'The Future of American Industry Depends On Open Source Tech' (wired.com) 45
An anonymous reader shares an opinion piece from Wired, written by Kevin Xu and Jordan Schneider. Xu is the author of Interconnected, investor and advisor of open source startups at OSS Capital, and served in the Obama White House. Schneider is the author of the ChinaTalk newsletter and host of the ChinaTalk podcast, posted on Lawfare. From the report: Open source is a technology development and distribution methodology, where the codebase and all development -- from setting a roadmap to building new features, fixing bugs, and writing documentation -- is done in public. A governing body (a group of hobbyists, a company, or a foundation) publicly manages this work, which is most often done in a public repository on either GitHub or GitLab. Open source has two important, and somewhat counterintuitive, advantages: speed and security. These practices lead to faster technological developments, because a built-in global community of developers help them mature, especially if the technology is solving a real problem. Top engineers also prefer to work with and on open source projects. Wrongly cast as secretive automatons, they are more often like artists, who prefer to learn, work, collaborate, and showcase what they've built in public, even when they are barely compensated for that work.
But doesn't keeping a technology's codebase open make it more vulnerable to attack? In fact, exposing the codebase publicly for security experts and hackers to easily access and test is the best way to keep the technology secure and build trust with end users for the long haul. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and open source is that sunlight in technology. Linux, the operating system, and Kubernetes, the cloud container orchestration system, are two of the most prominent examples. [...] Using open source technology is now the fastest way new products get built and legacy technologies get replaced. Yet as US policymakers develop their industrial policy to compete with China, open source is conspicuously absent.
By leaning on the advantages of open source, policymakers can pursue an industrial policy to help the US compete in the 21st century in line with our broader values. The alternative is to continue a top-down process that picks winners and losers based on not just technology but also political influence, which only helps individual firms secure market share, not sparking innovation more broadly. A few billion more dollars won't save Intel from its technical woes, but a healthier ecosystem leveraging open source technology and community would put the US in a better position for the future. Open source technology allows for vendor-neutrality. Whether you're a country or a company, if you use open source, you're not locked in to another company's technical stack, roadmap, or licensing agreements. After Linux was first created in 1991, it was widely adopted by large companies like Dell and IBM as a vendor neutral alternative to Microsoft's Windows operating system. In the future, chip designers won't be locked into Intel or ARM with RISC-V. With OpenRAN, 5G network builders won't be forced to buy from Huawei, Nokia, or Ericsson. [...] By doubling down on open source, America not only can address some of our most pressing technological challenges faster and more securely, but also revive relationships with our allies and deepen productive collaborations with the tech sector.
But doesn't keeping a technology's codebase open make it more vulnerable to attack? In fact, exposing the codebase publicly for security experts and hackers to easily access and test is the best way to keep the technology secure and build trust with end users for the long haul. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and open source is that sunlight in technology. Linux, the operating system, and Kubernetes, the cloud container orchestration system, are two of the most prominent examples. [...] Using open source technology is now the fastest way new products get built and legacy technologies get replaced. Yet as US policymakers develop their industrial policy to compete with China, open source is conspicuously absent.
By leaning on the advantages of open source, policymakers can pursue an industrial policy to help the US compete in the 21st century in line with our broader values. The alternative is to continue a top-down process that picks winners and losers based on not just technology but also political influence, which only helps individual firms secure market share, not sparking innovation more broadly. A few billion more dollars won't save Intel from its technical woes, but a healthier ecosystem leveraging open source technology and community would put the US in a better position for the future. Open source technology allows for vendor-neutrality. Whether you're a country or a company, if you use open source, you're not locked in to another company's technical stack, roadmap, or licensing agreements. After Linux was first created in 1991, it was widely adopted by large companies like Dell and IBM as a vendor neutral alternative to Microsoft's Windows operating system. In the future, chip designers won't be locked into Intel or ARM with RISC-V. With OpenRAN, 5G network builders won't be forced to buy from Huawei, Nokia, or Ericsson. [...] By doubling down on open source, America not only can address some of our most pressing technological challenges faster and more securely, but also revive relationships with our allies and deepen productive collaborations with the tech sector.
