5 ms·

Proprietary Software Is Often Malware

78 points by crazypython 6y ago

pc86 6y ago
No it's not.
- kgwxd 6y ago
  I agree. It's always is.
btgeekboy 6y ago
Correlation is not causation. I don’t see anything on that list that is a consequence of the license.
- Osiris 6y ago
  > I don’t see anything on that list that is a consequence of the license. That's an interesting point. The GPL does not restrict what software can do. GPL software can potentially do all of these things. Heck, a virus or malware could be GPL licensed, there's nothing stopping that. The advantage is that under the GPL, they must provide sources which allows the user (who must have software engineering skills) to modify the software to change behavior.
  - junon 6y ago
    There are indeed PoC malware in GitHub licensed as GPL. ("malware" here meaning "virus", not whatever Stallman thinks it means).
umvi 6y ago
> Software whose functioning mistreats the user is called malware Hmm, well based on that super broad definition, sure, proprietary software is "often malware". But usually "malware" is understood to mean software that exploits vulnerabilities in a computer system, not merely software with DRM, paywalls, banners, ads, etc. I think GNU might need to pick a different term here than "malware" unless they are intentionally fear mongering to get the free software conversation going.
- easton 6y ago
  Based on that definition, GNU Emacs is malware as whenever I see it on my system (it used to be included with several Linux distros and macOS), I cringe at the thought of all of disk space I could be filling with fortune files.
  - crazypython 6y ago
    I would modify the definition to this: > Software whose functioning intentionally mistreats the user is called malware There is nothing stopping you from removing GNU Emacs. There are features missing in Roam Research. But in Emacs org-roam, if you are missing a feature, you can ask any programmer– they don't have to be an org-roam maintainer– to add a feature as it is free software. Roam intentionally takes away the freedom to modify the software.
  - hundchenkatze 6y ago
    I get your point, but I think in this case the distro would be the malware not emacs.
- Osiris 6y ago
  > unless they are intentionally fear mongering to get the free software conversation going. I think it's this. However, they aren't wrong, per se. Users should have control over their systems and their privacy. But hyperbole and fear mongering are not very effective at affecting change in the system. I would argue that they have a noble mission but take it to such an extreme as to not be very practical.
- dpeck 6y ago
  I don’t know about that. The way I remember it “malware” as a term was invented to be a bigger umbrella term to account for things like bonzi buddy when “virus” wasn’t quite as good of a description.
- crazypython 6y ago
  Wikipedia[0] says > Programs are also considered malware if they secretly act against the interests of the computer user It's fair to say proprietary software often creates an ability and incentive to act against the interests the user which results in it becoming malware. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malware
Osiris 6y ago
It depends on how you define "malware". This defines malware as "Software whose functioning mistreats the user". I understand the point that's trying to be made. People use software because it provides value to them. I certainly have used or seen software that's abusive (anti-virus/malware products are pretty bad in this respect), and I don't use them. Unfortunately, proprietary software generally has much more funding and thus can create a much better product than open source alternatives. A recent example for me was looking for an alternative to Lightroom Classic. I found a few different open source projects that replicated different aspects of Lightroom, but not provided the full feature set combining library management with raw editing. The question then comes down to, how much privacy am I willing to sacrifice to get the extra value? The answer to this question will be different for different people. As people become more and more privacy focused, we see additional pressure on companies that provide proprietary software to improve privacy in their applications.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  GIMP is the classic example of why free software can't compete for end users.
  - crazypython 6y ago
    Then Krita[0] is a classic counterexample: A free software digital painting tool with lots of functionality that provides a superior UX to Adobe products. [0]: https://krita.org/en/ https://krita.org/en/
    - Osiris 6y ago
      My daughter uses Krita with a drawing tablet. She's not very experienced but the software is good at making it easy for her to at least do all the basics. I was pleasantly surprised when I found Krita after buying her drawing tablet.
    - lrossi 6y ago
      > a superior UX to Adobe I have a couple of years of experience working with that, and I strongly disagree. It’s also quite buggy. I’ve hit crashes several times while working with large drawings. There are better examples of desktop OSS that beat proprietary ones: Blender, vlc, ffmpeg+Handbrake, Firefox, 7zip.
