>I don't see why everything needs to be open source.
I think this goes back to one of the core tenets of free and/or open source software: the user should be able to know, control, and modify exactly what their machine is doing.
If the source is not available you're just running a black box and praying that it will do what the person who gave it to you claims it will do.
"If the source is not available you're just running a black box and praying that it will do what the person who gave it to you claims it will do."
I'm sorry to point out to you but a large set of computing devices are black boxes and it does not hurt their marketability. Cars, phones (the OS running the hardware, not Android), ... the pilot in the passenger plane does not want to hack his planes OS, nor most likely does the mechanics crew.
Practically, lots of people just want to get their job/art project/email/browsing done and do not care about the blackness of the box just as long as it works.
I think one of the reasons RMS got going was that he was irritated that the software from vendors did not work.
The software markets have advanced some what. Nowadays, for any product with a sizeable market it is fairly safe to presume the software works or at least won't fail miserably. And if it does, it's not just the lone consumer but thousands/million others who are pissed off as well. Yeah, crap gets released though.
The reality of your software being a black box is not a matter of marketability. It is a matter of what you are able to know and control about what your personal machine is actually doing. Obviously there are manifest examples of people running all manner of black boxes, but as someone else pointed out, they are at the complete mercy of their black box vendor (unless someone wants to reverse engineer the box). If your vendor folds up and a critical vulnerability is exposed or is being openly exploited, well, congratulations on your new black brick.
On the other hand, if you have complete visibility into what your machine is doing and have the ability to modify it at will you can avoid all manner of failure scenarios that are essentially unrecoverable in the black box scenario.
We know people will run black boxes, drink poisoned sugar drinks, support genocidal megalomaniacs, torture others for limited monetary gain and/or endorphin rushes, etc. None of those realities imply that others should follow in the same footsteps, especially when there are workable alternatives that don't suffer from the same permanent failure scenarios.
I think you are a bit too idealistic about the hacking capabilities and willingness of people in general. It is convenient the correct functioning of my car or my phone is the responsibility of someone specific else than me.
Civilization is characterized by specialization of people. I cherish the notion that hardware and software should be based on open standards. For day to day work, I just want my gear to work. If it fails, I certainly do not have the time to dig in to the software layer because I have a work, children, housekeeping duties, and a bunch of art projects and higher level concepts I want to focus on.
"if you have complete visibility into what your machine is doing and have the ability to modify it at will you can avoid all manner of failure scenarios that are essentially unrecoverable in the black box scenario."
You presume all software is trivially simple. I can tell you, it is not. A large category of software requires years of specialization to actually grok what is happening.
As an extreme example if I owned a plane I would not like to hack it's software under any circumstance unless I were a professional aeronautics professional, and probably not even then.
> As an extreme example if I owned a plane I would not like to hack it's software under any circumstance unless I were a professional aeronautics professional, and probably not even then.
But would you download an alternative distribution made by a group of enthusiastic aeronautics professionals that has been used by tons of other people with no problems? Think Cyanogenmod.
If I was a manufacturer of planes I would probably figure out if it could be used. As a private individual - no way.
In this plane software example if I was a plane manufacturing org I could dedicate people to integrate it and test it.
There is a difference between an organization dedicated to making a product and a group of hobbyists coming together to scratch their itch. There is a scale, a threshold, above which you need big-org organization and sharing of responsibilities.
Small expert teams are fantastic for the sort of projects that can be done by small expert teams. For larger things there needs to be a bit more infrastructure and organization, or at least continuity of many, many years.
There is a threshold in software complexity after which one really needs lots of organized testing and fixing.
As a private user, if I fail the firmware update on my shiny plane, it's all on me. Unless there was some weird insurance to cover the costs.
Considering the quality of cyanogenmods "stable" releases, never. Hobbyist professionals are still hobbyists and not liable for the damage their code may do.
> I'm sorry to point out to you but a large set of computing devices are black boxes and it does not hurt their marketability.
Free software should be looked on from the point of ethics, and not from financial gain. Proprietary software is immoral, and that is the reason you shouldn't be building it.
It's one thing to laud the common benefits of FOSS, or the ethical gains of charity. These things resonate with me. But I fundamentally disagree with - and as a proprietary software developer, am alienated by - your statement.
Is that actually what you mean? My day job - making games - is immoral? A daily dose of evil? If so, this is the kind of attitude that puts me off contributing to anything even remotely related to "free software".