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Re:Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
They could be, if not for decades of training to only buy the cheapest option on the shelf, along with decades of wages not keeping up with inflation for an over growing portion of the population.
I keep hearing about how important it is we get US industry back in shape, and not much about how many people won't be able to afford paying for US made goods. I think we're looking at this picture all wrong. In my opinion we need a more balanced view of where we are as a society, and policies that not only give our industries a leg up in rebuilding themselves to actually produce something other than advertising and service, but also encourage those industries to pay better wages so that once they begin producing product again the average consumer can afford to buy them.
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The problem is we are competing against de-facto slave labor, both in China and other countries. In the 3rd world, factory workers often get by with roughly $2 hr.
And within China, there are the "industrial migrant workers" who are often treated like second-class citizens, and are pretty much stuck that way because they live in a dictatorship.
If sanctions etc. drive manufacturing out of China, there are plenty of
Re: Nonsense (Score:2)
The hardware problem is irrelevant if open source software can't finance its own development. See Firefox and the recent layoffs as an example.
Not to mention that the article also claims that opening up the code makes it more secure is a lie. How many years did bugs exist in OpenSSL? 16 years. All those eyes make bugs shallow simply isn't true when nobody is looking.
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As far as security, specific instances and anecdotes of flaws don't tell us much because it's rare any software is perfect. We'd need more quantitative measurements to settle that.
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The hardware problem is irrelevant if open source software can't finance its own development. See Firefox and the recent layoffs as an example.
Firefox has issues completely unrelated to financing due to open source.
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"Not to mention that the article also claims that opening up the code makes it more secure is a lie. How many years did bugs exist in OpenSSL? 16 years. All those eyes make bugs shallow simply isn't true when nobody is looking."
How many bugs exist in closed source implementations? You have no idea, because you can't audit the source. So how can you parrot this cockery?
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No point getting in a race to the bottom. Concentrate on making high end stuff where the price premium allows you to pay decent wages. Problem is that many companies will simply offshore that to make more money, so you need strong trade unions and employee ownership/participation to make sure it doesn't happen.
Germany is a good working model illustrating this.
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the American industry is primarily built on Chinese hardware
Completely wrong. The hardware was built in China and designed in the US. The whole reason it's such a big deal that we're pulling manufacturing back is because it means China can no longer take the tech designs when building the tech.
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start making shit and maybe people will buy it.
Actually that why a lot of industry left you started making shit so the company leaders thought we can make cheaper shit elsewhere and sometimes it would be a bit better.
the American correction western worker needs to make quality products. I have no trouble paying extra for a quality long lasting product.
Made in USA is an anti-goal (Score:4, Interesting)
the American industry is primarily built on Chinese hardware
This. As long as Taiwan/ROC is at risk of being absorbed into China/PRC, American technology is at risk. Our huge fabless silicon industry will be meaningless when we lose access to cutting edge foundries with a huge manufacturing capacity.
Once China gets control of Taiwan they will simply ignore silicon IP laws and press on ahead without us. We can either buy their IP-violating malware phones and routers, or we can have effectively none. China's own propaganda makes it clear that China will lead the world in the 21st century (and sometimes they claim the entire millennium). Their dominance is assured if we keep losing to them in diplomacy and trade. Doesn't matter how many aircraft carriers and submarines we have (actually China has more subs than the US).
We don't need to make everything in the US. We need to have lots and lots of allies that respect laws and will trade freely with us. Ideally partner countries that invest in American business and use our financial institutions. The US will never be a world manufacturing center again unless every American is ready to takes a huge cut in their own quality of life. Lower pay, longer hours, less opportunity to advance, higher relative consumer prices (less buying power), and a more polluted environment for your children. Made in USA is an anti-goal, you shouldn't want to actually do it, it's a nice slogan though.
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Taiwan has no desire to become part of the PRC.
Intel and IBM operate fabs in the US.
Samsung operates fabs in korea.
I believe globalfoundries still operates fabs in germany and malaysia.
