5 ms·

"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

by 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.
- MaulingMonkey 12y ago
  > Proprietary software is immoral It's one thing to laud the common benefits of FOSS, or the ethical gains of charity. These things resonate with me. But I fundamentally disagree with - and as a proprietary software developer, am alienated by - your statement. Is that actually what you mean? My day job - making games - is immoral? A daily dose of evil? If so, this is the kind of attitude that puts me off contributing to anything even remotely related to "free software". Perhaps you're fine with that, but I feel it leaves us all poorer. (edit: minor improvements to clarity.)
  - teddyh 12y ago
    Maybe a car analogy will help: If you are selling cars with the hoods welded shut and all systems permeated with DRM, are you making the world better, because, hey, cars are good? Or are you in effect making your customers helpless, teaching them that they are not, and should not even want to be, in control of their own cars?
    - fsloth 12y ago
      DRM and closed source software are not the same thing. Closed source software is commonly used to manipulate open data. Free software facilitates the openness of data and is absolutely essential but it does not make in any way closed source software evil.
      - teddyh 12y ago
        > DRM and closed source software are not the same thing. True, but in this situation they have the same effect which I wanted to highlight, i.e. loss of control on the part of the owner/user. > Closed source software is commonly used to manipulate open data. True, but I can’t see the relevance. > Free software facilitates the openness of data and is absolutely essential but it does not make in any way closed source software evil. I don’t see how that follows.
        fsloth 12y ago
        > True, but in this situation they have the same effect which I wanted to highlight, i.e. loss of control on the part of the owner/user. Analogies are a bit awkward. With cars, DRM would equal to each car manufacturer having their own road barred to other car manufacturers. If the welded-shut-bonnet bothers you just switch cars. This is what I meant with open data - it's what one does with the product that matters, and can one practically choose another. As to the "evilness" of the situation, I cannot think I could work professionally in software as a field - which I love - if there were no established large companies with closed source products. If my analysis is flawed I would value pointers why. As my employer is a closed source software vendor, to me the economics situation looks as follows: vendor provides software, end user uses it to add value to their work. End user reports bugs, vendor fixes the bugs. There is an efficient responsibility interface to the whole thing. And the area is well competed in, if vendor a screws up customers will move to vendor b, c, or d... With an established product there is an established revenue stream which enables stable income for all employees. The way I choose to work on my profession, I will take stable revenue stream with specific work hours over some 24/7 freelancer role to fix bugs here and there. This simply would not be compatible with a family, with small kids I'm barely able to cope with the stresses at home and work as they are. If I had to worry after the next mortgage payment I would probably go nuts, and that is no exaggeration. Open source simply does not work that well as a revenue model in general. It works as an enabler for all sorts of practical interactions, and is absolutely essential, but people need to eat and feed their families. Open source provides value, but few people are able to capture that value. That's why there are non-profits to organize critical work in this area. If the product of my company was open sourced, several enterprising individuals would simply copy the product, relabel it, and sell it. Thus eating to the market share, thus probably leaving me to find another job. Thus, to me, closed source software provides housing, food and security to me and my family.
jsprogrammer 12y ago
The reality of your software being a black box is not a matter of marketability. It is a matter of what you are able to know and control about what your personal machine is actually doing. Obviously there are manifest examples of people running all manner of black boxes, but as someone else pointed out, they are at the complete mercy of their black box vendor (unless someone wants to reverse engineer the box). If your vendor folds up and a critical vulnerability is exposed or is being openly exploited, well, congratulations on your new black brick. On the other hand, if you have complete visibility into what your machine is doing and have the ability to modify it at will you can avoid all manner of failure scenarios that are essentially unrecoverable in the black box scenario. We know people will run black boxes, drink poisoned sugar drinks, support genocidal megalomaniacs, torture others for limited monetary gain and/or endorphin rushes, etc. None of those realities imply that others should follow in the same footsteps, especially when there are workable alternatives that don't suffer from the same permanent failure scenarios.
- fsloth 12y ago
  I think you are a bit too idealistic about the hacking capabilities and willingness of people in general. It is convenient the correct functioning of my car or my phone is the responsibility of someone specific else than me. Civilization is characterized by specialization of people. I cherish the notion that hardware and software should be based on open standards. For day to day work, I just want my gear to work. If it fails, I certainly do not have the time to dig in to the software layer because I have a work, children, housekeeping duties, and a bunch of art projects and higher level concepts I want to focus on. "if you have complete visibility into what your machine is doing and have the ability to modify it at will you can avoid all manner of failure scenarios that are essentially unrecoverable in the black box scenario." You presume all software is trivially simple. I can tell you, it is not. A large category of software requires years of specialization to actually grok what is happening. As an extreme example if I owned a plane I would not like to hack it's software under any circumstance unless I were a professional aeronautics professional, and probably not even then.
  - tokenizerrr 12y ago

