7 ms·

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the moral case for using an Open Source OS over a proprietary one. Just to restate, Open Source software gives users the

by tlocke 10y ago

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the moral case for using an Open Source OS over a proprietary one. Just to restate, Open Source software gives users the freedom to: * Run the software for whatever purpose they want. * Inspect the software so they can see what it's doing. * Change the software however they want. * Share the software with anyone. Call me an idealist, but aren't these things important?

qntty 10y ago
s/open source/free/g
theandrewbailey 10y ago
What you described is free software, not open source. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html There are things that are open source, but not free, like the Unreal Engine.
- tlocke 10y ago
  As far as I can make out from looking at the EULA: https://www.unrealengine.com/eula https://www.unrealengine.com/eula the Unreal Engine is not Open Source. Not least because you can't share the source code without restriction. As I understand it, the difference between free and Open Source is a difference in philosophy rather than a difference in licensing. For Free Software people the importance lies in freedom, but for Open Source people the importance is that it's a better way to develop software. For example, a Free Software person would always use free software even if was inferior to a proprietary alternative, because they wouldn't want to give up their freedoms. An Open Source person would use whichever is superior, regardless of licensing. I'm in both camps but I tend to use the term Open Source because Free is confusing because it means both 'no charge' and 'liberty'.
  - dandelion_lover 10y ago
    >> I tend to use the term Open Source because Free is confusing because it means both 'no charge' and 'liberty'. Would you consider to use term "libre software", because "open source" is confusing because it means both "one can read the code" and "one can do certain things with the code"?
  - Cursuviam 10y ago
    That's why Libre is used instead of Free quite often
  - loup-vaillant 10y ago
    > As I understand it, the difference between free and Open Source is a difference in philosophy rather than a difference in licensing. The FSF and the OSI both have a list of licences they endorse. I think some licences are endorsed by the OSI, but not by the FSF. Those are candidate for "Open Source, yet not Free". Besides this small detail, I agree.
mbrock 10y ago
I agree in substance, but I find arguments from moral principles mostly unconvincing, so I prefer to formulate it in different ways. * Proprietary software makes me dependent on the whims of a business. If the business shuts down, stops updating its products, or changes their products in ways I dislike, I have to discard the investment I've made (time, money, learning, etc). * Proprietary software makes it complicated to share my work tools with friends and even family. * Proprietary ecosystems prevent me from learning. On the other hand, I am profoundly grateful for the learning opportunities given to me by the free software community ever since I was a teenager. * Proprietary tools are hard to integrate with. For example, whenever a new version of Apple's mail program is released, the makers of the GPG plugin have to reverse engineer the changes before they (hopefully) can update their software. * Proprietary tools often use proprietary formats, which prevents collaboration and contributes to the problem of digital rot. And so on...
- gravypod 10y ago
  Those are all the basis of the moral arguments. If you watch Stalman speak on this topic he usually refers to this fact: If the users do not control the program, the program controls the users. If we do not have the right to maintain, update, and distribute our programs on our machines and to run them in any fasion we would like then the programs control us, we don't control them. What could this mean? Well they could do something malicious (which they quite often do), they could allow something malicious to happen out of ignorance of the original programers and we'd have no way to fix these issues (think all the window's 0-days), they could even just revoke licenses of software that is in use for critical systems (think medical records). A worse side effect then all of these is the one that is most egregious: It prevents younger generations who are starting to learn about computers from understanding how the lower part of the stack works. That's why, in my opinion, many older people have no problem delving into lower level systems code and many younger people today have a very hard time doing such. They've been robbed of the experiance of hacking their OS/Machine to shreds and loving every minute of it. Hardware, software, and even documentation is under lockdown and it's an assult on not only our principles but also our youth and self interests.
  - 10y ago
therealmarv 10y ago
There are nice to have. But having a better desktop experience (especially with photo related pro software) is more important for me than just going Open Source. And sometimes closed source does the better job.
freehunter 10y ago
You're just trading your trust in a company to a trust in an organization of loosely affiliated individuals. I don't know C, so Linux being open source makes zero difference to me. I couldn't change it if I wanted to. I couldn't inspect it even if I wanted to. I couldn't run it for whatever purpose I want, only for whatever purpose people who know better than me have allowed for. And I can share the software, but the people I share it with will likely have the same limitations as me. I'm still dependent on Intel providing the drivers for their wifi chips. I'm still dependent on AMD/Nvidia providing drivers for their video cards. I'm still dependent on a lot of non-libre software that I need in order to do my job. All of your points are important from a theoretical standpoint, but that's based on the idea that the end user actually knows how to do any of that. And those skills are very, very uncommon.
- whyileft 10y ago
  You are forgetting that there isn't an incentive for any of the makers of my software to trick or coerce me into doing things I don't want to do. With the profit motive removed free software has less of an incentive to hurt me.
  - freehunter 10y ago
    I didn't forget it, it just wasn't mentioned in the comment I replied to. But if you think open-source gets rid of that issue, I'd like you to look up "Ubuntu Amazon search ads", maybe "systemd vs init", also "pulse audio" just to name a few. Yep, it's possible to get rid of all of these things, but again, only if the user knows how. Which again, isn't a common skill.
renaudg 10y ago
I used to think like that in my idealistic 20s (card-carrying member of Free Software organizations, regular attendee of RMS talks, etc), and given the choice I'll still favor free / open source building blocks (especially in a professional context). I'm thankful for what the movement has brought us. That said, growing up I've come to realize that one's time is valuable, life is too short and at the end of the day you have to pick your fights. Even as hackers, there are times when we find ourselves with the "end user" hat on. Creative work for example (photo/music editing in my case) is already challenging and time-consuming enough not impose additional burdens upon yourself, like dealing with inferior / immature desktop Free software when there's an alternative that gets you there faster. macOS in my view has always struck that rare balance between polished end-user tools and large amounts of familiar Unix / open source / standards based components under the hood to satisfy the hacker in us. As most people I'm slightly worried about Apple's hardware vision lately, but the state of desktop Linux simply isn't good enough to warrant a switch back for demanding users yet.
matt4077 10y ago
As a fellow idealist, I feel the battle has shifted to online services, and it may actually be much more significant there than it ever was for desktops. After all, looking back I can't easily point at actual harms created by (for example) photoshop's proprietary nature. But it's almost universally accepted that there's a danger in the walled gardens of Facebook or Google. I'm hoping that the idealists will be able to defend/create open protocols and networks. There have been some successes, mostly when it was in the interest of industry heavyweights as well (i. e. Apple killing flash, html5 takings its place). Currently endangered is E-Mail and essentially dead is personal publishing.

