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Kilinc 1Ali KilincSPC191: Fundamentals of Speech - Thursday 6:00PM-10:20PM (30386)Dr. Penny WadellFebruary 6, 2009
Persuasion SpeechOpen-Source: Now is the Time!Attention Step
(Make eye contact with everyone in the room, and then pause for a few seconds)COMPUTERS! Computers, computers, computers… Think for a few moments if the life youlive right now could be possible without computers… It could not. The bread you eat is cookedwith computer controlled ovens, and the light that stops you before you get to Wal-Mart, has acomputer in the pole. Even to run
away
from all that technology and go camping, you have tointeract with computers. How? You need to fill up your gas tank from a pump controlled bycomputers!(Start slides) As we already know, we need computers. What we also need is the softwareto run those computers. As Bill Gates once said, “Computers are useless without a language”(“Pirates…” 1). Now I’d like to show you a video demonstrating this. (Move to slide 2 whichthen moves to slide 3: plays video showing Bill Gates interviewing Altair to increase licensingfees.) Bill Gates was able to double Microsoft’s income just by “asking”, because Altair 
needed
that software. Therein lies the problem, because most software in the market is proprietary,meaning you have to pay for a license to use it. What we all
need
to know is that there areadequate, free, and open-source alternatives to those paid softwares.
 
Kilinc 2The reason why I am the perfectly credible person to speak about this topic is because mymajor is based on open-source software. I have also been using Linux products for many years,and use computers with open-source software installed on them on a daily basis.In consideration of those unaware of the different types of software, I will like to give acrash course. (Move to slide 4) There are three main types of software: proprietary, open-source,and hybrid. Due to time constraints and irrelevance, (Click to drop hybrid, focus on the other two) we will not be discussing hybrid source. Instead, we will be focusing on proprietary andopen-source. Put simply, (Move to slide 5) proprietary is paid, and open-source is free. To giveinsight
 
on the importance of open-source software, first I will explain the problem of proprietarysoftware in the industry, then I will explain the benefits of open-source software, and finally, Iwill explain what kind of a world we could live in if more companies and individuals adoptedmore free and open-source software solutions.
Description of the Problem (Need)
There are many downsides of using proprietary software. For the sake of time, we willnot discuss the obvious benefits. First of all, if one uses proprietary software, one is always at themercy of one, sole, software producer. According to Riley, this leads to extremely high initialstart-up costs (“Bohams to migrate…” 1). On top of that, the software is rarely updated, and the program is less secure because of this. Proprietary software is also harder to develop andimplement. One obvious downside can be seen for small business system builders. A tinycomputers store cannot afford to put dozens of paid applications on a new system; if they did,they would not be able to make money. That kind of software is also almost impossible todevelop for because the source “code” of the program, as in, the stuff that runs it, is “closed,”meaning nothing goes in, nothing goes out, and nothing is added. For the business side of things,many downsides can be seen because the “closed” source scheme could hinder development due
 
Kilinc 3to companies that do not “share” their programs. According to Kilinc, the biggest downside of using paid, proprietary software is the licensing model (Kilinc 2). Furthermore, some programsrequire yearly licensing, something that could annoy business owners and make them feel“used”.
Proposed Solution (Satisfaction)
Now that we’ve have seem some of the bad sides of using paid software, let us take alook at the good sides of using free software. There are many benefits to using open-sourcesoftware. The first thing to know is that it should always be considered and preferred whenswitching to a new system. According to Riley, it requires fewer infrastructures for businessesswitching entire systems to open-source (“Open source given…” 1). This could mean: fewer servers, fewer application providers, fewer IT staff, and things of that nature. It’s also easier touse in many other aspects. Mainly because you can download and install any type of software,when you need it, download as much as you need to, and use it as often as you need to.Furthermore, there is no sense of “lifetime” commitment. On the one hand, if you make a presentation in Microsoft’s PowerPoint 2007,
only
PowerPoint 2007 will be able to open, or modify that file. The same rules apply to most proprietary programs. If the software vendors donot do this, you might not be so inclined to pay for the same program again and again. On theother hand, we can see that this rule does not apply to open-source software. Many open-sourceapplications try to integrate with many vendors in compliance with “open standards.” For them,it’s a positive thing to integrate with all your other applications.The most obvious benefit from using open-source is that it is
free
. Not only is it free, butthere is no license to buy! Some of the basic principles of open-source clearly state that (Move toslide 6): it’s free to copy and redistribute, it’s free to modify and edit, the license is freely
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