4 ms·

For any open source project, the developer only has a final say on the name. If you disagree with what somebody is doing, you are always free to take the code a

by tikhonj 15y ago

For any open source project, the developer only has a final say on the name. If you disagree with what somebody is doing, you are always free to take the code and change what you like. If Linux is used in the government, the government has control: if they want they could, oh, write their own access control and security system for it. And then release it as open source. But that's patently ridiculous, right? The whole point of Free Software is that you are not beholden to the developer--you are always free to modify the code yourself or hire somebody else to do it. The government could even maintain their own distro and do everything the way they want. With proprietary software, there are two issues: they are not allowed to modify it legally and it is not practical because you only have a binary. In fact, the whole point of the GPL is to ensure that not only the original developer does not have absolute control over the source, but that other developers can't do so either.

billpatrianakos 15y ago
I get that completely but one of my major points was that because people are writing the software you'll always run into some problem. People by mature have their views which can creep into software. They also make mistakes which could creep in too. And even though a large community submits code to a single project, the project's creator has final say of what makes the final version. Now, all the points about these issues being mitigated and possibly eradicated are totally right on. What I'm saying though is that this freedom is only truly an advantage if you take advantage of it. Someone who uses free software but doesn't inspect the source, modify it to their liking, and generally just trusts it might as well have gone the proprietary route. That freedom it gives you is essemtially useless unless you're exercising it to your advantage. Granted, I'll give you that you can pretty much trust most major free software but all I'm saying is that you never know, you could have a back door or spyware in the free stuff and won't know it unless you check. Just because it's free doesn't mean it's safe. I'm wondering how many people are using free software to avoid these pitfalls but never look under the hood and just take the developer's word for it that it's secure. "It's FOSS so it must be secure, right?" is how many may think.

by tikhonj 15y ago

billpatrianakos 15y ago

I get that completely but one of my major points was that because people are writing the software you'll always run into some problem. People by mature have their views which can creep into software. They also make mistakes which could creep in too. And even though a large community submits code to a single project, the project's creator has final say of what makes the final version. Now, all the points about these issues being mitigated and possibly eradicated are totally right on. What I'm saying though is that this freedom is only truly an advantage if you take advantage of it. Someone who uses free software but doesn't inspect the source, modify it to their liking, and generally just trusts it might as well have gone the proprietary route. That freedom it gives you is essemtially useless unless you're exercising it to your advantage. Granted, I'll give you that you can pretty much trust most major free software but all I'm saying is that you never know, you could have a back door or spyware in the free stuff and won't know it unless you check. Just because it's free doesn't mean it's safe. I'm wondering how many people are using free software to avoid these pitfalls but never look under the hood and just take the developer's word for it that it's secure. "It's FOSS so it must be secure, right?" is how many may think.