by tlocke 10y ago

qntty 10y ago

s/open source/free/g

theandrewbailey 10y ago

What you described is free software, not open source. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html There are things that are open source, but not free, like the Unreal Engine.

tlocke 10y ago
As far as I can make out from looking at the EULA: https://www.unrealengine.com/eula https://www.unrealengine.com/eula the Unreal Engine is not Open Source. Not least because you can't share the source code without restriction. As I understand it, the difference between free and Open Source is a difference in philosophy rather than a difference in licensing. For Free Software people the importance lies in freedom, but for Open Source people the importance is that it's a better way to develop software. For example, a Free Software person would always use free software even if was inferior to a proprietary alternative, because they wouldn't want to give up their freedoms. An Open Source person would use whichever is superior, regardless of licensing. I'm in both camps but I tend to use the term Open Source because Free is confusing because it means both 'no charge' and 'liberty'.
- dandelion_lover 10y ago
  >> I tend to use the term Open Source because Free is confusing because it means both 'no charge' and 'liberty'. Would you consider to use term "libre software", because "open source" is confusing because it means both "one can read the code" and "one can do certain things with the code"?
- Cursuviam 10y ago
  That's why Libre is used instead of Free quite often
- loup-vaillant 10y ago
  > As I understand it, the difference between free and Open Source is a difference in philosophy rather than a difference in licensing. The FSF and the OSI both have a list of licences they endorse. I think some licences are endorsed by the OSI, but not by the FSF. Those are candidate for "Open Source, yet not Free". Besides this small detail, I agree.

