The Triangle

Issue date: 5/20/05 Section: Sci-Tech

Media Credit: Anthony Cesarini Alex Daley and Eric Lucas debate between open source titan Linux and closed source goliath Microsoft.

In 1991, when Linus Torvalds posted on a USENET newsgroup about his new creation, a functional desktop operating system that came to be known as Linux, he had no idea that a revolutionary war would ensue because of his operating system.

Many argue that Linux, for a variety of reasons, is a better operating system than any product from Microsoft's Windows line. However, for every Linux lover it's not too hard to find someone who will take the opposing viewpoint.

Alex Daley, an academic relations manager from Microsoft, and Eric Lucas, a Drexel graduate and member of the Philadelphia Linux Users Group, took opposing viewpoints in a debate sponsored by Drexel's Math and Computer Science Society May 19.

The debate was set with each candidate giving a three-minute talk and one-minute rebuttal for a series of predetermined prompts compiled by the MCS Society.

The first topic up for discussion focused on the pros and cons to both open source programming and proprietary, or closed source, programming. Lucas concentrated on the positive aspects of open source programming and argued that an open source program is one that users have the right to distribute, modify, derive works from, and universally use. There are no licenses that bar the user from owning the software.

"With open source it's your business, your data, your right to use it as you see fit," said Lucas.

He also added that Microsoft licenses do not give users ownership of the software, only the right to use it.

Daley indicated that with some open source projects, "what's everyone's problem is no one's problem" and often times bugs or exploitations of open source software exist for a substantial amount of time without being fixed. Also, just because Microsoft doesn't allow the source code for its operating systems or Office products to be distributed at will, doesn't mean the company doesn't embrace the idea of collaborative creation. He gave Microsoft's .NET (dot-net) Framework as an example of a shared source project with many minds going into its development.

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