FS.
  3. I noted the controversy regarding the source of some TCO figures used by Newham.
  4. I also noted some EWeek and vnunet articles blasting silly overstatements like “proprietary vendors no longer sit on vulnerabilities.” The reality, of course, is you need to check your suppliers; assume nothing.
  5. I referenced the new State of California report. Interestingly enough, I’m in the references!
So, take a peek at the paper.

path: /oss | Current Weblog | permanent link to this entry