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Imagine a really complicated maze out in the forest. You know that a FREE Apple iPhone (or other cool gadget of your choice) is at the end of the maze, but this maze is really tough. You've spent some time poking around in it but you're just not getting anywhere, so you decide to bring in some help.

One helper, a company called "We Own Mazes," shows up. They tell you they will find the way through the maze, allowing you easy access to the iPhone and will mark out the path for you to follow to get to it. They will charge you a mere $10,000 for their services, and they won't tell you how they did it. Corporate secrets, you understand.

Another company, called "Peace, Love, and Mazes" shows up in a 1962 VW Bus. They say they will map out the maze, find several ways through it, give you the iPhone, and show you what they did at every step along the way so you can find your own way the next time you find a maze in the forest with a cool prize at the end. They will charge you $100 for the service.

Which company would you rather do business with?

This is an elaborate metaphor for the old question about Linux vs. privately owned operating systems. "We Own Mazes" can be compared to Windows, Mac OS X, or any other proprietary operating system for network or individual computing. The code of the operating system is a closely-held secret, and you can't modify it without incurring the wrath of the gods who own it.

Linux, on the other hand, is like "Peace, Love, and Mazes." Nobody owns the Linux OS code, so you can modify it to suit your purposes. That's why there are so many different distributions available. There are no corporate secrets in the code because it's public property.

Another benefit of Linux in particular, and open source software in general, is that there are many smart people working on a problem at any given time, attacking it from many different angles. "We Own Mazes" has just its own people working on solving your maze. "Peace, Love, and Mazes" sends out an email to thousands of Maze experts and says, "Help!" Guess which approach solves problems faster? Guess which approach is more responsive to the customer's needs? More cost-effective? Returns more stable results?

There are so many advantages to using Linux over proprietary systems. In the near future, I predict that Linux and open source software will mature to the point that it offers viable alternatives to every proprietary solution out there.

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