Downgrade for stability

The G3 was down for a few weeks. I finally found the time to fix it. The problem was I tried using a third party piece of software to try to bring it up to a newer version of the operating system. It didn't work too well. I eventually went back to the version of OS X which was installed on the machine.

The reason I tried to install a newer version of OS X was the final patch in the 10.2 line caused instability in my machine. It would reboot every five or ten minutes. When I had installed the original 10.2 I noticed it was decently stable. It was the 10.2.8 patch which caused the problems. This last time around I installed the patches up to 10.2.6 (the patch before the last one). The stability problems are gone but unfortunately I lost Safari. There are a couple of other tweaks I need to perform but at least I have software running without reboots.

Oddly enough this pattern is repeated with M$ and Linux. Allowing an M$ box to autoupdate caused instability with an ME box I was running. My solution there was to reinstall ME and disable access to Microsoft.com. Normally this isn't a very smart thing to do. I eventually reinstalled again and completely disabled access of ME to the net. ME has never run so well. With Linux (specifically Fedora) the transition from Fedora 2 to Fedora 3 was nasty. Third party software wouldn't install. I tried compiling a couple of video players from source and standard C libraries weren't found. When I tried accessing the CD drives, they had been moved to a different location in the device list.

Sometimes it's a good idea to take one step back to get two steps ahead.

Reaction to a web page

http://www.e.govt.nz/policy/open-source/open-source-legal/

This is apparently a legal opinion from the New Zealand government about open source. I took a quick look at it and have come to the conclusion the people writing this opinion aren't very bright or thorough. Specifically they don't compare the nature of open source software with commercial/closed source software.

There are a number of relevant points to consider with commercial software.

1) There is an upfront cost.
2) There may be hidden costs (eg. forced upgrades) in the future.
3) The software may not be compatable with some other piece of software.
4) There is no guarentee it will perform as advertised (or even work).
5) The end user can not modify the code if they find a bug.
6) Licenses are usually more restrictive than open source licenses.
a) Each machine using the software may have to be licensed separately.
b) Each site may have to be licensed separately.
c) When software becomes obsolete an upgrade is forced or must be purchased at additional cost.
d) Some licenses forbid transfer of license from one entity to another.
e) Home use (work from home) may not be covered with a commercial license.
7) In the case of development software, unlike open source software, distribution is usually limited to specific platforms (eg. no C# on anything but Windows).

In essence, with commercial software the end user is stuck with what they have purchased. If the vendor/author chooses not to accept customer suggestions (as is their right) the customer is out of luck. With open source the customer can make a change and must submit the change back to the author (the original program wasn't the property of the customer to begin with).

As to security... Tis to laugh. Updates are much slower in coming. Good guys have a harder time finding the problems. Bad guys don't care. If a program is well written there will be less security problems. Unfortunately with commercial software there is no reason for it to be well written.

Fragmentation is another problem. I have worked in offices where they had to purchase multiple (incompatible) word processors because none of them had all the features they wanted. Repeated requests to the companies fell on deaf ears.

In the end, there is a place for commercial software. The customer shouldn't be under the illusion it (or the various licenses) are any better than open source software or licenses. It's fine to express an opinion but government officials should examine all sides of an argument not just one. In this specific case one can only guess at their motivation. Maybe examination of their stock portfolio or vacations may be in order.