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Open Source Software has a hugely important factor that we don't talk about enough, IMHO: it promotes standards that are actually accepted. Think about it. A n

Open Source Software has a hugely important factor that we don't talk about enough, IMHO: it promotes standards that are actually accepted. Think about it. A new image compression standard comes out. What are the chances that it becomes widely accepted and used if there isn't any Open Source (or at least free) tooling to compress and decompress it? And just "free" might not be enough, because lots of folks need to incorporate it into their own software (image viewers, browsers, chat clients etc.), and they wouldn't take that risk if they could link it, but maybe not apply a security fix if the vendor didn't react quickly enough. Image formats are a relatively benign example, but deeper in the stack, non-interoperability becomes much more of an issue. How many programming languages without Open Source implementations became really successful? How about OS APIs? Do you think we would have somewhat compatible libc and syscall landscapes without Open Source BSD distributions and Linux? And then there's version control, implementation of communication standards (bluetooth, USB, but also TCP/IP stacks).... the more I think about it, the more horrifyingly fractured the software world would look without OSS as a unifying force.

johannes1234321 3y ago
> Image formats are a relatively benign example GIF was, despite patents a dominating image format for a long time and PNG took quite a while to replace it. If we look at video codecs "open" variants are quite a small part. Heavily patented MPEG dominates the space over webm etc. > How about OS APIs? Windows still got a very successful proprietary API. (Or set of APIs) Yes, open standards and implementations are relevant, but it's not that clear win.
- perlgeek 3y ago
  > GIF was, despite patents a dominating image format for a long time and PNG took quite a while to replace it. Yes, and it caused quite some legal grief for many software vendors. > If we look at video codecs "open" variants are quite a small part. Heavily patented MPEG dominates the space over webm etc. We were talking about Open Source Software, not patents. There are lots of OSS codecs for the various MPEG formats. > Windows still got a very successful proprietary API. (Or set of APIs) Depends on what you call "successful". Sure, it's been in use, thanks to a quasi-monopoly. But I'm not aware of any other OS implementing the Windows APIs because they think it's a great set of APIs. There are some projects like "wine" that try to implement it to offer compatibility, and it took them many years to make it mostly work. Would it have been better for society as a whole if Windows had implemented System V APIs instead of their own, proprietary APIs? Monopolies are the other avenue to introduce new protocols and formats, but apart form that, OSS seems to be the main pathway to introduce them.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    > Depends on what you call "successful". Could you give a reasonably mainstream definition of “successful” that would exclude Windows?
  - djbusby 3y ago
    https://reactos.org/ https://reactos.org/ implement some of the windows API
- derekp7 3y ago
  GIF was fully open and free, before it wasn't. After it had established itself as a standard, was when Unisys and IBM started in with the patent they had on the compression algorithm. Note that GIF could have switched to a different compression format, but that would have had the same issue that PNG had in that new images wouldn't be compatible with existing viewers (and that was in the days before the concept of "evergreen" web browsers -- they didn't get automatic frequent updates). And the other thing holding back the switch to PNG was that people weren't all that confident that there weren't any unknown patent landmines in that standard. You don't know until either one goes off (some patent troll convinces a court that a generically worded patent applies), or until enough time elapses (20 years) that all potential patents would have expired.
- awilfox 3y ago
  And Windows now has WSL to implement the open API, because it's so popular. And implements SSH and sudo, because they're so popular. Etc :)
graemep 3y ago
Another factor is transparency. FOSS software is independently auditable without permission. It does not always happen (few things have "many eyeballs" on them) but it is at least possible. AT the very least, it is a deterrent to malice because of the greater risk of being caught. Yet another is the reduction in administrative cost because of the simpler licensing requirements. Another is the the huge difference to distribution between cheap and free to use because there is not payment mechanism needed. it makes trying software easier too.
pfdietz 3y ago
It goes the other way too: standards promote open source. With standards, there is less of a moat protecting vendors from free competition. We've seen this play out with compilers. Who is going to buy an expensive compiler when a reasonably performant free one implementing the same standard is available?

johannes1234321 3y ago

> Image formats are a relatively benign example GIF was, despite patents a dominating image format for a long time and PNG took quite a while to replace it. If we look at video codecs "open" variants are quite a small part. Heavily patented MPEG dominates the space over webm etc. > How about OS APIs? Windows still got a very successful proprietary API. (Or set of APIs) Yes, open standards and implementations are relevant, but it's not that clear win.

perlgeek 3y ago
> GIF was, despite patents a dominating image format for a long time and PNG took quite a while to replace it. Yes, and it caused quite some legal grief for many software vendors. > If we look at video codecs "open" variants are quite a small part. Heavily patented MPEG dominates the space over webm etc. We were talking about Open Source Software, not patents. There are lots of OSS codecs for the various MPEG formats. > Windows still got a very successful proprietary API. (Or set of APIs) Depends on what you call "successful". Sure, it's been in use, thanks to a quasi-monopoly. But I'm not aware of any other OS implementing the Windows APIs because they think it's a great set of APIs. There are some projects like "wine" that try to implement it to offer compatibility, and it took them many years to make it mostly work. Would it have been better for society as a whole if Windows had implemented System V APIs instead of their own, proprietary APIs? Monopolies are the other avenue to introduce new protocols and formats, but apart form that, OSS seems to be the main pathway to introduce them.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > Depends on what you call "successful". Could you give a reasonably mainstream definition of “successful” that would exclude Windows?
- djbusby 3y ago
  https://reactos.org/ https://reactos.org/ implement some of the windows API
derekp7 3y ago
GIF was fully open and free, before it wasn't. After it had established itself as a standard, was when Unisys and IBM started in with the patent they had on the compression algorithm. Note that GIF could have switched to a different compression format, but that would have had the same issue that PNG had in that new images wouldn't be compatible with existing viewers (and that was in the days before the concept of "evergreen" web browsers -- they didn't get automatic frequent updates). And the other thing holding back the switch to PNG was that people weren't all that confident that there weren't any unknown patent landmines in that standard. You don't know until either one goes off (some patent troll convinces a court that a generically worded patent applies), or until enough time elapses (20 years) that all potential patents would have expired.
awilfox 3y ago
And Windows now has WSL to implement the open API, because it's so popular. And implements SSH and sudo, because they're so popular. Etc :)

graemep 3y ago

Another factor is transparency. FOSS software is independently auditable without permission. It does not always happen (few things have "many eyeballs" on them) but it is at least possible. AT the very least, it is a deterrent to malice because of the greater risk of being caught. Yet another is the reduction in administrative cost because of the simpler licensing requirements. Another is the the huge difference to distribution between cheap and free to use because there is not payment mechanism needed. it makes trying software easier too.

pfdietz 3y ago

It goes the other way too: standards promote open source. With standards, there is less of a moat protecting vendors from free competition. We've seen this play out with compilers. Who is going to buy an expensive compiler when a reasonably performant free one implementing the same standard is available?