In case you haven’t caught on to how open-source software works, we’re in the middle of a lengthy discussion about how it all works. Next stop, pros and cons. Let’s get the biggest pro out of the way. IT’S FREE. Horray. But there are, of course, some downsides too.

With commercial software, support and follow-through must be exemplary in order to maintain your customer base for future releases. However with open-source, because the software is free, the developers have very little incentive to provide technical support. The support for CKEditor was a little lackluster (non-existent), it’s also quite poorly documented. This made it very hard to figure out what I was doing wrong without digging around and debugging the code. A lot of people will opt for commercial software because it’s already been extensively tested and will (usually) function very well out-of-the-box.

CKEditor might be an exception in this regard however, since normally open source projects will document every single function. Why spend all that time writing wikis and APIs? Because the hope is that if the program is well documented, it will be easier for people to alter the software on their own and thus more contributions will come back to the program. Still, support is often the blind leading the blind.

The upside to glitches in open-source software is that they are usually fixed quickly and the software tends to have more releases than its commercial counterparts. In addition, customers usually have the option of three different types of releases. Stable, Beta, and Nightly. Stable is the equivalent of a commercial release. It's supposed to be extremely stable and polished. If, however, you want to have the newest features and bug-fixes sooner, you can opt for a beta version. These versions tend to have some kinks that still need working out, but generally function quite well. Finally, there's nightly. This is basically a copy of the source code (From the SVN, remember?) which is built automatically every night.

Even though nightly builds are supposed to be quite unstable, CKEditor usually has very good nightly packages. This is because all code changes are reviewed before they are committed, thus changes tend to work with 95% certainty as soon as they are in the code base.

Features can be another huge factor in choosing. Again though, it’s a two part problem. While commercial software might have more features initally, it’s usually easier to request new features in open-source software and to have those changes made. (Try asking Microsoft to add 16-bit support to 64-bit OS’s, I dare you).

Here’s the sticky part though. Remember way back when we talked about licensing? Well that means that any part of an open-source program can be reused (Under certain licenses). Thus Microsoft could, in theory, use some part of CKEditor for it’s own nefarious purposes, however the same is not true in reverse. Commercial companies can use these things called patents to exclude anyone else from using the software. Despite the short 10-year lifespan, this is an eternity in computer terms and effectively means that commercial applications can have features that no one else does.

In fact, this problem is most present in video codecs right now. Remember when I said that linux was 100% open-source? Well that is except for one video codec. The problem is that it’s commercial and thus doesn’t have to include its source code. This is also a problem for HTML5 video tags (New way of playing videos in browsers more or less), people cannot decide on a standard codec to use because one is commercial (and a bit better?) but one is open source. Thus, due to asymmetric information…this round goes to commercial. Nevertheless, more and more companies are starting to give back to the open-source community in various ways. So keep an eye on this tussle in the future.

I think now you can see why not everyone is using open-source software. It sometimes isn’t available, especially in niche areas where there wouldn’t be enough developers and sometimes it just doesn’t get the job done as well as commercial products. I still HIGHLY encourage you to give it a try! Take the OpenOffice challenge and try to use the free program for 6 months instead of Microsoft Office. You'll see that OpenOffice is really really good, but probably be so used to Microsoft that it will be hard to use.

Anyways, next time, we’ll get into my involvement and experiences with open-source projects.

Contributing:

Normal companies like Microsoft, Google, etc. pay people to develop software, but yet there is often comparable software (Linux, OpenOffice, etc.) which is free, if not better. So how do these free applications stay free? Well in the case of large projects such as Linux and Firefox, they are supported by foundations which collect donations and solicit support to help fund the core developers and to pay for the overhead of running a website.

Most projects, however, begin with a spark from one individual or a group which does the initial development. For small things, maybe it’s just some guy who made a tool for himself and decided to share it. For medium sized projects, the initial release is often sloppy and bug-ridden as it is developed (and thus tested) by a small number of people.

As the project gains popularity (If it ever does), people will start to complain about the bugs and to request features. The developers will usually prioritize those requests and work on them in their free-time (I.E. Slowly). As a project becomes more stable and useful however, individuals and companies (like myself) will start to use the projects. Those people may have different requirements than what the software does out of the box. For instance, my company wanted to be able to use IFrames in CKEditor. Thus it became my job to develop a plugin which could handle this task. When I was done, (and since I’m a very classy open source guy), I sent my work back to the project.

