Naturally everyone's welcome to their opinions, and of course all we're talking about here is opinions. But if _in_my_opinion_ your arguments aren't well supported or seem rediculous, I will be much less likely to change my opinion, and I'll be less likely to respect you and any organization you represent (such as linuxworld, in the case of the author of the original article). And I know that goes both ways. Remember I wrote this in one sitting in this tiny little window without going through multiple revisions trying to make it clearer, proofreading, etc. I hope an author of an article in a publication wouldn't do it that way, but it doesn't look like the author of this article did much proofreading etc because it didn't seem very logical and well thought out to me (again, my opinion, not necessarily fact, duh). I tried to figure out and articulate why I thought so, but not everyone agrees, fine.

Regarding the language thing: Two things:

1. One of the main reasons India is doing so well compared to other countries is precisely because English is one of their main state languages. India actually has soooo many native languages that they often are forced to resort to using English to communicate _with_each_other_ anyway!

2. My opinion (the only one I have is mine) is that as the world in general becomes more ubiquitous and sharing of knowledge, that the worldwide economy will improve faster. History has shown that closing your borders hurts your economy more than opening them. I realize that this worldwide sharing of culture, knowledge, communication, etc, will have a detrimental effect on what makes us each unique, and that is at least sad and some may even consider it bad, but it will do nothing but help the world overall economically.

Therefore, outsourcing will temporarily hurt the USA, but it's kind of their come-up-ins for being so far ahead for so many years, and it will help the world overall in general, and eventually the worldwide benefit will outweigh the detriment and it will help the USA too. I just don't know how long this will take, that's all, it could be a couple years or a couple decades. I say this all as a US citizen who has lived abroad for multiple 1 to 2 year chunks totalling 4 years spread over the past 15 years.

But who really cares about that, all I care about is me, right now, right? That's natural for each of us to feel that way...

Dave

Outsourcing of services have bad effect on countries like India, HOW?

Influence of English (foreign language) increases. It goes to that extent that parents educate their children in English language as medium. By this, mother tongue or State's language or Country's language is completely sidelined. Persons educated using foreign language will try to understand Indian society and culture using English language. Is this tolerable?

Outsourcing of services have bad effect on countries like India, HOW?

Influence of English (foreign language) increases. It goes to that extent that parents educate their children in English language as medium. By this, mother tongue or State's language or Country's language is completely sidelined. Persons educated using foreign language will try to understand Indian society and culture using English language. Is this tolerable?

Why is it that people feel it necessary to police articles looking for what they believe is "bias". Do people not understand the meaning of "opinion"? This piece appears in the "Opinions" area of their web site. It's not meant to be a journalistic approach to anything. It's an *opinion*. If you don't agree with the *opinion*, then post reasons why rather than attempting to criticise something for being biased.

Now, to comments by Dave, which are already repudiated by the fact that he seemed to believe that this was a journalistic piece:

1. There was never an argument put forth by the author that claimed anything was meant to "better mankind". On the contrary, open source should be used because it can provide long term cost savings.

2. What? That makes no sense and is not relevant to the *opinion* article. Why would the author attempt to explain all of this and refute his own points in an *opinion* piece?

3. Same as above. Not relevant to the article.

4. Wha'huh? It seemed clear to me in the article.

5. Wha'huh? Again, the author's point seemed perfectly clear to this reader. Ever try converting from a large-scale Microsoft-based shop to open source? Heh. Probably not.

6. What's your point here? Salespeople to come demo a product is a good thing? I fail to see how. Salespeople routinely waste time when it comes to the down-and-dirty details of the software. I fail to see the value that a demo can provide other than to PHBs.

All in all, it's pretty easy to sit on the sidelines and snipe at someone's opinion, just as anyone can with your weak points Dave.

Out-sourcing of services increase the influence of foreign language in countries like India. I beleive that this is a bad thing.

Dave is absolutely right. Steve's article is likely to actually turn off the thinking reader since it is inaccurate in parts and comes across as biased.

While I agree open source is cool and offers many advantages, your arguments do not present a balanced and realistic picture.

1. Arguing that outsourcing will have a long term detrimental effect on the economy is just barking into the wind. Name one person in the known universe who will pay as high a price for a loaf of bread that they can get away with, just to help "stimulate the economy" and "better mankind." It just doesn't happen in individuals or companies, perhaps in governments but that's still not exactly an altrustic motive but simply individual constituancies cutting up the big pie and taking it home. People are basically selfish, our worldwide economy is based on every selfish force tugging against each other seeking some kind of equalibrium. Temporary offbalances do cause temporary hardships and pain, but they do naturally eventually balance out, that's just basic economics and the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The USA has had so many years of being significantly economically stronger than the rest of the world, now it's balancing out as global communication barriers are broken down. Trying to get people to voluntarily stop behaving naturally is useless and changes nothing.

2. You're right, open source really is no more or less difficult to deploy. If you don't have the expertise in-house to deploy it, you have to pay someone else to do it about the same amount either way. That's not an argument in favor of open source, that's just shooting down an argument in favor of closed source, making it a moot point.

3. Regarding lowered costs of supporting open source, there _can_ be lowered cost if you have in-house expertise to handle any issues with it using the free resources of the world. But if you don't have those resources, then the cost of supporting both closed source and open source is about the same either way. I'm not arguing for closed source here (I personally love open source), just showing it's a moot point for most people.

4. You're right about the 2 meanings of the word "free" but you fail to mention where the false notion comes from that you're required to release any changes back to the community. This false notion comes from the fact that most open source licenses prohibit *distributing* your modified open source software ourside your organization, without allowing access to the modified source code. It simply means, if you give it to others, you have to give *all* of it including the source. If you only use your modified code in-house, then there's no need to contribute anything to benefit anyone else at all (since nobody else is benefiting from it anyway). Your lack of making this clear is really bad.

5. The whole "lock-in" thing is a weak point too the way you make it. Everyone is always free to dump their software and use any other software at any time, as long as they can afford the disruption to actually do the change over. This is pretty much the same for both users of open source and closed source software. The only benefit of open source software is that usually writers of open source software *try* *hard* to openly interact and integrate with all other software whenever possible, instead of *try* *hard* to restrict you from using anything considered a competitor. So you *might* have a higher chance of being able to migrate more slowly if you ever need to change, thus reducing the disruption, if you use open source software. Your don't explain this very clearly at all.

6. Also, the fact that there are *some* highly successful open source offerings out there (such as Apache or Linux) does not mean that open source in *general* is better software. There are plenty of terrible open source offerings out there too. Usually those ones just don't get as well recognized because of it that's all. So one has to be careful when choosing an open source offering to make sure it's a good product, just as one has to be careful choosing any closed source product. The only difference is that a corporation can't as easily get a salesperson to come demonstrate open source software to them!

This whole article is really a whole lot of nothing except a weak attempt at anti-FUD... Kudos for making anti-FUD, but you need to think about it longer and make it more robust before submitting the article.

Dave