If u create a website as a business, is there any reason(s) why you would NOT use open source/free technology?

Question

Hi,

I would like to see as many reasons as possible about why you would NOT use free technologies like MYSQL, PHP..

Basically I also would like to know if any of you have experienced problems using free/open source technologies to create a website.

Thanks in advance for your time.

Answer 1

You could end up with a program that falls over, that you can't fix and you get very limited support.

You need to update to new versions quickly, as no limited support for old software.

It's ok to use, but I would not run business critical products on free software.

Answer 2

None. Many use Apache/Tomcat, Linux, Eclipse and Mozilla which are all Open Source. There are several Open Source ecommerce projects (some with MySql and Postresql) available already which you can start with and modify which shortens your development time. Also, Ubuntu is providing a nicely packaged Linux distribution. Community support though different than Vendor support is standing the test of time both on bug fixes and help. We have always been able to find a forum, an email or a person to help when we needed it.

Check out:

http://sourceforge.net

search ecommerce. Some assembly required.

Answer 3

There aren't many reasons not to use free solutions. As someone else mentioned, community support is different than vendor support, but I would argue that community support can be better.

I have been building Web sites using free technologies for nearly a decade, and I've never run into a problem that couldn't be solved using open source solutions.

Colleges and universities rely on open source technologies like PHP and MySQL. NASA recently switched from Oracle to MySQL. Facebook, one of the Internet's most popular sites, is built in PHP. These technologies, in my opinion, are fine for mission-critical systems.

That being said:
* While PHP and MySQL are stable platforms, it widely depends on the applications created in this software. You want to make sure that the software you use for your mission-critical applications is stable. There's a big difference between scripts that were created on open source software by a group of skilled programmers and something created as an 8th grade final project.
* Open Source technologies are backed by vendors and major businesses that depend on these technologies to conduct business, so it's not like the projects are being run by a bunch of people in their spare time. Everyone from your 14-year-old neighbor to computer science professors at Berkeley contribute to the open source community as a whole. While some of these contributions are great and others aren't, a lot of groundbreaking ideas are a result of people from different industries collaborating on projects.
* Mostly everything else on the Internet is "open source." You don't need to buy HTML. You don't need to buy a Web browser. You don't need to buy CSS. You don't need to buy JavaScript. Saying that you shouldn't use open source technologies for mission-critical systems is like saying you should use IE instead of Firefox for mission-critical browsing. And I think we all know how asinine that sounds....

Answer 4

I have to agree with Pete B. I work in the IT department of a multibillion dollar corporation and we've been using open source technology on our intranet for years. We started using things like DotNetNuke portals when we were in a financial crisis, yet we needed to address users' needs on the intranet. While I personally develop many home grown applications, the open source technologies that we are using make it easier to hit the ground running with minimal development time.

I have personally found that support isn't so much of an issue with the bigger open source projects, there are tons of resources on the Internet when you need help. The only downside I have encountered, at least in the projects that we've used, is that when there are major bugs that you either don't have time to modify the core code on, or can't find a workaround to, you can't rightfully demand that the developers provide an immediate fix for you.

Answer 5

Documentation.

I do open source and MS web work - and I much prefer MS technologies.

Open source is going in all directions at once - almost everything you use has been customised from standard in some why or other - your final system will be completely unique, impossible for you to get assistance with problems and impossible for anyone else to update or maintain (although this might be good for you commercially!).

Use MS technologies and you are working on a standard platform that has tons of documentation, samples, training, help text and loads of reference books.

The basic MS tools are available free of charge - even for commercial use.

It may have been open-source that forced MS into its current position, but that positon is good enough that I wouldn't chose open-souce for a new project.

Answer 6

There are several different technologies out there to use, More depends on who is hosting your site and your ability to transfer your Whole site or the pages to the web host.
Many offer different variations of Macromedia's Dreamweaver, or Microsofts FrontPage, both of these are full blown web developing software.
Then we have the real easy ones that are WYSIWYG or what you see is what you get. with these you create a new page that is blank and evrything you add is exactly what you get for final product.
Yahoo's Sitebuilder is like this, very easy to use and add to or delete from, You can develop a complete site and publish it in like 5 hrs even if you have never done one before with anything you want to use, JPG's Clipart, Text as well as several other features to many to mention.
Just remember there is a learning curve with whatever you use.
Don

Answer 7

If you want to get into e-commerce you will need to know ASP.NET AJAX PHP SQL all sorts of fun stuff. And as far as can you learn it, I'm sure you can... The real question is do you have the time? Time is money, you need to think you could hire a professional to do it and have it take a week or you can learn yourself and have it take 5-6-7 months etc. I personally learned ASP.NET and SQL etc and it has come very handy because people need websites and I can do it, but if you don't plan to make money from it I would just hire someone.

Answer 8

Hello,
You can download the latest version of Mozilla Firefox from here http://bitly.com/1p6kFB2

Mozilla Firefox is one of the world's most popular web browsers and, to me, it's the best.