Open-Source Power

Idealistic people tend to overemphasize the power and flexibility embedded in Open-Source projects. I am not one of those. I am much more realistic than idealistic.

The thing is that even being realistic, the power of open-source is always knocking on my door. I have just been fighting with closed-source apps like RealPlayer and QuickTime for days. The idea was to play a very simple video stream I was broadcasting. Both gave me hours of headaches functioning in very erratic and unstable ways.

I then decided to use the open-sourced play-it-all VLC media player and, to my dear surprise, it not only worked in the first run but also is amazingly more stable than its commercial competitors. As I write this blog entry, I am watching my longest broadcasted live video stream (and it is only 20 minutes - something RealPlayer and QuickTime not even dreamt about reaching).

Fully commercial products have a very short life span on their horizon.