by fsloth 12y ago

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.
MaulingMonkey 12y ago
> Proprietary software is immoral It's one thing to laud the common benefits of FOSS, or the ethical gains of charity. These things resonate with me. But I fundamentally disagree with - and as a proprietary software developer, am alienated by - your statement. Is that actually what you mean? My day job - making games - is immoral? A daily dose of evil? If so, this is the kind of attitude that puts me off contributing to anything even remotely related to "free software". Perhaps you're fine with that, but I feel it leaves us all poorer. (edit: minor improvements to clarity.)
- teddyh 12y ago
  Maybe a car analogy will help: If you are selling cars with the hoods welded shut and all systems permeated with DRM, are you making the world better, because, hey, cars are good? Or are you in effect making your customers helpless, teaching them that they are not, and should not even want to be, in control of their own cars?
  - fsloth 12y ago
    DRM and closed source software are not the same thing. Closed source software is commonly used to manipulate open data. Free software facilitates the openness of data and is absolutely essential but it does not make in any way closed source software evil.
    - teddyh 12y ago
      > DRM and closed source software are not the same thing. True, but in this situation they have the same effect which I wanted to highlight, i.e. loss of control on the part of the owner/user. > Closed source software is commonly used to manipulate open data. True, but I can’t see the relevance. > Free software facilitates the openness of data and is absolutely essential but it does not make in any way closed source software evil. I don’t see how that follows.
      - fsloth 12y ago
        > True, but in this situation they have the same effect which I wanted to highlight, i.e. loss of control on the part of the owner/user. Analogies are a bit awkward. With cars, DRM would equal to each car manufacturer having their own road barred to other car manufacturers. If the welded-shut-bonnet bothers you just switch cars. This is what I meant with open data - it's what one does with the product that matters, and can one practically choose another. As to the "evilness" of the situation, I cannot think I could work professionally in software as a field - which I love - if there were no established large companies with closed source products. If my analysis is flawed I would value pointers why. As my employer is a closed source software vendor, to me the economics situation looks as follows: vendor provides software, end user uses it to add value to their work. End user reports bugs, vendor fixes the bugs. There is an efficient responsibility interface to the whole thing. And the area is well competed in, if vendor a screws up customers will move to vendor b, c, or d... With an established product there is an established revenue stream which enables stable income for all employees. The way I choose to work on my profession, I will take stable revenue stream with specific work hours over some 24/7 freelancer role to fix bugs here and there. This simply would not be compatible with a family, with small kids I'm barely able to cope with the stresses at home and work as they are. If I had to worry after the next mortgage payment I would probably go nuts, and that is no exaggeration. Open source simply does not work that well as a revenue model in general. It works as an enabler for all sorts of practical interactions, and is absolutely essential, but people need to eat and feed their families. Open source provides value, but few people are able to capture that value. That's why there are non-profits to organize critical work in this area. If the product of my company was open sourced, several enterprising individuals would simply copy the product, relabel it, and sell it. Thus eating to the market share, thus probably leaving me to find another job. Thus, to me, closed source software provides housing, food and security to me and my family.

jsprogrammer 12y ago

The reality of your software being a black box is not a matter of marketability. It is a matter of what you are able to know and control about what your personal machine is actually doing. Obviously there are manifest examples of people running all manner of black boxes, but as someone else pointed out, they are at the complete mercy of their black box vendor (unless someone wants to reverse engineer the box). If your vendor folds up and a critical vulnerability is exposed or is being openly exploited, well, congratulations on your new black brick. On the other hand, if you have complete visibility into what your machine is doing and have the ability to modify it at will you can avoid all manner of failure scenarios that are essentially unrecoverable in the black box scenario. We know people will run black boxes, drink poisoned sugar drinks, support genocidal megalomaniacs, torture others for limited monetary gain and/or endorphin rushes, etc. None of those realities imply that others should follow in the same footsteps, especially when there are workable alternatives that don't suffer from the same permanent failure scenarios.

fsloth 12y ago
I think you are a bit too idealistic about the hacking capabilities and willingness of people in general. It is convenient the correct functioning of my car or my phone is the responsibility of someone specific else than me. Civilization is characterized by specialization of people. I cherish the notion that hardware and software should be based on open standards. For day to day work, I just want my gear to work. If it fails, I certainly do not have the time to dig in to the software layer because I have a work, children, housekeeping duties, and a bunch of art projects and higher level concepts I want to focus on. "if you have complete visibility into what your machine is doing and have the ability to modify it at will you can avoid all manner of failure scenarios that are essentially unrecoverable in the black box scenario." You presume all software is trivially simple. I can tell you, it is not. A large category of software requires years of specialization to actually grok what is happening. As an extreme example if I owned a plane I would not like to hack it's software under any circumstance unless I were a professional aeronautics professional, and probably not even then.
- tokenizerrr 12y ago