[baddox]

To play devil's advocate, one could say the same for a lot of open source software: it's great until it breaks. Your claim implies that broken proprietary software is bad because you can't access the source code, while mine implies that broken open source software is bad because there might be no company or organization dedicated to providing support.

[valarauca1]

But dealing with real life probabilities the likelihood of the event occurring (Unless your approaching the fringe of newer/locked down hardware) is slim.

[npsimons]

Irrelevant; you can fix (or pay/trade/beg someone else to fix) FLOSS. You can't say the same for closed source.

[baddox]

For many things, that's only true as a technicality. Having access to the source code of a complicated piece of software doesn't instantly make it easy, or even remotely feasible, to fix it yourself.

For example, back when I ran a Linux desktop and had problems with my video card or video settings, there wasn't a chance that I could fix it myself. The odds of me being able to do so were roughly equivalent to the odds of being able to fix a broken closed-source video driver by opening the binary up in a hex editor. Technically possible, yes, but not remotely feasible.

[derrida]

You didn't have access to the source of the video driver. Not an example of having the source being & difficult to fix.

[nemothekid]

How so? You could similarly beg or pay for Apple to fix the issue.

Consider OP's use case. Lets say hes a non-programmer and Keynote is open source, but similar in complexity to WebKit. Now he comes across the error - what can he do? Learning to program or finding someone with the time and knowhow of Keynotes (or WebKits) inner workings may take months.

On the time scale of months, he could also bitch enough at Apple that they may release a tool.

However in both cases, the most time efficient solution is to download Keynote 09.

[legulere]

You can also patch the binaries of proprietary software, technically possible, but exactly as unfeasible as your solution when you want to get stuff done.

[eru]

> [...] technically possible [...]

But often not legally possible?

[userbinator]

Practically, it's more of a "not legally possible to distribute".