Now it isn't as though anyone can just waltz in and alter the code. Usually the code is stored in what's called an SVN system (Subversion Control System). This system is the perfect solution for managing projects. Here's why. First, everytime a new file is saved, a copy is created. Thus if I were to commit some bad code, it could just be rolled back to an old version, no problem. Second, it can do "branching" of code. This in effect creates a second copy of the code which people can work on for specific reasons. For instance, when a large new feature was introduced to CKEditor, it was first created in a branch so that any problems stemming from this feature could be isolated from the rest of the code changes.

It all sounds complicated, but it's really easy to use. To keep things sane, only the core developers can approve changes to the source code. So once they approve my plugin, it will eventually be integrated in and redistributed as part of the program. Thus even though my company didn’t pay for the program, we paid for the program indirectly. Because my company pays me, and it became my job to work on the project, the project as a whole benefits.

More generally, because each user wants slightly different things out of a program. They will expand the program in the direction of their needs. If we look at the entire user base, this will have the effect of eventually expanding and bolstering the project in all directions.

From a companies/users perspective, they could pay 1000$ for a commercial solution, or could pay their developers 400$ to take open-source software and alter it to fit their needs. For the company/user, this is often more lucrative because they are permitted to directly change the program and will benefit from future development, which is not always the case with commercial software.

So how does the software perform head-to-head? That’s something we’ll look at next time.

Over the past month I've contributed about 10 bug findings, 15 bug patches, 2 plugins, and lots of support hours. Not all of my contributions made it into this release (Some will be in 3.5), but I wanted to take some time to reflect on my second major open-source project involvement. Especially in light of the open-source movement which is constantly growing and becoming more of a debate in the technological community as various companies "embrace" open-source practices, buy open-source companies, or use open-source software.

This will be a multi-part series about Open-Source software, its pros and cons, project life-cycle, and more! So let’s start with a bit of background.

For the uninitiated, one of the biggest trends in software development right now is the open source model. Source code is the raw programming code which produces the programs and sites you use. For example, when you look at my blog, you see HTML, you cannot however see the source code (PHP) which was used to generate this HTML. Also, when you run Word or any other program, you will not find the code which powers that program. Just the EXE.

Open-Source programs on the other hand, usually require that the program be distributed with its source code, and that the source code be kept in a publicly accessible place. So when you use CKEditor on a website, it’s shrunken down, translated and basically unreadable…but it’s easy to get the source code to make changes.

Since the raw-code is available, open-source programs are usually free to use under certain conditions. These include: 1) The source code must always be distributed, 2) The license may not be altered (It’s at the top of every file), 3) Attribution must remain, 4) It may not be used in commercial products. Since this doesn’t fit everyone, many people will offer a second type of license for commercial applications. This allows companies to pay a certain amount of money for a different license which lets them remove references to the original product and to use it in a commercial program.

For example, if I were to use CKEditor to allow you to comment on my site, that’s fine. But if I used it in the same was (for editing comments) in a Content Management System which I sold to companies, I would need a different license. Anyways, there are some core CKEditor developers who presumably use this money as their salary (Including the guy who the editor is named after).

I woke up around 6:15 on Thursday morning to catch the first train out of Munich to Vienna where I was meeting my friend for the weekend. After we met around noon, we dropped off our bags at the hostel and headed out. Sights included the beautiful Schönbrunn Palace and surroundings which were quite impressive. Covering at least a square mile, the Palace area is home to a number of cool attractions. We checked out the Palm House first, mainly because of its awesome appearance. After that we made our way over to the actual palace and up the hill where we had a fantastic view of the palace and city.

After that we made our way to a vocational gardening school which is only open once a month. Wandered around there for a bit, then headed to the city center and bummed around. At that point, it was about time for Charlie’s afternoon sick nap, so we slept for a couple hours at the hostel.

Not wanting to waste too much time sleeping, I got up in the middle of the night (8PM). At which point we went to the hostel bar for a snack and to claim our welcome drinks. We tried a few more cocktails there before heading back downtown. Eventually we ended up at the Circus/Fair area of town where we got Currywurst, more beer, and rode the ferris wheel. Actually, we rode a normal Ferris wheel instead of “the” Ferris wheel. But we we’re pretty sure our ride was better.