crazypython 6y ago
The Kurdish ethnic minority was severely persecuted in Turkey. At Turkey's pressure, Microsoft refused to add Kurdish language to Windows until Windows 10, despite languages with far fewer speakers being in Windows. This made Windows complicit in Turkey's cultural genocide against the 3 million people who speak only Kurdish. In above and many other situations, the character of “proprietary” limits human rights. Ubuntu GNU/Linux was the first OS to support Kurdish. Don't forget when Apple removed Hong Kong protest safety apps from the app store.
martamorena1093 6y ago
By that definition, I feel most open source software is malware. I have yet to find a single open source project that is user-facing (i.e. not a compiler, etc), not funded & developed/driven by a major corporation and providing a good USER EXPERIENCE. By that definition, much more open source software is malware, than proprietary software. It is incredible how much time you lose by using Linux and open source tools. GIMP, Darktable, LibreOffice, Eclipse, etc. the list goes on and on. Any tool that you need in your daily workflow usually sucks when it is open source, compared to their commercial counterparts. And the lack of understanding of the open source community that "normal" people don't care about "open source" and simply want a good user experience, didn't help over the past 20 years to improve anything. Using OpenSource makes you feel like you are back in 2000. Having funding and a coordinated team and management focused on solving customer problems and shipping the right features is something that just doesn't work when a bunch of unpaid devs "team up" and loosely work on solving problems they "think" people have and building UX that "they" like, as opposed to what customers like. My experience with open source is much more along the lines of "a bunch of nerds building software for themselves that nobody else can use or wants to use". This is not a recipe for success. And god knows I tried. I tried to switch to Linux about once a year in the past 20 years. It always ended up to be an utter disappointment UX wise. Linux is not something people want to use. It's a great accomplishment. But without focusing on UX, Linux will never reach any adoption outside of the server realm. Period.
- crazypython 6y ago
  > I have yet to find a single open source project that is user-facing (i.e. not a compiler, etc), not funded & developed/driven by a major corporation and providing a good USER EXPERIENCE. Free software developed by a major corporation is still free software. It may not use the open-source development model, but it's still free software. > GIMP https://krita.org https://krita.org https://penpot.app https://penpot.app > Eclipse IntelliJ IDEA Community > usually sucks when it is open source The UX argument has been well-worn. In my experience Jitsi Meet, videoconferencing software, is far more reliable than Zoom and Google Meet.
- Miraste 6y ago
  I don't think these examples have anything to do with being open source. They're problems of funding and organization. Of course a lot of open source software doesn't compete well with corporate projects, because it's made by individuals as a hobby. That said, I can list OSS which is highly competitive with its closed equivalents, like Blender and Krita, or has completely displaced corporate software, like VLC, FFmpeg, and git. The issues you mention are real and widespread, but I find open source solutions are still the best tool for the job a significant amount of the time. This is also ignoring the field of corporate open source, which has made great, if caveat-laden, strides in the past few years.
tgv 6y ago
> A proprietary program puts its developer or owner in a position of power over its users. This power is in itself an injustice. Apart from the horrible style and lack of nuance, it's simply not true. To reply in the same style: who pays for proprietary software, often can demand changes. With OSS, the user is in no position to do so at all. There is of course nuance here, since large companies with many end users do not listen to their paying customers, and OSS developers can be responsive, but I don't feel particularly kind to someone who uses false and nonsensical premises to make a political point. > the proprietary program's developer is tempted to design the program to mistreat its users I mean ...
- fsflover 6y ago
  > who pays for proprietary software, often can demand changes So how do I demand that Windows 10 stops spying on me?
  - warkdarrior 6y ago
    You can demand that by paying for an enterprise license of Windows and then disabling the tracking yourself: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/configure-windows-diagnostic-data-in-your-organization https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/configure-w...
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    Boycott it. If enough users cease to buy the OS, Microsoft suffers economic consequence and may change the design to adapt to customer desires. This model works less well for free software / open source, which often has a lack of financial incentives to motivate (or demotivate) developers.
    - shaan7 6y ago