Perhaps you're fine with that, but I feel it leaves us all poorer.
If you are selling cars with the hoods welded shut and all systems permeated with DRM, are you making the world better, because, hey, cars are good? Or are you in effect making your customers helpless, teaching them that they are not, and should not even want to be, in control of their own cars?
DRM and closed source software are not the same thing. Closed source software is commonly used to manipulate open data. Free software facilitates the openness of data and is absolutely essential but it does not make in any way closed source software evil.
> True, but in this situation they have the same effect which I wanted to highlight, i.e. loss of control on the part of the owner/user.
Analogies are a bit awkward. With cars, DRM would equal to each car manufacturer having their own road barred to other car manufacturers. If the welded-shut-bonnet bothers you just switch cars. This is what I meant with open data - it's what one does with the product that matters, and can one practically choose another.
As to the "evilness" of the situation, I cannot think I could work professionally in software as a field - which I love - if there were no established large companies with closed source products. If my analysis is flawed I would value pointers why.
As my employer is a closed source software vendor, to me the economics situation looks as follows: vendor provides software, end user uses it to add value to their work. End user reports bugs, vendor fixes the bugs. There is an efficient responsibility interface to the whole thing. And the area is well competed in, if vendor a screws up customers will move to vendor b, c, or d...
With an established product there is an established revenue stream which enables stable income for all employees.
The way I choose to work on my profession, I will take stable revenue stream with specific work hours over some 24/7 freelancer role to fix bugs here and there. This simply would not be compatible with a family, with small kids I'm barely able to cope with the stresses at home and work as they are. If I had to worry after the next mortgage payment I would probably go nuts, and that is no exaggeration.
Open source simply does not work that well as a revenue model in general. It works as an enabler for all sorts of practical interactions, and is absolutely essential, but people need to eat and feed their families. Open source provides value, but few people are able to capture that value. That's why there are non-profits to organize critical work in this area.
If the product of my company was open sourced, several enterprising individuals would simply copy the product, relabel it, and sell it. Thus eating to the market share, thus probably leaving me to find another job. Thus, to me, closed source software provides housing, food and security to me and my family.
> If you are selling cars with the hoods welded shut and all systems permeated with DRM, are you making the world better, because, hey, cars are good?
My cellphone might as well be welded shut - because of system-on-a-chip design. I can't replace the GPU, the CPU, the memory, or any number of things I've repeatedly replaced on my desktops with my current lack of soldering skills or equipment. Is SOC design also immoral? Even as it enables access to the internet to an ever growing number of people, something some have been calling a human right?
But let us return to your analogy instead of playing analogy ping pong.
> If you are selling cars with the hoods welded shut and all systems permeated with DRM
Assuming the price remains around the same, I'd simply not buy that car because it's stupidly designed, and going to be a pain to maintain. I'd also not buy a car where I had to replace the engine block to replace the front headlights, no matter what percentage of it's software is GPLed, or how many of it's parts have 3D printer schematics available for me to replace them in my own basement. Neither choice is based on ethics.
I also think it's good we have government laws forcing car companies to make their maintenance documentation etc. available to 3rd party mechanics. Cars are expensive enough to maintain that society is well served by competition. And while proprietary systems aren't inherently immoral, unexpected predatory pricing based on vendor lock-in certainly can be a problem. I've seen the short end of that stick enough times to know it sucks. I think it's worth limiting what a car company can do to help avoid the circumstances that can even lead to that, even if some of the things we're prohibiting them from doing were perfectly ethical for them to do on their own.
But you'll be hard pressed to convince me it's a problem for your $3 copy of Canabalt. It doesn't need an oil change. With several games, I complain if 3rd parties figure out how it works - when multiplayer suddenly becomes plagued with aimhacks, wallhacks, maphacks, and other unfair competition.
If I owned a car, it might as well have been welded shut – I am not a mechanic. Does this fact make it ethically OK for someone else to sell a “closed” car to me?
> […] I'd simply not buy that car […]
That was not the question. The question was if would be ethically OK to sell that car, not if you (or anyone else) would buy it or not.
> But you'll be hard pressed to convince me it's a problem for your $3 copy of Canabalt.
It also wouldn’t really be a large issue with a simple enough car or car-like conveyance, like maybe a bicycle, or a Segway. Does this make it OK?
> It doesn't need an oil change.
