Evaluating the Harmful Effects of Closed Source Software 490
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Soulskill
from the probably-causes-cancer dept.
from the probably-causes-cancer dept.
New submitter Drinking Bleach writes "Eric Raymond, coiner of the term 'open source' and co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, writes in detail about how to evaluate the effects of running any particular piece of closed source software and details the possible harms of doing so. Ranking limited firmware as the least kind of harm to full operating systems as potentially the greatest harms, he details his reasoning for all of them. Likewise, Richard Stallman, founder of GNU and the Free Software Foundation, writes about a much more limited scope, Nonfree DRM'd games on GNU/Linux, in which he takes the firm stance that non-free software is unethical in all cases but concedes that running non-free games on a free operating system is much more desirable than running them on a non-free operating system itself (such as Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS X)."
How exactly do I support myself as a developer? (Score:4, Interesting)
What about the harmful effects (Score:3, Interesting)
What about the harmful effects of software not being developed that meets a businesses needs? If you do not pay for it it doesn't get developed.
People say yeah linux can do everything Windows can do or clueless. Redhat, IBM, and thousands of others donate and develop code for Linux so you can use it on a server at work.
The 100% no non free code linux kernel was 200k in the 1990s and unpractical. Just because it was given away doesn't mean it was free to make. More to the point Windows meets the needs much better than Linux to desktop users because they are willing to pay Microsoft to fine tune and make sure it works right on their pc. You do not have to worry an update will hose your system due to the lack of an ABI or some weird wifi will randomly disconnect (issue with my laptop with linux).
What is so evil about getting paid? If you need shit done you provide value to barter that we call call cash in exchange for their labor. That is capitalism 101 and is the most efficient system.
All this non free software is worth every penny for those who need JIT inventory in Access/SQL Server to the accountant who purchases statistical add on packages for Excel so his employer can pay him. If you do not like it go get a job or write your own solution.
Also someone should get paid handsomely for his or her contribution and there is nothing wrong with that.
Richard Stallman is not a spokesman (Score:1, Interesting)
When I was younger, I would write free software or shareware, put it into public domain, and archivists would make a business out of making disks with free software on it. This is how I view Richard Stallman, just a parasite on free software who collected together one of these archives of other peoples free works without contributing to that body of work in any substantial way.
So I don't view him as any kind of spokesman for anything, simply because he actually doesn't do the work, he just takes the credit.
If I go to a library, does the librarian get credit for writing the books? Is he spoken to as though he's the worlds most famous author? Yet RMS is listened to as some sort of spokesman for the programmers whose work he simply archives!
What the submitter has done is put a very sensible article about the dangers of close source software, and juxtaposed with RMSs idiot comments and it lessens the original article by quoting that idiot.
esr makes sense (Score:3, Interesting)
While the above post could have been better written, I'd say it does summarize rms pretty well. Wouldn't call him a troll.
Reading ESR's article, what he describes makes sense. The more complex the software, the more bug prone, and that's where the contrast b/w the open source and closed source methodology stands out. The emphasis has been more on having open source OSs, but w/ all those Linux and BSD distros out there, we have a plethora of choices. However, there are far fewer choices when it comes to applications software - how many open source counterparts are there to Adobe apps, tax software like TurboTax, Quickbooks, and so on? It's really the shortage at the user level software applications like this that has held off the acceptance of open source.
I like the examples he gave, and the 5 dimensional spectral axes that he set up based on the reliability harm, the unhackability harm, the agency harm, the lock-in harm and the amnesia harm. That at least establishes a scale on which to put things, rather than an 'open-source good, closed source bad' slogan. The comments section in his thread made interesting reading, w/ the examples of the elevators, the microwaves, the washing machines, the smartphones, and so on.