Hi
(!If I am posting this in the wrong place, let me know!
This was the best place fitting I could see!)
I was looking at some “Why open source matters” articles.
Their TLDR was that it is good, because the code can be checked, and in principle, if something bad is being done at the source code level, it can be seen.
Assuming, that it is not cleverly hidden.
Any other ideas?
And issues?
Also, if you can remember the big scandal, where a open source dev decided to stop companies using their hard work in their sites, and made some “bugs” into it. I think he also was banned from github?
Sorry, cannot remember the name
Note: Some of the following Reasons also require the Code to be Free as in Libre, not just Open Source.
Auditable Code
→ From a Security Standpoint, it’s easy to find vulnerabilites and submit fixes. This will greatly reduce the chance that something a dev forgot ten years ago suddenly takes down hundreds of companies.
→ From a Privacy Standpoint, one can actually know whether an application takes user data and what’s being done with it
Freedom / Libre
→ If there’s something wrong with the Program or one’s personal usecase requires changes, one is free to find the issue and submit a fix or create a fork of the program
→ There are little restrictions on usage, no DRM and the likes. No subscription fees or the possibility for me to loose access to something as it’s under my control.
→ Should the Creator of the Program do something bad, the community can create a fork to alleviate it.
This is pretty much the F/LOSS ideology in a nut shell. The only part that is missing is the subtlies of the different licenses.
IE.) GNU, if you modify GNU libraries, you have to make public the changes that you made. Otherwise, if you use GNU libraries with out modification, you need to provide those GNU libraries (at least on request). → End user freedom with some Developer restrictions.
IE) BSD, you may use the code however you see fit. You do not need to release your changes. You do not even need to state that you are using F/LOSS code in your project. You may fork a project and keep it completely closed source. → Developer Freedom with some end user restrictions.
For me, a lot of the practical advantage of free & open source software (and hardware) is that you aren’t as often fighting with the software company if the software company wants you to use their stuff a certain way. Some examples I’ve run into in recent memory:
Windows 8 and above are hideously annoying about pushing Bing, Cortana, other Microsoft products, and other things a typical user may not prefer and should be allowed to disable easily.
If something extremely controversial is done in FOSS projects, angry users can modify the source code, reverse the change, then upload their custom version of the software for anyone to use. FOSS software means people other than the official developers can steer what happens with the software, and we don’t all have to agree on what’s best to each get the product we want.
Software companies stop supporting software eventually. That can mean you can’t install or run it anymore, or some features stop working, and there’s nothing you can do. Many multiplayer games are now unplayable, even on LAN, because the software company has decided they can’t be bothered to keep the servers up anymore. Some software can’t even be installed or run once this happens, even if it doesn’t do anything involving the internet. They decide when you’re done using it, not you or your willingness to keep paying.
If the software was FOSS, you are free to use unsupported software as much as you want.
A damaged CD or game cartridge shouldn’t mean you can’t use the software that was on it. My younger brothers scratched a nontrivial number of my games back when CDs/DVDs were used for that.
If the user was free to make backup copies, damage to the $0.10 piece of plastic the game is written on wouldn’t lead to losing the $60+ game.
Hardware that comes with special closed source software often has proprietary nonsense that makes repairs considerably harder or impossible. My Xbox 360’s DVD drive died, and with it, my ability to play my 360 games I’ve paid for. It uses more or less standard DVD drive hardware, but the software checks the serial number of the DVD drive matches the original so I can’t just buy a new DVD drive and swap it like in a normal computer.
If the xbox used standard parts and didn’t check if the DVD drive was changed to actively prevent repair, it wouldn’t be too difficult to fix this and move on. If it was a PC, you could just buy a cheap USB DVD drive and wouldn’t even need to bother with the repair if you didn’t want to.
Apple hardware is notorious for this. Even if you can fix the hardware, the software will stop you.
The $0 aspect is also great, but for me a lot of the motivation to choose FOSS projects is that the company I’m doing business with isn’t actively trying to sabotage me. I’m very willing to spend hours to get something working, but it’s very frustrating to spend hours trying to use the software you paid for the way you want it to. Some people really enjoy a puzzle, but very few people enjoy puzzles when the pieces bite.