Software needs updating. Static software is dead code.
> If I owned a car, it might as well have been welded shut – I am not a mechanic. Does this fact make it ethically OK for someone else to sell a “closed” car to me?
That's not the deciding factor. I've no particular ethical qualm with it if you know full well what you're getting into and choose it.
>> […] I'd simply not buy that car […]
> That was not the question. The question was if would be ethically OK to sell that car, not if you (or anyone else) would buy it or not.
"Neither choice is based on ethics." The ethics of the sale would depend on the other particulars, but if we assume those other particulars were all ethical, then yes, I'd say it's ethically OK to sell you that car.
Let's take a few concrete examples where a car has indeed been welded shut.
- I'm selling you the car for you to resell at a profit as scrap metal.
- I'm selling a clunker I tried to "repair". A few poorly followed DIY guides later and... well, I made some mistakes.
- In a fit of mental illness, or for the sake of a harmless prank, I welded my car shut intentionally.
In which circumstances should I feel guilt trying to sell it to you? To me, it's the ones where I'm trying to mislead you. That could be any of the above (I lie and say it's not welded, lie about the scrap tonnage, I try to convince you welded cars are in vogue, etc.) or none of the above (I'm upfront about the facts and ensure you know what you're getting into.)
>> But you'll be hard pressed to convince me it's a problem for your $3 copy of Canabalt.
> It also wouldn’t really be a large issue with a simple enough car or car-like conveyance, like maybe a bicycle, or a Segway. Does this make it OK?
I didn't say you'll be hard pressed to convince me it's a "small enough" issue or problem to fly under some ethical radar or waterline. I'm saying you'll be hard pressed to convince me it's a problem, period.
>> It doesn't need an oil change.
> Software needs updating. Static software is dead code.
I disagree with your assertions. You might want to update it, but there's a big difference between want and need. Plenty of old DOS and cartridge games are still quite playable. And for the purposes of archival and preservation of the commons, I think a focus on emulation provides more bang for the buck than trying to modernize every abandoned application - and, it should be noted, doesn't require updating the software.
EDIT: On the subject of unanswered questions, I'll repose my original one to you since the original poster isn't answering.
Do you actually think my day job - making (proprietary) games - is immoral? A daily dose of evil?
> I've no particular ethical qualm with it if you know full well what you're getting into and choose it. […] I'm upfront about the facts and ensure you know what you're getting into.
One could make the same argument about any laissez-faire economical proposal, like “Do I have the right to sell myself into slavery?” Some things are prohibited, even though people are, in theory, well aware of what they are doing. One could argue that this is one of those things that ought to be prohibited.
> You might want to update it, but there's a big difference between want and need.
I would argue that it is my right to update the software to changing circumstances. Otherwise, it’s like a solid-block car with DRM; unchangeable, and (once support is dropped) increasingly unusable due to changes in its environment. These characteristics (pay for a limited time of support, after which it becomes practically unusable) is more akin to renting than buying. If I buy a thing, I would expect it to be my right to modify it according to my circumstances for all time, since I now own it. For software, I can’t practically do so without the source code.
> Do you actually think my day job - making (proprietary) games - is immoral? A daily dose of evil?
Words like “evil” have unreasonable amounts of emotional attachments, so since you are pressing me, I feel like you are setting an rhetorical trap, so I will refuse to use that word. I will say, though, that you are quite possibly making the world slightly worse instead of better. The fact that people are taught to be helpless and powerless is a bad thing. Whether you are, on the whole, doing a bad thing depends on whether any positive impact of your game (your game, mind you, as compared to any possible replacement game) is large enough to offset this. This could possibly be true, and perhaps not – I do not feel competent to judge this.
> Words like “evil” have unreasonable amounts of emotional attachments, so since you are pressing me, I feel like you are setting an rhetorical trap, so I will refuse to use that word.
Please note this thread started with some rather emotionally attached wordage applied broadly. And with me very explicitly responding to that wordage. The entire basis of my question centered around that phrasing. It's what I responded to. If you're not interested in handling it... what exactly are you trying to help explain from davorb's post? Are you sure that what you're explaining was in davorb's post?
