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You seriously cannot find a single correlation between the mass availability of programming talent which extracts and transforms data, the vast majority of Inte
by BaseS4 6y ago
You seriously cannot find a single correlation between the mass availability of programming talent which extracts and transforms data, the vast majority of Internet hardware and servers being at least 70% powered by open source software, and the unstoppable destruction of privacy made possible by said infrastructure?
Open source made Internet hardware affordable for mass use.
Mass use of Internet hardware destroyed privacy.
Even at its peak, 1950s IBM didn't have enough money in the world to violate privacy the way Google does. And the only reason Google can do it is because it stands on the infrastructure of Internet servers that were able to proliferate to the point of pennies per megabyte due to open source code.
Yes, open source code is DIRECTLY responsible for the economics that has made the destruction of privacy endlessly cheap.
- ggggtez 6y ago>DIRECTLY Even in your example, the effect from Open Source is at least two steps removed. The problem you are referring to has more to do with Moore's law than open source software. Let's take IBM in the 1950s. Renting the use of a 701 from IBM would have cost $15000 per month. In today's dollars, that would have been about $1.8 million per year. How exactly would you propose that IBM in the 1950s actually convince the world's population to use a computer at all, let alone using one to keep track of all of their conversations? OSS didn't make that change, cheaper silicon did.