      > Boycott it. If enough users cease to buy the OS So I have to convince thousands (for Windows maybe a million) of people that the thing that irritates me should be removed. Nope, that seldom happens. I find better luck in FOSS where there is enough tweaking potential that I can remove the irritating thing I don't like. Maybe FOSS maintainers and developers have no financial incentive to do what I want, but I can always have a local patch to do that.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
GPL software is the foundation of the privacy unfriendly platforms we now have. Facebook runs on Linux, Google runs on Linux. Having Linux available made it much more cost effective to store data and do computation on the server, instead of the user’s device. You think Facebook would exist if it had to buy per CPU licenses of Windows NT Advanced server? Frankly, we would have been better off in the Microsoft world of individual PCs running proprietary applications on the computer the user owned. Because it ran on your system, you had defacto control over what it did, and if you really wanted to, could reverse engineer and patch it (witness game hacks, and what Microsoft did for backwards compatibility). Now thanks to the economics of GPL software such as Linux, we are being pushed to a model where all data is stored and computed with on servers you don’t own.
- monocasa 6y ago
  You don't think they'd just run on the BSDs instead if GPLed software didn't exist?
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
    For some reason, the BSDs never really developed as a rival to commercial server operating systems. Solaris, Irix, Windows NT, etc all seemed to exist pretty well even though BSDs were freely available. Then Linux came and ate everyone’s lunch. Maybe it was the GPL’s requirements to contribute back changes that resulted in Linux rapidly developing a lot of capabilities?
- domador 6y ago
  Fascinating argument! If I may distill it, it sounds like Low-cost server software -> more power to server-based systems and companies -> more centralization of data -> less privacy Expensive server software -> more power to standalone computing and individual users -> more decentralization of data -> more privacy On a related note, I wonder what would be the threshold at which the cost of servers and software would make social media and ad-tech companies economically unviable, and which would have prevented Facebook, Google, and others from becoming what they've become.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> Proprietary software, also called nonfree software, means software that doesn't respect users' freedom and community. Proprietary software is generally just referred to as "Software". Also known as the stuff that makes phones ring, cars start, satellites communicate, banks able to track money, grocery stores track how many bananas they have, airplanes not collide... Fundamentally software makes the world go around, and a huge chunk of it is proprietary.
- bluecatswim 6y ago
  I don't see how that contradicts the original statement. Software can be useful while not respecting user freedom.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    Does a comment have to contradict something it replies to?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
shadowgovt 6y ago
`(Please note that the article wrongly refers to crackers as "hackers".)` Always fun to see someone out there still trying to fight the fight of owning word definitions that much of the rest of the world has agreed on.
hermitcrab 6y ago
Gnu has done some amazing stuff, but I think they are making themselves look a bit silly with this clickbaity title and intentionally dodgy definition of 'malware'.
joe_the_user 6y ago
It seems like the Solarwinds exploit deserves inclusion on their list. The big thing about the event is you have a whole bunch of high-value-target companies who uncritically load whatever update Solarwinds (and the other proprietary vendors they use) send them. The create a huge "attack surface" and allowed the hackers to stay in the various systems for a substantial period of time. And yes, "anyone can be hacked" but if the various companies compiled their admin software from source, things would certainly be harder - even if dubious source got through, the action of the software of "phoning home" would be a lot more suspicious, etc.
Nevermark 6y ago
I think we need to be adults about these different categories of software. The primary aspects of adult interactions are consent based on honesty and good communication about any arrangement. If you are ok delegating services and other work, you are already trusting another person or organization. There is nothing wrong with trusting a software vendor if the benefits are there and the vendor behaves in a trustworthy manner. Companies often pay for parts they need to create products, where the parts are made with a proprietary process. Whether depending on a vendor for a unique part is worth it depends on the situation. And there isn’t an open source or free state-of-the-art-software solution for every problem.
new_realist 6y ago
If proprietary software is often malware, free software is often shitware.