I think the difference between you and I is a simple one of opinion. Correct me if I'm wrong: You see providing ease of modification as a rights driven moral mandate. I see providing ease of modification as a virtue worth encouraging - sometimes through law - especially when the good to society outweighs the burden or harm to the authors. But I do not see it as a moral mandate, because I do not see 'ease of modification of another's work' to be a right. I do not see it as a right because I see imposing that much burden on the author to be a clear violation of their rights. I have no right to demand a novelist's draft notes or plotline sketches, the LaTeX documents that generated their PDFs, none of it.
Where rights collide, one must strike a careful balance. Let us suppose that one has a right to modification: I think the current length of copyright is unreasonably long, unreasonably in favor of the author, harming the commons and that 'right to modification'. But I agree with the original principle of copyright - to provide an author a means to support themselves via temporary monopoly of the fruits of their labor - and feel that demanding they make it easy to subvert that monopoly from the very get go, to be unreasonably against the author. And although I'm fine with e.g. legalizing jail-breaking a phone, I feel I've no right to demand it be easy.
My ideal world involves much shorter copyright durations (somewhere between 5-20 years max?), better enforced (and perhaps simply by being more reasonable, it will be more respected?), with a richer commons at the end. You could even try to make these rights balance against each other: e.g. for software only providing the protections of copyright only to those who provide their source code.
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>> I've no particular ethical qualm with it if you know full well what you're getting into and choose it.
> One could make the same argument about any laissez-faire economical proposal
I'm not arguing about "any" laissez-faire economical proposal, I'm arguing about a car I welded shut.
I'm also not arguing that there aren't other particulars that must be considered.
A mugger clearly explains to you so you know what you're getting into and offers you a choice: Give him all your money in exchange for not shooting you. I'm not saying that's ethical!
> like “Do I have the right to sell myself into slavery?” Some things are prohibited
Tell that to a court-martial when you change your mind about enlisting after a war starts. I have many ethical concerns about military recruiting and some of the incentive structures around enlistment, but no particular problem with allowing enlistment. I absolutely cannot fathom those who would want to do this, however, as to me, they very much are selling themselves into slavery - a potentially very dangerous slavery - a slavery which may very well last for the rest of their lives.
> These characteristics (pay for a limited time of support, after which it becomes practically unusable) is more akin to renting than buying. If I buy a thing, I would expect it to be my right to modify it according to my circumstances for all time, since I now own it. For software, I can’t practically do so without the source code.
Do you consider free as in beer - but proprietary - software to be immoral? You didn't buy it. Do you consider free as in beer - but proprietary, and subscription requiring - software to be immoral? You're clearly renting it. Do you consider renting out to people to be immoral?
I can sympathize a little with the "I thought I was buying it but all I got was renting a license" argument. Enough I could potentially agree with, say, an argument that DRMed music is immoral. I'm of the opinion that invasive and negligently DRMed music is immoral (see: Sony rootkits.) But I certainly don't assume I'm buying a DRM-free game complete with source access when I buy a game off Steam - nor I think do most gamers. And being okay with subscription payment model, but not okay with a one time fee payment model, requires some level of cognitive dissonance I simply don't have. I also have no fundamental moral issue with rental, software or otherwise.
> Words like “evil” have unreasonable amounts of emotional attachments, so since you are pressing me, I feel like you are setting an rhetorical trap, so I will refuse to use that word. I will say, though, that you are quite possibly making the world slightly worse instead of better.
You're quite suspicious of me. But to your credit, you're at least not jumping to conclusions.
> The fact that people are taught to be helpless and powerless is a bad thing.
Given just how rampant piracy and cracking, or hacking and modding is, it's a hard sell to me to say that proprietary software is actually teaching this. In fact, I'd argue just the opposite - it's clear any and all barriers proprietary software devs try to come up with to protect their profits are overcome by the users with time. And by "with time" I mean a possibly negative amount of time, where cracked versions of the game release before the non-cracked version does. Vibrant and awesome modding societies pop up around proprietary games - including those that were intentionally hostile to modding (e.g. in a bid to make lives more difficult for cheaters.) Some good, some bad.
And while I'd generally agree with your statement, I admit - I wouldn't consider it a bad thing if pirates felt a bit more helpless and powerless when it comes to intentionally and willfully draining a dev's resources (server bandwidth, support resources, etc.) under false pretext ("I totally bought your game!") while giving nothing in return. Because that's simply not a fair or equitable exchange.
> Whether you are, on the whole, doing a bad thing depends on whether any positive impact of your game (your game, mind you, as compared to any possible replacement game) is large enough to offset this. This could possibly be true, and perhaps not – I do not feel competent to judge this.