Once we’d had our fair share of fair stuff, we headed to a bar she had heard about. After literally walking back and forth down a street three times, we finally asked someone where this place was. Apparently it’s an unmarked door that just opens into a bar (sketchy). The place was really cool though. It had a bar in the center and lots of seating around the outside for lounging. What was most interesting though was the décor. We are pretty sure that the entire room is composed of white walls and random white shapes hanging from the ceiling. But this place was decorated entirely by a series of 12 projectors showing very colorful designs on the walls. I should have taken pictures, but didn’t. Too bad we couldn’t go back…does it change every night? What does it look like during the day? We’ll never know. In any case, we barely caught the last subway (clutch) and headed home.

Friday we woke up, checked out and headed to check out some things near the center. The church was pretty nice, but the highlight was the “House of Music”. Sitting somewhere in between the Twilight Zone, Electronica, and Philosophy, this “museum” poses grandiose questions about deeply philosophical topics while somehow maintaining that the museum was about music. It was more like Impression 5 meets Philosophy 201. I think they forgot to hand us our drugs at the door, nevertheless we had a good time.

Finally, we wandered around the inner ring to our subway and headed to the station to travel to Budapest. Let me preface this by saying that Budapest is so much more different than every other city I’ve been to thus far. While closest to Prauge, it was just so much more distinct than the other cities. The pre-soviet-era buses and trams definitely gave it some character, but it wasn’t just the dilapidation around the edges which set it apart. The feel of the city was very different from Western Europe. While walking down the street, the buildings all felt more imposing, though there were greenplaces and city art aplenty. Certain streets with outdoor cafes felt akin to NYC or Paris even.

The first night we went to enjoy one such restaurant before heading back and hanging out for the night. (Charlie only got 1.5-hours of afternoon-sick-nap-time on the train). The following day, we crammed in all the sites. We started by going to the outskirts of town for a flea market. This was a sight to behold as literally anything one could conceivably want was being sold. Most of it was Soviet era junk probably unused for years. I’m almost sure one could assemble a tank using only parts from this market.

After this we headed back to town, checked out a huge food / souvenir type market and grabbed lunch. After lunch (Next to the coolest fountain ever), we wandered through the city a bit more and headed up the hill to the fortress area. There we checked out more churches and ramparts and had some nice views. Finally, we headed back to the house to grab dinner.

Our night started out with a Hungarian stand-up comedy show in English which, for a number of reasons, turned out to be quite entertaining. After that, we wandered to the famous “Ruin Bars” of Budapest. These bars are built in ruined or abandoned buildings. The one we went to was quite impressive. It spanned two floors with ample seating area and was very well lit and decorated, maintaining the feel of the open-air portions and surrounding buildings. Later on we checked out another (much less cool) bar and eventually headed home.

The next morning we checked out a few more areas and most notably, the House of Photography which was 150% less trippy than its counterpart in Vienna. I took the last train home (3 PM) and eventually got back home after my whirlwind weekend.

I am getting pretty used to wandering around Europe, but it was a really nice experience to have these cities still seem "new" to me. We didn't do some of the more touristy things, instead opting for a more specialized list of sights and bars assembled by my colleague. As I mentioned, I really enjoyed Budapest (Both the Buda and Pest sides!) I think it's definitely a must-see city if traveling around Europe. It also serves as a good stepping stone for getting further east. In any case, that wraps up my large European travels for the summer. But no worries, I'll have more meanderings coming yet!

First, it’s important to research the pass that best fits you. Obviously you get more value the longer your pass is valid for. A one-month global pass is $679, while a three-month is $1189. If you divide this out by weeks, you'll see that you only have to spend ~$100 per week to recoup the 3-month as opposed to over $160 for the one-month.

There are, of course, alternatives. You can get the limited number of days in a certain number of countries variety which will save you some cash. 15 days across 2 months spanning 5 countries (or regions) is only $589.

Even better, there are often ISIC card deals and the saver pass. The new saver pass costs about 1.5x as much as the youth global pass, but enables 2-5 people to travel together. Find four friends and you are doing Europe for dirt cheap. Can you say no brainer?

But unfortunately, no one wanted to come live and travel with you, so you're out on your own trying to find a pass. Probably the most important factor to you is cost. The best way to sum this up is to present my summer travelogue. It's not totally complete, but will give you an idea of what I fit into 3 months while working.