78 points by crazypython 6y ago

pc86 6y ago

No it's not.

kgwxd 6y ago
I agree. It's always is.

btgeekboy 6y ago

Correlation is not causation. I don’t see anything on that list that is a consequence of the license.

Osiris 6y ago
> I don’t see anything on that list that is a consequence of the license. That's an interesting point. The GPL does not restrict what software can do. GPL software can potentially do all of these things. Heck, a virus or malware could be GPL licensed, there's nothing stopping that. The advantage is that under the GPL, they must provide sources which allows the user (who must have software engineering skills) to modify the software to change behavior.
- junon 6y ago
  There are indeed PoC malware in GitHub licensed as GPL. ("malware" here meaning "virus", not whatever Stallman thinks it means).

umvi 6y ago

> Software whose functioning mistreats the user is called malware Hmm, well based on that super broad definition, sure, proprietary software is "often malware". But usually "malware" is understood to mean software that exploits vulnerabilities in a computer system, not merely software with DRM, paywalls, banners, ads, etc. I think GNU might need to pick a different term here than "malware" unless they are intentionally fear mongering to get the free software conversation going.

easton 6y ago
Based on that definition, GNU Emacs is malware as whenever I see it on my system (it used to be included with several Linux distros and macOS), I cringe at the thought of all of disk space I could be filling with fortune files.
- crazypython 6y ago
  I would modify the definition to this: > Software whose functioning intentionally mistreats the user is called malware There is nothing stopping you from removing GNU Emacs. There are features missing in Roam Research. But in Emacs org-roam, if you are missing a feature, you can ask any programmer– they don't have to be an org-roam maintainer– to add a feature as it is free software. Roam intentionally takes away the freedom to modify the software.
- hundchenkatze 6y ago
  I get your point, but I think in this case the distro would be the malware not emacs.
Osiris 6y ago
> unless they are intentionally fear mongering to get the free software conversation going. I think it's this. However, they aren't wrong, per se. Users should have control over their systems and their privacy. But hyperbole and fear mongering are not very effective at affecting change in the system. I would argue that they have a noble mission but take it to such an extreme as to not be very practical.
dpeck 6y ago
I don’t know about that. The way I remember it “malware” as a term was invented to be a bigger umbrella term to account for things like bonzi buddy when “virus” wasn’t quite as good of a description.
crazypython 6y ago
Wikipedia[0] says > Programs are also considered malware if they secretly act against the interests of the computer user It's fair to say proprietary software often creates an ability and incentive to act against the interests the user which results in it becoming malware. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malware

Osiris 6y ago

It depends on how you define "malware". This defines malware as "Software whose functioning mistreats the user". I understand the point that's trying to be made. People use software because it provides value to them. I certainly have used or seen software that's abusive (anti-virus/malware products are pretty bad in this respect), and I don't use them. Unfortunately, proprietary software generally has much more funding and thus can create a much better product than open source alternatives. A recent example for me was looking for an alternative to Lightroom Classic. I found a few different open source projects that replicated different aspects of Lightroom, but not provided the full feature set combining library management with raw editing. The question then comes down to, how much privacy am I willing to sacrifice to get the extra value? The answer to this question will be different for different people. As people become more and more privacy focused, we see additional pressure on companies that provide proprietary software to improve privacy in their applications.

MattGaiser 6y ago
GIMP is the classic example of why free software can't compete for end users.
- crazypython 6y ago
  Then Krita[0] is a classic counterexample: A free software digital painting tool with lots of functionality that provides a superior UX to Adobe products. [0]: https://krita.org/en/ https://krita.org/en/
  - Osiris 6y ago
    My daughter uses Krita with a drawing tablet. She's not very experienced but the software is good at making it easy for her to at least do all the basics. I was pleasantly surprised when I found Krita after buying her drawing tablet.
  - lrossi 6y ago
    > a superior UX to Adobe I have a couple of years of experience working with that, and I strongly disagree. It’s also quite buggy. I’ve hit crashes several times while working with large drawings. There are better examples of desktop OSS that beat proprietary ones: Blender, vlc, ffmpeg+Handbrake, Firefox, 7zip.