And yet I feel judged. To be fair, I asked to hear it, so thank you for responding. But: surely it's only fair to compare the positive impact of my game against the positive impact of the activity that would have replaced it, not against every possible activity? Otherwise, even if I've done zero harm, I'm left competing with "solving world hunger, cancer, and heart disease" all at once. Even if we limit it to games, there was that protein folding puzzle game, wasn't there?
> what exactly are you trying to help explain from davorb's post? Are you sure that what you're explaining was in davorb's post?
One can never be sure about what someone else is thinking, buy davorb did link to the FSF page “Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software” (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....), and since I am fairly familiar with the FSF’s world view, I thought I could clarify, since you seemed to have actual trouble even conceiving any other point of view than the contrasting Open Source one. I suggest that you simply read the linked page, it explains it more explicitly and at more length.
Regarding copyright in general, I am personally very suspicious of the concept (as explained by many others elsewhere). But the FSF’s view is more narrow, focused on software, and your work is producing software, which makes this relevant. And the FSF’s argument why, for software, the right of modification (with implied source code) is important, is, I think, a compelling one.
(You can’t argue that selling yourself into slavery is OK since enlisting oneself is allowed. If that was not the argument you were trying to make, I don’t understand it.)
> Do you consider free as in beer - but proprietary - software to be immoral?
I would have to say yes. It is offering something nice which contains a hidden trap.
> Do you consider free as in beer - but proprietary, and subscription requiring - software to be immoral?
I don’t think so. What you are paying for is not the software, but the service, of which the software is a tool the provider uses to provide the service. Of course, this has other dangers (privacy and dependency), but it is not, I think, necessarily inherently a bad thing.
> I can sympathize a little with the "I thought I was buying it but all I got was renting a license" argument.
It also dilutes the very concept of “owning”. When the Playstation was remotely downgraded by Sony, I saw the argument made that of course Sony had a right to do that to everybody’s Playstation, since it was, and I quote, “their [i.e. Sony’s] console”. People actually had the idea that, even though people had paid money for a console and owned it, it was still, and forevermore, within the domain of Sony, and that Sony therefore had the right to do whatever they wanted to it. This is a dangerous dilution of the concept of ownership.
> And being okay with subscription payment model, but not okay with a one time fee payment model, requires some level of cognitive dissonance I simply don't have.
It’s a question of what causes people to dilute the concept of ownership, and what teaches people to be more downtrodden, helpless, dependent, and afraid. I am against that which does this. Technically the same deal, presented differently, might not have this effect, in which case I would not object to it (on these grounds, at least).
> And while I'd generally agree with your statement, I admit - I wouldn't consider it a bad thing if pirates felt a bit more helpless and powerless
Who are you referring to when you say “pirates”? Are they the ones who crack the game? Those people are incorrigible and will only be aggravated by more copy protection and DRM. Are you instead referring to those which use a cracked copy of the game? Those people are impossible to make more helpless than your regular users. Your regular users, however, will be made to feel helpless if only DRM and online-only play (and no modding tools or source code) is provided.
> Because that's simply not a fair or equitable exchange.
I’d be more sympathetic if 99% of the server components of modern games weren’t only for their DRM-like properties (online-only play even for single-player campaigns, etc.) If, on the other hand, the servers were an optional component, you might solve the ethical problem by simply charging a recurring service fee for the server access.
> And yet I feel judged.
Them’s the breaks.
> But: surely it's only fair to compare the positive impact of my game against the positive impact of the activity that would have replaced it,
> I thought I could clarify, since you seemed to have actual trouble even conceiving any other point of view than the contrasting Open Source one.
Ahh, I see. Thank you. But it's not that I have trouble conceiving the the point of view put forth by the FSF and others. I can see their concerns, their desires, the benifits of a right of modification and the many ways people (including myself) have been harmed by not being able to enjoy such a right, suffering vendor lock-in etc.
What I have trouble with is understanding the jump to the more absolutest position, to say that there is no exception to the rule, to say that all proprietary software is immoral. Certainly, some hold this position - I would say RMS probably does - but I see it as a harmful stance and a rare stance. Those who appear to hold it usually have a fundamental difference of opinion - one that neither of us will make any headway trying to convince the other of in debate - or are speaking hyperbolicly, in which case I would point out the harm of that.
