6 ms·

>I don't see why everything needs to be open source. I think this goes back to one of the core tenets of free and/or open source software: the user should be a

>I don't see why everything needs to be open source. I think this goes back to one of the core tenets of free and/or open source software: the user should be able to know, control, and modify exactly what their machine is doing. If the source is not available you're just running a black box and praying that it will do what the person who gave it to you claims it will do.

jussij 12y ago
I suspect for the average Windows user they don't care what their machine is doing. They just want it to work. That black box model has been with Windows from day one and it hasn't stopped Windows owning 90% of the PC market.
- zanny 12y ago
  Wanting your machine to work is also caring what your machine is doing. I'm sure the IRS is kicking themselves for running XP for over a decade, building up such an extreme dependency on it that they are now paying huge sums of money for Microsoft to continue to support them. The black box is only great so long as it actually works, and when it breaks you are completely screwed. It is in Microsofts business interests to make sure it works, but they also want you paying them money while maintaining control of your computer. But when it does break, your only option is the true owner of your computer, who will milk you for all you are worth, because you are now trapped. You don't know you are in a cage until you want out.
  - jussij 12y ago
    My mum and dad both uses their computers on a daily basis and yes on occasions things don't always work as expected. When that happens they ask me to fix it and if it wasn't me, then yes they would take it to a computer technician. Just like they take their car to the mechanic. Guess what. Not everyone is or wants to be a computer programmer and that group makes up the majority of all Windows users. And why Windows has been so successful is you can get away with knowing very little about computers (like my mum and dad) yet still find Windows easy to use.
  - Sanddancer 12y ago
    The number floated around for XP continued support is $200 per machine per year. Redhat, which is one of the few companies that supports a Linux distro for as long as Microsoft supports their products, charges $49/year for the equivalent of Windows Update, and doesn't have any information whatsoever on extended support. So, for the average customer which wants their desktops to have the same lifespan as XP in order to minimize training and other associated costs, ending up with a year or two of Extended Support while you finish your transition is still cheaper than any of the Linux providers.
    - zanny 12y ago
      I'm pretty sure Dell and HP provide support on all their Ubuntu machines, as do System76 et al. And they have extended support offerings all the same. Not sure on pricing, though.
      - Sanddancer 12y ago
        Software support, not hardware. Patches, etc. RedHat is pretty much the only distro maker that will provide software support for the same timeframe as Windows releases are supported. Ubuntu, you'd have gone through the compatibility testing, upgrade testing, migration, etc cycle at least once more often than Windows, and deployments for anyone with custom software get expensive fast.
        the_why_of_y 12y ago
        Besides RHEL there is also SuSE SLES / SLED with apparently 7 years of "general support" + 3 more of "self support" (guess that means you just get serious security fixes). http://support.novell.com/lifecycle/ http://support.novell.com/lifecycle/ In addition to the shorter support time, with Ubuntu LTS it's a bit too easy to install packages from "universe" that aren't actually supported for more than 18 months...
  - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
    >The black box is only great so long as it actually works, and when it breaks you are completely screwed. To most users Linux is just as much of a black box as Windows is. Even among Linux fans, the number of people who actually need to customize the kernel is tiny. The number of people who can customize the kernel is even smaller. So where's the freedom? At the OS level, all that's happened is that the lockdown has moved from corporations to a subset of the developer community. Most end users aren't any more empowered than they used to be. Now - it's different in the web and language spaces, where there's a steady simmer of framework development, and many popular web projects/products wouldn't have been possible without framework sharing. But there's still plenty of proprietary content there. Just try to get Google or Facebook to share their data collections with you and see how politically relevant open source 'freedom' is then. If that seems like a tangent, it's missing the point that the value of a system doesn't come from the source code - it comes from the system as a whole, and includes usability, community reach, innovation, invention, and data. Open source pretends to be a huge lever for freedom, but it's more like a battered fork caught in an avalanche. In computing, the world-changing leverage is elsewhere, and always has been.
    - sudioStudio64 12y ago