That’s what my friend’s dad wound up doing for me, but if he didn’t do it then I would be toast. It still took several weeks for the laser assembly to arrive from China, so the xbox was unavailable.
Around the same time the DVD drive in my beater desktop died and I replaced it with an off the shelf DVD burner from Best buy for $30, and the entire affair took 45 minutes including travel time.
One of these situations sucked much less than the other
So, just because I think the “Pros” are already well expanded on, some “Cons” would be:
Security Concerns: open-source means that malicious actors can view the code directly and have an easier time coming up with attack vectors; it also means that they can try and sneak in malicious code (see aforementioned research project that managed to introduce malicious code into the linux kernel codebase for a short time) which can be hard to find, if ever, depending on the complexity of the project and the community around it
Lack of QA/UAT: testing, both for the purposes of code quality and general user-testing, is hard for open-source projects because that costs money and time and manpower. One need look no further than UX design in Ubuntu vs MacOS/Windows, where much of the QoL improvements are driven directly by an enterprises ability to fund their R&D and throw resources at the problem; open-source projects need to be more laser focused in their feature development and have a much narrower scope at what feedback they can take and incorporate
Lack of Support: open-source software very rarely has the kind of support you want to rely on in a business setting or for normal (not tech savvy) end-users
Fragmentation: the nature of open-source means fragmentation is normal and generally goes directly against the goal of unifying users to one standard, ie. look at linux
These are just some off the top of my head.
Open-source can be a good thing in a lot of places, but it’s not universally always better than a closed-source solution
Open Source software returns clarity to the relationship between the developer and user of the software.
Modern proprietary software tends to be filled with all sorts of ‘features’ that are neither disclosed to nor wanted by the user. The legalese in the license associated with the software tricks you into giving up rights which then allows the developer to turn YOU into a product and sell your data to undisclosed third parties for additional profit. [ Surveillance capitalism - Wikipedia ]
It is impossible to hide such user-hostile code in Open Source software. Open Source licenses are also not crafted in such a way as to trick you into giving up rights.
An Open Source calculator will let you add up numbers. A proprietary calculator will let you add up numbers, but may also track your location, log your keystrokes, monitor other running programs, listen in on your private conversations using your microphone, take photos of you using your inbuilt camera, and worse…
In a nutshell: You know that Open Source software does what it says it does because the source code can and will be checked. Proprietary software, however, is a vector for exploitation of the user — you have no idea if, when or how it is going to betray your trust, hijack your computer, and abuse your data. Users have no basis for confidence that proprietary software will only do what it claims to do, whereas they do have a basis for confidence that Open Source software will only do what it claims to do.
I like the community aspect of it, if you have the required knowledge you can help contribute to an amazing system. Not to mention not as many privacy concerns in my opinion.
IMO this is particularly important between corporates. Why does IBM spend so much on LInux? Perhaps because it has a history of being screwed over by other software vendors. Google was able to quickly get huge traction for Android, because its partners had confidence that the relationship was clear and open.
Some of my best reasons are that, for one, if there are problems in the source code, they’re generally discovered quickly by the community (Remember equifax?). Another is that, if you don’t like how some specific thing works, say in kde plasma, you can just change it if you know how. One more is that, if you ever have a problem, I there’s an entire community of people who can help, rather than waiting for technical support from a faceless, soulless company who only cares about you paying them.
It’s past being “good”, it just is and it’s not going away.
It helps as a way around vendor lock-in, for businesses utilizing the code/products; and for “public good” type projects that need to use the code.
It’s good for learning and development of humans who work with it, as they’re venturing into their professional developer lives. Even if it may seem atrocious on average, from the perspective of professionals who might be used to their own code bases at work, there’s in incredible amount of learning that can be had by following the evolution of some of the opensource projects over time.
It’s like knowledge - you can learn how some stuff works in the world, through code.
It’s foundational to the survival of civilization (you think airplanes and SpaceX rockets, and the Internet, and cars and boats and trains run on proprietary “visionary captains of the industry developing in a basement stuff”? Yes. What do you think their stuff is built on top of? There’s a lot more devs using opensource text editors and building stuff on Linux/BSD to run on Linux or BSD once deployed, than there are developers using proprietary tools or languages.