3 ms·

Cue the "you wouldn't steal a car" music. ♫ "You wouldn't demand open-source software for life-critical contexts instead of the industry-perfected closed softw

Cue the "you wouldn't steal a car" music. ♫ "You wouldn't demand open-source software for life-critical contexts instead of the industry-perfected closed software" ♫

parthianshotgun 3y ago
I am bad at reading this, can you elaborate what you mean? Should we open source life critical software?
- fsflover 3y ago
  We should: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38143180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38143180
  - parthianshotgun 3y ago
    Oh good! I agree, perhaps some of it can be defined as a social good. I remember the idea that was posed of having government created social media. Something open source and with a transparent algorithm. I really can't see a downside if it's done well.
onetimeuse92304 3y ago
I think you are missing the point. The point is that with commercial software is that there exists an entity that accepts responsibility for it under threat of severe penalties. You don't want somebody to be killed and then have just everybody shrug "it is not me" and not be able to find a culprit. Personally, I always include a note that my software is offered as is and I do not accept any liability for anything that it might do including damage to property or somebody's health or life. That, obviously, absolutely disqualifies it from any critical use. But that's only fair, if I am not compensated for my work I should not be held liable for it either. Now, once we find out the software pretty much must be developed commercially, there exists currently no way to force the commerce to make the code public and there are valid arguments in the debate that making it public could make it less safe.
- fsflover 3y ago
  > The point is that with commercial software is that there exists an entity There is no reason you can't hire a company to support free software.
  - onetimeuse92304 3y ago
    You can hire, but no company will take responsibility for it as in be liable in court for damages.
    - fsflover 3y ago
      Why is that? Should depend on your pay.
- ale42 3y ago
  Maybe, rather than "open source" it should at least be "source available"? I mean, to allow everyone to see what's actually going on, and spot possibly critical bugs. This doesn't remove the responsibility from the entity who accepts the legal responsibility for what the software does.
UncleMeat 3y ago
Eh. The bug is in the Android app. It is probably roughly as easy to identify this bug by staring at the dalvik bytecode as it is to identify this bug by staring at the source (though it is odd that this appears to be nondeterministic - hard to know why that would be the case). This is a really really bad bug, but I don't think this is especially related to open vs closed source products.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  The fact that it is non-deterministic is the scary bit. It could be the symptom of something much worse than just a display issue.
shp0ngle 3y ago
Are you implying that open source software doesn't have bugs because there are thousands of reviewers looking at every commit? If you do you haven't actually worked on open source software. Even in critical software people just LGTM.
- fifteen1506 3y ago
  No. Just saying that there comes a time where a company may be refusing to fix bugs because they aren't earning enough money associated with that software. So, open-source may win there. It's worth thinking about it.
Mountain_Skies 3y ago
IIRC, both the ipod and the Zune media players independently ended up with nasty date/time bugs due to errors in open source libraries they used. More eyeballs can be a good thing but given the number of willing eyeballs and the amount of open source code, it seems like the effectiveness of eyeballs on code is going down. Probably still better than just company eyeballs but far from something that should be relied on to filter out defects.

Cue the "you wouldn't steal a car" music. ♫ "You wouldn't demand open-source software for life-critical contexts instead of the industry-perfected closed software" ♫

parthianshotgun 3y ago

I am bad at reading this, can you elaborate what you mean? Should we open source life critical software?

fsflover 3y ago
We should: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38143180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38143180
- parthianshotgun 3y ago
  Oh good! I agree, perhaps some of it can be defined as a social good. I remember the idea that was posed of having government created social media. Something open source and with a transparent algorithm. I really can't see a downside if it's done well.

onetimeuse92304 3y ago

I think you are missing the point. The point is that with commercial software is that there exists an entity that accepts responsibility for it under threat of severe penalties. You don't want somebody to be killed and then have just everybody shrug "it is not me" and not be able to find a culprit. Personally, I always include a note that my software is offered as is and I do not accept any liability for anything that it might do including damage to property or somebody's health or life. That, obviously, absolutely disqualifies it from any critical use. But that's only fair, if I am not compensated for my work I should not be held liable for it either. Now, once we find out the software pretty much must be developed commercially, there exists currently no way to force the commerce to make the code public and there are valid arguments in the debate that making it public could make it less safe.

fsflover 3y ago
> The point is that with commercial software is that there exists an entity There is no reason you can't hire a company to support free software.
- onetimeuse92304 3y ago
  You can hire, but no company will take responsibility for it as in be liable in court for damages.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    Why is that? Should depend on your pay.
ale42 3y ago
Maybe, rather than "open source" it should at least be "source available"? I mean, to allow everyone to see what's actually going on, and spot possibly critical bugs. This doesn't remove the responsibility from the entity who accepts the legal responsibility for what the software does.

UncleMeat 3y ago

Eh. The bug is in the Android app. It is probably roughly as easy to identify this bug by staring at the dalvik bytecode as it is to identify this bug by staring at the source (though it is odd that this appears to be nondeterministic - hard to know why that would be the case). This is a really really bad bug, but I don't think this is especially related to open vs closed source products.

jacquesm 3y ago
The fact that it is non-deterministic is the scary bit. It could be the symptom of something much worse than just a display issue.

shp0ngle 3y ago

Are you implying that open source software doesn't have bugs because there are thousands of reviewers looking at every commit? If you do you haven't actually worked on open source software. Even in critical software people just LGTM.

fifteen1506 3y ago
No. Just saying that there comes a time where a company may be refusing to fix bugs because they aren't earning enough money associated with that software. So, open-source may win there. It's worth thinking about it.

Mountain_Skies 3y ago

IIRC, both the ipod and the Zune media players independently ended up with nasty date/time bugs due to errors in open source libraries they used. More eyeballs can be a good thing but given the number of willing eyeballs and the amount of open source code, it seems like the effectiveness of eyeballs on code is going down. Probably still better than just company eyeballs but far from something that should be relied on to filter out defects.