A few notes before diving in. In Italy, I had to pay 10 Euros for a reservation per leg. This ended up taking about 40€ out of the above estimate, still...Italian trains were pretty expensive and helped my pass a lot.

Second, this chart doesn't include small trips in the area I took on regional trains. (Ex. Füssen, Dachau, etc.). Lastly, the ticket is also valid on all S-Bahns in Germany, which I also didn't count (I.E. Potsdam-Berlin)

So the numbers speak for themselves here. I priced these by looking up the cheapest trips I could find for next week. It's possible to find cheaper prices if you book a month or so in advanced, or if you take regional trains all the way, but this list is still pessimistic.

The reason it is, is because I am looking a week ahead for trips in the above table. There were many, many times I didn't know what train I was going to take until I got on it. This is the second biggest advantage to the rail pass, total flexibility. I can literally walk onto any train in Germany and be covered. (Some fast-trains in other countries have required reservations for 2-10€ which you should still get beforehand). I would have paid much much more for certain journeys had I booked only one day in advanced.

As with all things like this. It depends if it's worth it for you. If you plan to spend the entire time travelling...there's no other way to go. Especially if you are travelling with friends...the saver pass is absolutely the best.

As for my case, I made it worth it. And had the Euro not plummeted, it probably would have been even more worth it. The best part for me was having the freedom to decide Friday afternoon where I wanted to go that weekend. This weekend is still wide open...so who knows where I'll end up!

Background

Munich is supposedly the most expensive city in Germany to live in. The good news is that if you are living anywhere else, it might be a bit less. The bad news is, if you're living in Munich, it isn't, but that's ok because Munich is awesome.

There are a lot of little things one doesn't normally think about when budgeting. For instance, if you tip, restaurants in the U.S. suddenly get a bit more expensive. In Germany, Tipping is usually a much smaller around, generally rounding up to the next whole dollar or two. In addition, all the prices I'm giving include tax (6% or 19%!?!). Even though tax in the U.S. is much smaller, it can often artificially raise the comparative prices of things.

The duration of your stay can also dramatically affect how economical it is. There are tons of one-time costs which can make it hard to live independently for a short-period of time. For instance, upon arrival I had to get a Resident Permit (50 Euros) and a Strainer (15 Euros), plus you're gonna want a bike and a bunch of other one-time goodies...oh and a plane ticket. For this article, we won't count those one time costs.

Of course, there's also the big currency thing. I got a bit lucky with my exchange rate being about 1.25 to 1, which is the number I'm going to use for the article. Just so this bad boy is (short-term) future-proof. I'm also going to give the Euro cost.

Housing

When you first get to your city, you're going to want a place to live. While living on the street is free, it’s probably not the best way to go. Instead, you’re going to want an apartment. Now this is a very broad category of dwelling, but let’s assume you want to have a private bathroom and kitchen, but are willing to live with roommates. Also, let’s assume you are flexible on where in the city you live (Hint: Probably not on the main city square). Finally, we want a furnished apartment, since after all this is a temporary thing, right?

The costs can still vary widely based on tons of factors. I personally pay about 400 Euros per month for a single, studio apartment which is roughly 22 sq. m (I made that number up). On the other hand, one of my friends here just managed to find a 2 bedroom apartment for 600 Euros per month. It has a separate kitchen and bathroom plus came totally furnished with all the fixings. She couldn’t find anyone to rent with, and the people renting it were out of town, so she got a great apartment for 300€ (Just found the button) per month.

This isn’t normal. Others would pay twice as much for something similar. Not every apartment comes with internet either (mine doesn’t). In general though, I think you’ll find something you like for around 450€ per month after utilities, internet, and basic living supplies (4-ply toilet paper is dope).

Food

Next on that list of things you need to survive is food. The major decider here is if you eat out or cook for yourself. Since we made sure that our nice apartment had at least some food preparation method, we are going to say we cook basically every day. I’ll break it down by meal for you.

Breakfast: I eat cereal and milk. Simple. Eggs on the weekends. Cereal is about 3€ per bag, the nasty milk is around 1€ for 4 days of cereal worth, bags last about 4 day (convenient math!) so that’s 1€ per day for breakfast.