      This is a great point.
    - zanny 12y ago
      The user of open source, in the absence of the skills necessary to change code themselves, can easily pay any other developer on the free market to do it for them. You can never do that with proprietary software. If you want something changed or fixed, you must appeal to the singular entity with monopoly access to the source.
    - nitrogen 12y ago
      Comments in this thread keep mentioning "most users" or "the average user". But they're not supposed to be the direct beneficiaries of Free Software. We are, and in line with the rule that 80% of users use 20% of features but never the same 20%, it's perfectly reasonable for us developers to expect a feature (open source code) that nobody else will use. The endlessly apathetic hypothetical "average" user can't see past next week's paycheck, let alone their long-term best software interests. We are the ones who have to look to the future and prepare for it now. Wanting access to source code of core infrastructure is part of that preparation, and "average" users will be indirect beneficiaries via our improved ability to write reliable software. To add another perspective, constantly targeting "average" is a great way to stay mediocre (see regression to the mean). Finally, "average" users will benefit immensely from those who are inspired by the ability to tinker at a young age.
fsloth 12y ago
"If the source is not available you're just running a black box and praying that it will do what the person who gave it to you claims it will do." I'm sorry to point out to you but a large set of computing devices are black boxes and it does not hurt their marketability. Cars, phones (the OS running the hardware, not Android), ... the pilot in the passenger plane does not want to hack his planes OS, nor most likely does the mechanics crew. Practically, lots of people just want to get their job/art project/email/browsing done and do not care about the blackness of the box just as long as it works. I think one of the reasons RMS got going was that he was irritated that the software from vendors did not work. The software markets have advanced some what. Nowadays, for any product with a sizeable market it is fairly safe to presume the software works or at least won't fail miserably. And if it does, it's not just the lone consumer but thousands/million others who are pissed off as well. Yeah, crap gets released though.
- davorb 12y ago
  > I'm sorry to point out to you but a large set of computing devices are black boxes and it does not hurt their marketability. Free software should be looked on from the point of ethics, and not from financial gain. Proprietary software is immoral, and that is the reason you shouldn't be building it. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
  - pikachu_is_cool 12y ago
    I have definitely had my Stallman phase, but after seeing some Free As In Freedom™ projects fail spectacularly, I've realized that there are in fact benefits to keeping some things out of the public eye (from a moral point of view).
  - fsloth 12y ago
    "Free software should be looked on from the point of ethics, and not from financial gain." I think the word 'markets' was a bit misguiding in terms of argumentation. I meant "things which bring people added value and joy" and not "things which can be sold for money". Markets encompass both but I was thinking the consumer added-value in this instance. "Proprietary software is immoral, and that is the reason you shouldn't be building it" I think taken without any other context this is not realistic. I think the concept of ownerhip and responsibility are far more important for high quality software for the point of view of short term end user value than openness. Software has a philosophical and a mathematical dimension. I don't think anyone should be able to own those and that most software patents are harmful in this way. However. Software is used as an enabling component everywhere. As an enabling component it's added value does not depend on it's freedom or openness, but from it's capability to function bug free and provide the features end users need. As the canvas in the art program, as the automatic stabilizer in the plane and so forth. In these instances I claim the biggest human value those softwares bring is indenpendent from their openness. To enable the example softwares to function correctly require lots of hard labour that is not fun at all. I.e. work. Often it is repeating the same old concepts over and over again, knitting the specific system together piece by piece. I think there is no Photoshop killer because the people to whom it brings most added value are not programmers and it's usually not fun or rewarding at all to work with such a large codebase. Blender is a fantastic counterexample. Of course, software should utilize open and hackable data formats so that the data does not vanish. The long term value for the user and the concept of the software providing free speech capabilities then depends on the underlying software ecosystem, and there open source most definitely helps. Open formats, open tools to hack on them, open platforms. Yes, definetly! Any other way is harmfull to all stakeholders. IMO, products can be closed source.

