Is free software really as good as proprietary software?
Many innocent pixels and sheets of paper have devoted their lives to attempts to answer this question, and there is still no easy “yes” or “no” answer for it. Some proprietary software is better than any current free software equivalent. Some free software is better than any proprietary equivalent. Often, just defining “better” is hard. For instance, some define Microsoft Office as “better” than OpenOffice because it is better at opening files created with Microsoft Office. But OpenOffice can display almost all files made with Microsoft Office, while Microsoft Office can’t open any files created in OpenOffice’s native file format even though it’s a totally open standard, namely zipped XML. To me, this makes OpenOffice “better” than Microsoft Office (even though many Microsoft fans and employees would probably disagree). In the server room, many of the best-regarded programs in use today are free software, and much of the software on which the Internet’s basic structure depends is free.