Lunch: I work at a company where I end up paying 1/3 the normal price for lunch. This often leads to me eating like I’m never going to eat again because hey, it’s cheap. A normal lunch for me is 2€, but we’ll say it’s 4€ for you…Maybe you learn to make a sandwich, or something and it get’s cheaper, but hey we’re estimating generously.

Dinner: Dinner is tougher because it depends a ton of what you eat. In general, I had a few baseline dishes which aren’t terribly elaborate but will give us a good priceline. Usually I can buy a 4€ pack of meet and use it for two days. In addition. I can buy 3€ worth of veggies and get that to go for 3 days. If I’m being elaborate, I make pasta or dishes which might have a few more ingredients, but generally, we can still make a nice dinner, after drinks and everything for around 5€ (again generous). That gives us about 10€ per day. If you want to eat out once or twice a week, it’ll end up around 12€ per day.

Love…kind of

I think they told us this was one of the things you needed to live in elementary school. Unfortunately, prostitution is illegal here. You might invest in language courses, or just bank on your cute accent to find love.

Along the way on your quest to find love, you first need to develop affection. Chances are that in Germany, that affection will be for beer and clubs or something. This can vary widely, but since this will end up seeming like a dis-proportionately large part of your budget we’re going the cheap out. Assuming you go out twice a week to somewhere with no cover. You’re probably going to want to consume a bit before you go. Luckily, you thought ahead and picked up your drinks at a grocery store (Good Job!). Therefore, if you are a sturdy male, you can probably get by on 5€ per outing. But no one actually does this. You’re going to get to the bar and try to buy yourself and a girl a drink (Only to later find out she speaks French…what a waste!). This will run you another 10€. Factoring this out over the days, we get about 4€ per day for entertainment (You also went to see Iron Man 2 last week, remember?)

Getting Around

Well truth be told, you’ll probably not be happy just living in the same city (actually station) forever, and eventually you’ll want to travel. So we’re gonna set you up with a month long pass on the city’s transportation system. Depending on how far out you live, it will cost more. If you’re studying or working as a student, you also get a discount. In any case, I live basically on the border of where one could ever want to go, and that costs about 45€ per month, which is 1.5€ per day.

As for those weekend trips, there’s so many things outside your city to see. Unfortunately these run a little bit more. We’ll use the small/large alternating approach and assume that you don’t have a Eurail pass (Stupid-head, you knew you should have gotten one!).

Anyways let’s say that once a month you take a big trip and a small trip. Small trips mean that they are overnight, but in your region, and thus could be done on regional trains or a Bayern-Pass. We are planning to go to Prague this weekend for instance, for 5 people to go there and back is only 20€. Since it’s just the three of you going however, I’m giving you 40€ travel costs. Of course the major problem is that you have to eat out and live somewhere. If you don’t couch surf (You should), it’s another 40€ for accommodations and 40€ for food.

Big trips will carry a little bit higher price since they are probably to another big, expensive city. To get there is going to be around 120€. 90€ hostels (three day trip), 60€ food.

Now we’ve just tacked on a cost of 120€ + 270€ for trips, adding 390€ per month or a whopping 13€ per day. Obviously, it’s expensive traveling. There are some ways to cut these costs down, I.E. Ride-Sharing, cooking at hostels, etc. But you didn’t come to Europe to make your own pasta in Italy. So quit being stingy.

What am I forgetting…?

There’s always random things that will need replacing as they wear out and I suppose some house supplies, but taking as a whole these are minimal costs. Clothes and shoes wear out in the U.S. too. But just because your around H&M more here, I’m allowing an extra 2€ per day in souvenir, shopping and flex money.

Summary:

Clearly it costs a lot. I was pretty generous with my estimates, so I have no doubt that one could live quite comfortably in Europe for 40€ a day. Plus if you cut down on expensive travel by purchasing a Eurail pass or something, I'm sure one could make it cheaper still.

Of course another way to make it cheaper is to get a job. As I mentioned, my lunches are much cheaper and I have a Eurail pass, so my actual monthly budget is probably closer to 1,000€ per month, the fact that I also have a positive income (barely after taxes) also helps offset that cost.

Hopefully you found this little bit helpful or at least interesting. Keep in mind that Munich is more expensive than some other cities. A vast part of those costs are housing and food, so location can make a huge difference. If you live somewhere else, share your estimated costs for comparison!