Name: Anonymous 2009-12-20 7:35
Myth 1: Open Source is free
Status: BUSTED
There is one open source license that means freedom. The so called MIT license. It is a paragraph that says do whatever the fuck you want with this code, but leave our names in the comments. It is 1 paragraph. It constitutes less than 1/2 of 1% of open source software projects in the wild.
Every other open source license is longer than the EULA found with windows. That enormous document spells out thousands of restrictions on using the source code of the software. No open source license requires the software offered to be free.
Myth 2: Open Source is a better alternative to copyright and IP laws
Status: BUSTED
That enormous open source license is possible because of copyright. Copyright laws allow the maker to institute those thousands of restrictions. Much of the code in open source is protected by patents. Open Source is OK with this, its supports generally are not because they are ignorant to this fact. Some licenses require royalty free rights on patents within the code, but this is very uncommon. The open source Webkit, made by Apple, is protected by hundreds of patents and about a dozen are actually released as royalty free.
Myth 3: Open Source is free
Status: BUSTED
Open Source does not mean free as in cost. It is perfectly valid to charge for open source software, and it happens all the time. Open source is not free as in freedom. There is a large document that restricts your freedom to use the code and the software known as an open source license.
And then there are the little known dirty tactics of Open Source. You may, with restriction, modify open source software. This hardly ever happens. The norm in the industry is to request new features from the maintainer of the software. The maintainers always charge the requestor for these new features and they withhold the feature until they are paid when they know they can get money for it. Why? If a company requests a feature they will need to pay someone for it no matter what. They can pay their employees or a contractor but paying the maintainer is usually more cost effective because they are most familiar with the code and can produce results more efficiently. Many Open Source projects are only partial implementations in order to milk this revenue stream.
Myth 4: Open Source is more secure
Status: BUSTED
For empirical evidence look at Firefox vs. Internet explorer. During the same 1 year period (this last year) Firefox has had 4 times more security exploits than Internet Explorer. You can look that shit up from any unbiased complete 3rd party security expert.
The concept that hundred, thousands or millions of coders can fix bugs and problems is true. But that isn't reality in practice. The maintainer of the project has the final say for code additions. This is 1-3 people on average and this is not their fulltime job. They cannot reasonably process and approve the code submissions from thousands of developers, so they don't because it is impossible.
Open source is a PR gimmick to get you to trust a development company. But it's practices and results model proprietary software on every level. Except for polish. Open Source apps are generally unfinished perpetual beta shit.