crazypython 6y ago

The Kurdish ethnic minority was severely persecuted in Turkey. At Turkey's pressure, Microsoft refused to add Kurdish language to Windows until Windows 10, despite languages with far fewer speakers being in Windows. This made Windows complicit in Turkey's cultural genocide against the 3 million people who speak only Kurdish. In above and many other situations, the character of “proprietary” limits human rights. Ubuntu GNU/Linux was the first OS to support Kurdish. Don't forget when Apple removed Hong Kong protest safety apps from the app store.

martamorena1093 6y ago

By that definition, I feel most open source software is malware. I have yet to find a single open source project that is user-facing (i.e. not a compiler, etc), not funded & developed/driven by a major corporation and providing a good USER EXPERIENCE. By that definition, much more open source software is malware, than proprietary software. It is incredible how much time you lose by using Linux and open source tools. GIMP, Darktable, LibreOffice, Eclipse, etc. the list goes on and on. Any tool that you need in your daily workflow usually sucks when it is open source, compared to their commercial counterparts. And the lack of understanding of the open source community that "normal" people don't care about "open source" and simply want a good user experience, didn't help over the past 20 years to improve anything. Using OpenSource makes you feel like you are back in 2000. Having funding and a coordinated team and management focused on solving customer problems and shipping the right features is something that just doesn't work when a bunch of unpaid devs "team up" and loosely work on solving problems they "think" people have and building UX that "they" like, as opposed to what customers like. My experience with open source is much more along the lines of "a bunch of nerds building software for themselves that nobody else can use or wants to use". This is not a recipe for success. And god knows I tried. I tried to switch to Linux about once a year in the past 20 years. It always ended up to be an utter disappointment UX wise. Linux is not something people want to use. It's a great accomplishment. But without focusing on UX, Linux will never reach any adoption outside of the server realm. Period.

crazypython 6y ago
> I have yet to find a single open source project that is user-facing (i.e. not a compiler, etc), not funded & developed/driven by a major corporation and providing a good USER EXPERIENCE. Free software developed by a major corporation is still free software. It may not use the open-source development model, but it's still free software. > GIMP https://krita.org https://krita.org https://penpot.app https://penpot.app > Eclipse IntelliJ IDEA Community > usually sucks when it is open source The UX argument has been well-worn. In my experience Jitsi Meet, videoconferencing software, is far more reliable than Zoom and Google Meet.
Miraste 6y ago
I don't think these examples have anything to do with being open source. They're problems of funding and organization. Of course a lot of open source software doesn't compete well with corporate projects, because it's made by individuals as a hobby. That said, I can list OSS which is highly competitive with its closed equivalents, like Blender and Krita, or has completely displaced corporate software, like VLC, FFmpeg, and git. The issues you mention are real and widespread, but I find open source solutions are still the best tool for the job a significant amount of the time. This is also ignoring the field of corporate open source, which has made great, if caveat-laden, strides in the past few years.

tgv 6y ago

> A proprietary program puts its developer or owner in a position of power over its users. This power is in itself an injustice. Apart from the horrible style and lack of nuance, it's simply not true. To reply in the same style: who pays for proprietary software, often can demand changes. With OSS, the user is in no position to do so at all. There is of course nuance here, since large companies with many end users do not listen to their paying customers, and OSS developers can be responsive, but I don't feel particularly kind to someone who uses false and nonsensical premises to make a political point. > the proprietary program's developer is tempted to design the program to mistreat its users I mean ...