> I suggest that you simply read the linked page, it explains it more explicitly and at more length.
I have, a couple of times at least.
> (You can’t argue that selling yourself into slavery is OK since enlisting oneself is allowed. If that was not the argument you were trying to make, I don’t understand it.)
I'm arguing we allow a form of slavery, in the form of enlistment. This doesn't make it moral. I think in some circumstances it can be moral - but this is an unbacked and unsubstantiated opinion, presented only to help provide my point of view.
>> I can sympathize a little with the "I thought I was buying it but all I got was renting a license" argument.
> It also dilutes the very concept of “owning”. When the Playstation was remotely downgraded by Sony
They were rightfully slapped with lawsuits for advertising a feature and then pulling it. This is wrong regardless of ownership. You could be renting or leasing your console and it'd still not be right. Ownership doesn't grant you the right to do anything you want with it - but that works both ways too.
> Who are you referring to when you say “pirates”?
I was specifically referring to people using the software without paying the license holder for it, in a copyright infringing manner. This does not include people using a no-cd crack on a copy of the game they own, this does not include people buying copies second hand. It didn't include the creators of cracks either, although my opinion would still apply to them. (EDIT: Subject clarity.)
> Are they the ones who crack the game? Those people are incorrigible and will only be aggravated by more copy protection and DRM
They will also be delayed, which is generally the goal of companies applying these techniques (sometimes successfully.)
> Are you instead referring to those which use a cracked copy of the game? Those people are impossible to make more helpless than your regular users.
They cannot be made more helpless, but they can be deterred (sometimes successfully.) I do recognize this reality.
> Your regular users, however, will be made to feel helpless if only DRM and online-only play (and no modding tools or source code) is provided.
I am not made to feel helpless when lightweight DRM doesn't get in my way. I am not made to feel helpless when I can't play Planetside offline, because the game makes no sense to play offline. Make no mistake though - I don't buy games with heavyweight DRM, and I don't buy games with stupid online-only requirements (I'll not buy the latest Sim City, for example.)
> I’d be more sympathetic if 99% of the server components of modern games weren’t only for their DRM-like properties
This is hyperbolic to the point of being untrue. I suspect you know that. Were it true, I would still ask you not to judge the "1%" by the actions of the other "99%" - if for no other reason than your own self interest in giving that "1%" (however small) a reason to not become 0% (however small that reason also is.)
>> But: surely it's only fair to compare the positive impact of my game against the positive impact of the activity that would have replaced it,
> Yes.
>> not against every possible activity?
> That was not my intention.
Cool. Then as part of the "1%" building games with optional server components, I'm doing better than the other "99%" - I like my chances.
"Free software should be looked on from the point of ethics, and not from financial gain."
I think the word 'markets' was a bit misguiding in terms of argumentation. I meant "things which bring people added value and joy" and not "things which can be sold for money". Markets encompass both but I was thinking the consumer added-value in this instance.
"Proprietary software is immoral, and that is the reason you shouldn't be building it"
I think taken without any other context this is not realistic.
I think the concept of ownerhip and responsibility are far more important for high quality software for the point of view of short term end user value than openness.
Software has a philosophical and a mathematical dimension. I don't think anyone should be able to own those and that most software patents are harmful in this way. However.
Software is used as an enabling component everywhere. As an enabling component it's added value does not depend on it's freedom or openness, but from it's capability to function bug free and provide the features end users need. As the canvas in the art program, as the automatic stabilizer in the plane and so forth.
In these instances I claim the biggest human value those softwares bring is indenpendent from their openness.
To enable the example softwares to function correctly require lots of hard labour that is not fun at all. I.e. work. Often it is repeating the same old concepts over and over again, knitting the specific system together piece by piece.
I think there is no Photoshop killer because the people to whom it brings most added value are not programmers and it's usually not fun or rewarding at all to work with such a large codebase. Blender is a fantastic counterexample.
Of course, software should utilize open and hackable data formats so that the data does not vanish.
The long term value for the user and the concept of the software providing free speech capabilities then depends on the underlying software ecosystem, and there open source most definitely helps.
Open formats, open tools to hack on them, open platforms. Yes, definetly! Any other way is harmfull to all stakeholders. IMO, products can be closed source.
I have definitely had my Stallman phase, but after seeing some Free As In Freedom™ projects fail spectacularly, I've realized that there are in fact benefits to keeping some things out of the public eye (from a moral point of view).