jussij 12y ago

I suspect for the average Windows user they don't care what their machine is doing. They just want it to work. That black box model has been with Windows from day one and it hasn't stopped Windows owning 90% of the PC market.

zanny 12y ago
Wanting your machine to work is also caring what your machine is doing. I'm sure the IRS is kicking themselves for running XP for over a decade, building up such an extreme dependency on it that they are now paying huge sums of money for Microsoft to continue to support them. The black box is only great so long as it actually works, and when it breaks you are completely screwed. It is in Microsofts business interests to make sure it works, but they also want you paying them money while maintaining control of your computer. But when it does break, your only option is the true owner of your computer, who will milk you for all you are worth, because you are now trapped. You don't know you are in a cage until you want out.
- jussij 12y ago
  My mum and dad both uses their computers on a daily basis and yes on occasions things don't always work as expected. When that happens they ask me to fix it and if it wasn't me, then yes they would take it to a computer technician. Just like they take their car to the mechanic. Guess what. Not everyone is or wants to be a computer programmer and that group makes up the majority of all Windows users. And why Windows has been so successful is you can get away with knowing very little about computers (like my mum and dad) yet still find Windows easy to use.
- Sanddancer 12y ago
  The number floated around for XP continued support is $200 per machine per year. Redhat, which is one of the few companies that supports a Linux distro for as long as Microsoft supports their products, charges $49/year for the equivalent of Windows Update, and doesn't have any information whatsoever on extended support. So, for the average customer which wants their desktops to have the same lifespan as XP in order to minimize training and other associated costs, ending up with a year or two of Extended Support while you finish your transition is still cheaper than any of the Linux providers.
  - zanny 12y ago
    I'm pretty sure Dell and HP provide support on all their Ubuntu machines, as do System76 et al. And they have extended support offerings all the same. Not sure on pricing, though.
    - Sanddancer 12y ago
      Software support, not hardware. Patches, etc. RedHat is pretty much the only distro maker that will provide software support for the same timeframe as Windows releases are supported. Ubuntu, you'd have gone through the compatibility testing, upgrade testing, migration, etc cycle at least once more often than Windows, and deployments for anyone with custom software get expensive fast.
      - the_why_of_y 12y ago
        Besides RHEL there is also SuSE SLES / SLED with apparently 7 years of "general support" + 3 more of "self support" (guess that means you just get serious security fixes). http://support.novell.com/lifecycle/ http://support.novell.com/lifecycle/ In addition to the shorter support time, with Ubuntu LTS it's a bit too easy to install packages from "universe" that aren't actually supported for more than 18 months...
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  >The black box is only great so long as it actually works, and when it breaks you are completely screwed. To most users Linux is just as much of a black box as Windows is. Even among Linux fans, the number of people who actually need to customize the kernel is tiny. The number of people who can customize the kernel is even smaller. So where's the freedom? At the OS level, all that's happened is that the lockdown has moved from corporations to a subset of the developer community. Most end users aren't any more empowered than they used to be. Now - it's different in the web and language spaces, where there's a steady simmer of framework development, and many popular web projects/products wouldn't have been possible without framework sharing. But there's still plenty of proprietary content there. Just try to get Google or Facebook to share their data collections with you and see how politically relevant open source 'freedom' is then. If that seems like a tangent, it's missing the point that the value of a system doesn't come from the source code - it comes from the system as a whole, and includes usability, community reach, innovation, invention, and data. Open source pretends to be a huge lever for freedom, but it's more like a battered fork caught in an avalanche. In computing, the world-changing leverage is elsewhere, and always has been.
  - sudioStudio64 12y ago
    This is a great point.
  - zanny 12y ago
    The user of open source, in the absence of the skills necessary to change code themselves, can easily pay any other developer on the free market to do it for them. You can never do that with proprietary software. If you want something changed or fixed, you must appeal to the singular entity with monopoly access to the source.
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    Comments in this thread keep mentioning "most users" or "the average user". But they're not supposed to be the direct beneficiaries of Free Software. We are, and in line with the rule that 80% of users use 20% of features but never the same 20%, it's perfectly reasonable for us developers to expect a feature (open source code) that nobody else will use. The endlessly apathetic hypothetical "average" user can't see past next week's paycheck, let alone their long-term best software interests. We are the ones who have to look to the future and prepare for it now. Wanting access to source code of core infrastructure is part of that preparation, and "average" users will be indirect beneficiaries via our improved ability to write reliable software. To add another perspective, constantly targeting "average" is a great way to stay mediocre (see regression to the mean). Finally, "average" users will benefit immensely from those who are inspired by the ability to tinker at a young age.

fsloth 12y ago

"If the source is not available you're just running a black box and praying that it will do what the person who gave it to you claims it will do." I'm sorry to point out to you but a large set of computing devices are black boxes and it does not hurt their marketability. Cars, phones (the OS running the hardware, not Android), ... the pilot in the passenger plane does not want to hack his planes OS, nor most likely does the mechanics crew. Practically, lots of people just want to get their job/art project/email/browsing done and do not care about the blackness of the box just as long as it works. I think one of the reasons RMS got going was that he was irritated that the software from vendors did not work. The software markets have advanced some what. Nowadays, for any product with a sizeable market it is fairly safe to presume the software works or at least won't fail miserably. And if it does, it's not just the lone consumer but thousands/million others who are pissed off as well. Yeah, crap gets released though.

davorb 12y ago
> I'm sorry to point out to you but a large set of computing devices are black boxes and it does not hurt their marketability. Free software should be looked on from the point of ethics, and not from financial gain. Proprietary software is immoral, and that is the reason you shouldn't be building it. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
- pikachu_is_cool 12y ago
  I have definitely had my Stallman phase, but after seeing some Free As In Freedom™ projects fail spectacularly, I've realized that there are in fact benefits to keeping some things out of the public eye (from a moral point of view).
- fsloth 12y ago
  "Free software should be looked on from the point of ethics, and not from financial gain." I think the word 'markets' was a bit misguiding in terms of argumentation. I meant "things which bring people added value and joy" and not "things which can be sold for money". Markets encompass both but I was thinking the consumer added-value in this instance. "Proprietary software is immoral, and that is the reason you shouldn't be building it" I think taken without any other context this is not realistic. I think the concept of ownerhip and responsibility are far more important for high quality software for the point of view of short term end user value than openness. Software has a philosophical and a mathematical dimension. I don't think anyone should be able to own those and that most software patents are harmful in this way. However. Software is used as an enabling component everywhere. As an enabling component it's added value does not depend on it's freedom or openness, but from it's capability to function bug free and provide the features end users need. As the canvas in the art program, as the automatic stabilizer in the plane and so forth. In these instances I claim the biggest human value those softwares bring is indenpendent from their openness. To enable the example softwares to function correctly require lots of hard labour that is not fun at all. I.e. work. Often it is repeating the same old concepts over and over again, knitting the specific system together piece by piece. I think there is no Photoshop killer because the people to whom it brings most added value are not programmers and it's usually not fun or rewarding at all to work with such a large codebase. Blender is a fantastic counterexample. Of course, software should utilize open and hackable data formats so that the data does not vanish. The long term value for the user and the concept of the software providing free speech capabilities then depends on the underlying software ecosystem, and there open source most definitely helps. Open formats, open tools to hack on them, open platforms. Yes, definetly! Any other way is harmfull to all stakeholders. IMO, products can be closed source.