fsflover 6y ago
> who pays for proprietary software, often can demand changes So how do I demand that Windows 10 stops spying on me?
- warkdarrior 6y ago
  You can demand that by paying for an enterprise license of Windows and then disabling the tracking yourself: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/configure-windows-diagnostic-data-in-your-organization https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/configure-w...
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  Boycott it. If enough users cease to buy the OS, Microsoft suffers economic consequence and may change the design to adapt to customer desires. This model works less well for free software / open source, which often has a lack of financial incentives to motivate (or demotivate) developers.
  - shaan7 6y ago
    > Boycott it. If enough users cease to buy the OS So I have to convince thousands (for Windows maybe a million) of people that the thing that irritates me should be removed. Nope, that seldom happens. I find better luck in FOSS where there is enough tweaking potential that I can remove the irritating thing I don't like. Maybe FOSS maintainers and developers have no financial incentive to do what I want, but I can always have a local patch to do that.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

GPL software is the foundation of the privacy unfriendly platforms we now have. Facebook runs on Linux, Google runs on Linux. Having Linux available made it much more cost effective to store data and do computation on the server, instead of the user’s device. You think Facebook would exist if it had to buy per CPU licenses of Windows NT Advanced server? Frankly, we would have been better off in the Microsoft world of individual PCs running proprietary applications on the computer the user owned. Because it ran on your system, you had defacto control over what it did, and if you really wanted to, could reverse engineer and patch it (witness game hacks, and what Microsoft did for backwards compatibility). Now thanks to the economics of GPL software such as Linux, we are being pushed to a model where all data is stored and computed with on servers you don’t own.

monocasa 6y ago
You don't think they'd just run on the BSDs instead if GPLed software didn't exist?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  For some reason, the BSDs never really developed as a rival to commercial server operating systems. Solaris, Irix, Windows NT, etc all seemed to exist pretty well even though BSDs were freely available. Then Linux came and ate everyone’s lunch. Maybe it was the GPL’s requirements to contribute back changes that resulted in Linux rapidly developing a lot of capabilities?
domador 6y ago
Fascinating argument! If I may distill it, it sounds like Low-cost server software -> more power to server-based systems and companies -> more centralization of data -> less privacy Expensive server software -> more power to standalone computing and individual users -> more decentralization of data -> more privacy On a related note, I wonder what would be the threshold at which the cost of servers and software would make social media and ad-tech companies economically unviable, and which would have prevented Facebook, Google, and others from becoming what they've become.

ogre_codes 6y ago

> Proprietary software, also called nonfree software, means software that doesn't respect users' freedom and community. Proprietary software is generally just referred to as "Software". Also known as the stuff that makes phones ring, cars start, satellites communicate, banks able to track money, grocery stores track how many bananas they have, airplanes not collide... Fundamentally software makes the world go around, and a huge chunk of it is proprietary.

bluecatswim 6y ago
I don't see how that contradicts the original statement. Software can be useful while not respecting user freedom.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Does a comment have to contradict something it replies to?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

shadowgovt 6y ago

`(Please note that the article wrongly refers to crackers as "hackers".)` Always fun to see someone out there still trying to fight the fight of owning word definitions that much of the rest of the world has agreed on.

hermitcrab 6y ago

Gnu has done some amazing stuff, but I think they are making themselves look a bit silly with this clickbaity title and intentionally dodgy definition of 'malware'.

joe_the_user 6y ago

It seems like the Solarwinds exploit deserves inclusion on their list. The big thing about the event is you have a whole bunch of high-value-target companies who uncritically load whatever update Solarwinds (and the other proprietary vendors they use) send them. The create a huge "attack surface" and allowed the hackers to stay in the various systems for a substantial period of time. And yes, "anyone can be hacked" but if the various companies compiled their admin software from source, things would certainly be harder - even if dubious source got through, the action of the software of "phoning home" would be a lot more suspicious, etc.

Nevermark 6y ago

I think we need to be adults about these different categories of software. The primary aspects of adult interactions are consent based on honesty and good communication about any arrangement. If you are ok delegating services and other work, you are already trusting another person or organization. There is nothing wrong with trusting a software vendor if the benefits are there and the vendor behaves in a trustworthy manner. Companies often pay for parts they need to create products, where the parts are made with a proprietary process. Whether depending on a vendor for a unique part is worth it depends on the situation. And there isn’t an open source or free state-of-the-art-software solution for every problem.

new_realist 6y ago

If proprietary software is often malware, free software is often shitware.