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Reading this, I had an epiphany about why open-source software is essential. How do you peak under opaque abstractions? It's just not possible. Imagine if Kube
by subomi 3y ago
Reading this, I had an epiphany about why open-source software is essential. How do you peak under opaque abstractions? It's just not possible.
Imagine if Kubernetes was closed source & binary distribution only. Understanding abstractions is, I think, why being open source has become table stakes for infrastructure software.
- diarrhea 3y agoTo add: the two most popular languages by most popular metrics, JavaScript and Python, are interpreted. There, you don’t have a choice. Go is different of course. Your insight is very good. Not being able to dig into source code when needed is unimaginable.
- MaxBarraclough 3y ago> you don’t have a choice That's not really true, obfuscating JavaScript can be quite effective at making it difficult to study the program's workings. It can't be perfect at this, of course, but neither is conventional ahead-of-time compilation to machine code.
- MaxBarraclough 3y agoRight. The Free Software Foundation have written about this, they consider the right to study software to be part of 'Freedom 1'. * https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html * https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.en.html