Wanting your machine to work is also caring what your machine is doing.
I'm sure the IRS is kicking themselves for running XP for over a decade, building up such an extreme dependency on it that they are now paying huge sums of money for Microsoft to continue to support them.
The black box is only great so long as it actually works, and when it breaks you are completely screwed. It is in Microsofts business interests to make sure it works, but they also want you paying them money while maintaining control of your computer.
But when it does break, your only option is the true owner of your computer, who will milk you for all you are worth, because you are now trapped. You don't know you are in a cage until you want out.
>The black box is only great so long as it actually works, and when it breaks you are completely screwed.
To most users Linux is just as much of a black box as Windows is.
Even among Linux fans, the number of people who actually need to customize the kernel is tiny. The number of people who can customize the kernel is even smaller.
So where's the freedom? At the OS level, all that's happened is that the lockdown has moved from corporations to a subset of the developer community.
Most end users aren't any more empowered than they used to be.
Now - it's different in the web and language spaces, where there's a steady simmer of framework development, and many popular web projects/products wouldn't have been possible without framework sharing.
But there's still plenty of proprietary content there. Just try to get Google or Facebook to share their data collections with you and see how politically relevant open source 'freedom' is then.
If that seems like a tangent, it's missing the point that the value of a system doesn't come from the source code - it comes from the system as a whole, and includes usability, community reach, innovation, invention, and data.
Open source pretends to be a huge lever for freedom, but it's more like a battered fork caught in an avalanche.
In computing, the world-changing leverage is elsewhere, and always has been.
Comments in this thread keep mentioning "most users" or "the average user". But they're not supposed to be the direct beneficiaries of Free Software. We are, and in line with the rule that 80% of users use 20% of features but never the same 20%, it's perfectly reasonable for us developers to expect a feature (open source code) that nobody else will use.
The endlessly apathetic hypothetical "average" user can't see past next week's paycheck, let alone their long-term best software interests. We are the ones who have to look to the future and prepare for it now. Wanting access to source code of core infrastructure is part of that preparation, and "average" users will be indirect beneficiaries via our improved ability to write reliable software.
To add another perspective, constantly targeting "average" is a great way to stay mediocre (see regression to the mean).
Finally, "average" users will benefit immensely from those who are inspired by the ability to tinker at a young age.
The user of open source, in the absence of the skills necessary to change code themselves, can easily pay any other developer on the free market to do it for them.
You can never do that with proprietary software. If you want something changed or fixed, you must appeal to the singular entity with monopoly access to the source.
My mum and dad both uses their computers on a daily basis and yes on occasions things don't always work as expected.
When that happens they ask me to fix it and if it wasn't me, then yes they would take it to a computer technician.
Just like they take their car to the mechanic.
Guess what. Not everyone is or wants to be a computer programmer and that group makes up the majority of all Windows users.
And why Windows has been so successful is you can get away with knowing very little about computers (like my mum and dad) yet still find Windows easy to use.
The number floated around for XP continued support is $200 per machine per year. Redhat, which is one of the few companies that supports a Linux distro for as long as Microsoft supports their products, charges $49/year for the equivalent of Windows Update, and doesn't have any information whatsoever on extended support. So, for the average customer which wants their desktops to have the same lifespan as XP in order to minimize training and other associated costs, ending up with a year or two of Extended Support while you finish your transition is still cheaper than any of the Linux providers.
I'm pretty sure Dell and HP provide support on all their Ubuntu machines, as do System76 et al. And they have extended support offerings all the same. Not sure on pricing, though.
Software support, not hardware. Patches, etc. RedHat is pretty much the only distro maker that will provide software support for the same timeframe as Windows releases are supported. Ubuntu, you'd have gone through the compatibility testing, upgrade testing, migration, etc cycle at least once more often than Windows, and deployments for anyone with custom software get expensive fast.
Besides RHEL there is also SuSE SLES / SLED with apparently 7 years of "general support" + 3 more of "self support" (guess that means you just get serious security fixes).
In addition to the shorter support time, with Ubuntu LTS it's a bit too easy to install packages from "universe" that aren't actually supported for more than 18 months...
I think this goes back to one of the core tenets of free and/or open source software: the user should be able to know, control, and modify exactly what their machine is doing.
If the source is not available you're just running a black box and praying that it will do what the person who gave it to you claims it will do.