mbrock 10y ago

I agree in substance, but I find arguments from moral principles mostly unconvincing, so I prefer to formulate it in different ways. * Proprietary software makes me dependent on the whims of a business. If the business shuts down, stops updating its products, or changes their products in ways I dislike, I have to discard the investment I've made (time, money, learning, etc). * Proprietary software makes it complicated to share my work tools with friends and even family. * Proprietary ecosystems prevent me from learning. On the other hand, I am profoundly grateful for the learning opportunities given to me by the free software community ever since I was a teenager. * Proprietary tools are hard to integrate with. For example, whenever a new version of Apple's mail program is released, the makers of the GPG plugin have to reverse engineer the changes before they (hopefully) can update their software. * Proprietary tools often use proprietary formats, which prevents collaboration and contributes to the problem of digital rot. And so on...

gravypod 10y ago
Those are all the basis of the moral arguments. If you watch Stalman speak on this topic he usually refers to this fact: If the users do not control the program, the program controls the users. If we do not have the right to maintain, update, and distribute our programs on our machines and to run them in any fasion we would like then the programs control us, we don't control them. What could this mean? Well they could do something malicious (which they quite often do), they could allow something malicious to happen out of ignorance of the original programers and we'd have no way to fix these issues (think all the window's 0-days), they could even just revoke licenses of software that is in use for critical systems (think medical records). A worse side effect then all of these is the one that is most egregious: It prevents younger generations who are starting to learn about computers from understanding how the lower part of the stack works. That's why, in my opinion, many older people have no problem delving into lower level systems code and many younger people today have a very hard time doing such. They've been robbed of the experiance of hacking their OS/Machine to shreds and loving every minute of it. Hardware, software, and even documentation is under lockdown and it's an assult on not only our principles but also our youth and self interests.
- 10y ago

therealmarv 10y ago

There are nice to have. But having a better desktop experience (especially with photo related pro software) is more important for me than just going Open Source. And sometimes closed source does the better job.

freehunter 10y ago

You're just trading your trust in a company to a trust in an organization of loosely affiliated individuals. I don't know C, so Linux being open source makes zero difference to me. I couldn't change it if I wanted to. I couldn't inspect it even if I wanted to. I couldn't run it for whatever purpose I want, only for whatever purpose people who know better than me have allowed for. And I can share the software, but the people I share it with will likely have the same limitations as me. I'm still dependent on Intel providing the drivers for their wifi chips. I'm still dependent on AMD/Nvidia providing drivers for their video cards. I'm still dependent on a lot of non-libre software that I need in order to do my job. All of your points are important from a theoretical standpoint, but that's based on the idea that the end user actually knows how to do any of that. And those skills are very, very uncommon.

whyileft 10y ago
You are forgetting that there isn't an incentive for any of the makers of my software to trick or coerce me into doing things I don't want to do. With the profit motive removed free software has less of an incentive to hurt me.
- freehunter 10y ago
  I didn't forget it, it just wasn't mentioned in the comment I replied to. But if you think open-source gets rid of that issue, I'd like you to look up "Ubuntu Amazon search ads", maybe "systemd vs init", also "pulse audio" just to name a few. Yep, it's possible to get rid of all of these things, but again, only if the user knows how. Which again, isn't a common skill.

renaudg 10y ago

I used to think like that in my idealistic 20s (card-carrying member of Free Software organizations, regular attendee of RMS talks, etc), and given the choice I'll still favor free / open source building blocks (especially in a professional context). I'm thankful for what the movement has brought us. That said, growing up I've come to realize that one's time is valuable, life is too short and at the end of the day you have to pick your fights. Even as hackers, there are times when we find ourselves with the "end user" hat on. Creative work for example (photo/music editing in my case) is already challenging and time-consuming enough not impose additional burdens upon yourself, like dealing with inferior / immature desktop Free software when there's an alternative that gets you there faster. macOS in my view has always struck that rare balance between polished end-user tools and large amounts of familiar Unix / open source / standards based components under the hood to satisfy the hacker in us. As most people I'm slightly worried about Apple's hardware vision lately, but the state of desktop Linux simply isn't good enough to warrant a switch back for demanding users yet.

matt4077 10y ago

As a fellow idealist, I feel the battle has shifted to online services, and it may actually be much more significant there than it ever was for desktops. After all, looking back I can't easily point at actual harms created by (for example) photoshop's proprietary nature. But it's almost universally accepted that there's a danger in the walled gardens of Facebook or Google. I'm hoping that the idealists will be able to defend/create open protocols and networks. There have been some successes, mostly when it was in the interest of industry heavyweights as well (i. e. Apple killing flash, html5 takings its place). Currently endangered is E-Mail and essentially dead is personal publishing.