Tuesday, September 26, 2006

"Un-invention" : imagine

For english i had to write a small essay on what i would "un-invent" if i had a chance and why. And because i picked a topic that is tech related and that some might find interesting i decided i would share it with you...btw i am sorry i am not blogging more regularily but i have been very busy. I will soon let you readers know what i am doing that is interesting in school. Anyways here is my little essay (note this is not tottaly polished; comments are apreciated).

Un-invention

If i were to un-invent somethings i would un-invent proprietary software vendors like Microsoft and Macintosh because they prevent innovation, spread of computer usage throughout the world, and many other things that Open Source can provide. Proprietary indicates that a party, or proprietor, exercises private ownership, control or use over an item of property, usually to the exclusion of other parties (Proprietary). In the case of software that means the source code. Source code is the computer code that makes up an application. The following statement, “Knowledge belongs to the world” (Anti Trust) raises a point about proprietary software versus open source software. Knowledge should not be kept from the world but distributed freely, proprietary software prevents this. Open Source has many positive effects. One is a very fast development cycle. Ubuntu an open source linux distro that is based on Debian linux has a development cycle of 6 months where as Windows has a development cycle that changes from 2 to 6 years!! The reason open source development is much quicker is because other developers can contribute patches and extra code. Because more than one team of developers are working on the code and that outside sources are contributing you get a more innovative product. Also because open source software is free it allows more people to have computer because they can afford a OS (Operating System) therefore spreading computer usage world wide. Over all if there was no such thing as proprietary software then our world would be a cheaper, faster, nicer computer world.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmm nice post.. I would uninvent "money" which would make the world more humane minus wars.And uninventing that would inturn uninvent proprietary software :)

Collin said...

Thanks for the post srikanth...very clever idea...it would be kinda nice having everything free...