Open and Proprietary have their place (Score:2, Interesting)
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'The Future of American Industry Depends On Open Source Tech' != 'All Software Will Be Open Source'
Firstly, technology products have an entire ecosystem of technologies that fuel their existence— your examples exclusively focus on end-user technologies. While user-end products might benefit from the polish of a commercial solution, huge swaths of infrastructure such as server software and programming languages are dominated by open source, unless maybe you're in the large enterprise space.
Secondly, ma
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Having the most featured, most stable, most reliable products doesn't count for a lot. There are several other factors that have a much greater influence.
Marketing - goes to the proprietary products. Free products don't generally have a marketing budget, and people will often be unaware they exist.
Entrenchment/familiarity - once a product is established in a given sector its extremely difficult to unseat it, even if something massively superior comes along. Many proprietary products are entrenched in variou
Forgot to answer the only important question... (Score:4, Funny)
How does this benefit the President's re-election bid?
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with this post
Yeah. But that was then.
Create a WPA for open source then (Score:3, Interesting)
Put a .1% tax on all software sold in the United States and start a Works Projects Administration for open source software.
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Put a .1% tax
LEADING 0s for "numbers" that begin with a decimal! 0.1% is unambiguous -- .1% can easily be misunderstood as 1% if you're not paying attention.
I learned this is physics decades ago. I wish other people had as well. (Also accuracy -- a 6-digit accurate number divided by a 2-digit accurate number does NOT give you an 10-digit accurate number as a result, even if your calculator says it does.
And,separators,are,important,for,humans,to,easily,read,a,large,number. Quickly: what's the correct magnitude
"even when they are barely compensated" (Score:1)
alternative headline (Score:2)
"The future of American PRIVACY depends on open source tech"
oh, it is? (Score:2)
Then we are fucked, cause yea its done in public and managed by a "governing body", but the problem is there's about umpteen billion of them all working on different visions for the same software, which is why it takes decades to implement basic features and fixes
there is no open source (Score:2, Interesting)
Unless you can tell me that you compile every compiler version 3 times to make sure it's idempotent and then recompile every package, you are not running open source software. 99% of you can't find the sources for the packages you install on your Linux distribution. And if you did, you would not be able to reproduce 100% binary identical code.
Unless you actually know Lisp, and know it well, you are better off with an IDE when you code than you are with EMACS.
You are judging the world based o
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Unless you can tell me that you compile every compiler version 3 times to make sure it's idempotent and then recompile every package, you are not running open source software. 99% of you can't find the sources for the packages you install on your Linux distribution. And if you did, you would not be able to reproduce 100% binary identical code.
That's how Debian packages are built. You use a Free OS and build your Free compiler then build Free packages, including the package for your Free compiler with the new compiler you built.
And there has been quite a bit of progress in reproducible build artifacts on gcc and clang/llvm. You can do this today if you carefully control your build environment, such as using build tools that go through dependencies in a consistent order. You can now take two signed git repos, and build at a particular SHA commit a
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The slight difference is that the process is transparent and reproducible by third parties and end-users.
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And most importantly you have a choice of distribution vendors.
Companies are beholden to the governments in the locations where they operate, having a single vendor in a single country is no good if you don't trust the government of that country.
Having multiple vendors allows you to choose.
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FWIW I build docker every day because I develop modifications for it and track the upstream project. And there are more than 5 people on my team. But I do get your rhetorical point.
I can reproduce a container from the Dockerfile. It's not really anymore closed than a distro's package file. You can even sign containers today, not that people do much with that information w.r.t. open source.
Now how people use and think about things like PyPI (a python package repository), Go pkg, DockerHub, and other binary-o
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You are a shit head spewing nonsense. You can compile BSD distros yourself.
Oh, your stupid systemd-tard infested Linux distro won't do it? That's your problem.
Not possible for now (Score:2)
Open Source is not unlicensed (Score:2)
Business in the USA... (Score:2)
well said wired (Score:1)
the entire article is inspirational, plain truth well spoken, important information.
"Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and open source is that sunlight in technology."
exactly what we all need to know, if we did not already.