Software freedom

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
1

Hello Logan, Wendell, Pistol and everone.

 

I have a question for y'all.

Pardon my writing, I had a rough night. Let's get to the point though. Do you guys care about free software? Free as in Freedom, Richard Stallman and all of that?

Do you think all software should be open? I think you have a right to know what's going on. I understand that it's better for some pieces of software to be closed source, because of exploits and such.

You are all using Windows, and I can see why, but I'd just like to know your opinions.

 

Greetings,

 

Dave

2

I do think all software can be open, and while counter-intuitive, open software can be more secure as more eyes are on the code so bugs and exploits can be discovered and patched quicker.

I have very mixed feelings on monetizing software because there is virtually no cost to produce and distribute outside of development and advertising. On one hand, making a living on being a FOSS programmer can be very difficut, but if polished, it results in an excellent end-user experience. On the other hand, people shouldn't be forced to pay rediculous amounts of money for basic functions. I can build an entire tower for less than the cost of a Windows and Office license, which are essential to everyday use of any home computer. This should NEVER be the case, especially since hardware has rather expensive production/manufacturing costs, whereas software has none. 

3

I use open source as much as possible. I think open source is usually better because for people to get their software out there and have people actually using it, it has to be good. If its crappy software it wont get anywhere in the first place. But with paid stuff, you can just charge insane amounts of money for something thats half-assed and usually people will think along the lines of "well its expensive so it will probably be good, right?". Just my opinion.

4

I do, although I still rely on sone closed source stuff mainly AMD, I try to use as many open source apps just need to figure out the open source version of catalyst lol

5

Yes, I am very much in favor of free software because of the social aspect. That's why I like to use "free software" instead of "open source" as often as I can, even though almost everything "open source" is technically "free software" because is licensed under the GPL.

I could go over what Stallman is saying, but you can find his ideas better explained by himself in his videos.

What I don't particularly care about is their spat about the naming convention (GNU/Linux supported by Stallman, just Linux supported by Linus). I agree that names are important, but this has gone long enough and it can create the false impression for new users that linux users like to bicker among themselves over naming schemes.

What I feel that everyone should take away from Stallman's speeches is that software is information, and information needs to be freely available ("freely" as without discriminating, you can choose to pay money for it or not, that is not the point). The sharing of information is the way humankind has evolved since the first man discovered fire and taught it to his tribe, and this is how we should evolve as a society.

EDIT: forgot to talk about this:

"[..] that it's better for some pieces of software to be closed source, because of exploits and such."


THIS IS NOT TRUE!!!!  Free software is of better quality than close source software. Open source means that everyone can review the code and find bugs and vulnerabilities. Who do you think will do a better job reviewing code? Anyone on the internet that can code (and will probably do it out of passion or conviction), or a few guys who haven't slept in ages and are getting paid to deliver the code by a certain date?

For example, Mozilla urged programmers everywhere to find backdoors in their code that could have been implanted without their knowledge by the NSA.

This is a lie, pure and simple, created by the companies that want to control the user. I can see refusing refusing to offer the source of a program because of licensing issues, but not because of security exploits.

6

I don't care too much about "libre" software, I don't care too much about Stallman's ideas. I understand it, and respect the ratio, and support the movement because I think that it's important from an intellectual point of view to have people think about this stuff and inform others.

I don't use closed source software, because closed source software can't be trusted and is just a vehicle for exploitation, period. If they would have nothing bad to hide, they wouldn't hide it. I also only use open source software because of the quality, it's much better quality than closed source software in every aspect.

For me, it's about the quality of the tool. Open source software isn't necessarily cheaper than closed source software, but it's a better investment. I want to use the best possible quality tools to make money. It's not even possible to buy really good closed source tools, so open source is definitely the only way to go. I also want the ultimate reliability and easy maintenance, because I value a healthy work/life balance. Closed source software prevents me from reaching both that and a high productivity, so that's a nig nono.

I also think that non-libre open source software is eventually absurd. Corporations spend a lot of energy on trying to keep everything locked down, but that's all wasted energy in the long run. They should focus on progress and sustainable development instead. A first step would be to kill all proprietary code in open source software, because that would give them access to a lot more assets for free. Just like it took a long time before people started to see that open source development is more efficient and leads to more progress, it will take a long time before people will see that libre software will make it even more efficient and will lead to even more progress. It's not new that big corporations are stupid and make wrong choices though... that will never change.

7

Should all software be forced to be Open Source?  No, that should be the choice of whoever creates the software.

Is Open Source inherently better than proprietary software?  It depends on what you want to do.  Without Open Source software, many Startup companies would never have a chance of succeeding, or would have a much more difficult struggle.  But as Startups move beyond their initial founding and growth phase and begin to receive VC funding, many begin to use proprietary software--many keep using exclusively Open Source products--but a lot will end up with a blend of Open Source and proprietary. 

In terms of which has better quality, Open Source or proprietary?  It varies.  I went to a tech conference last year and attended a presentation by Coverity--a company that makes code quality analysis and testing tools.  They presented the results of a survey they had conducted using their tools to analyze many software projects, both Open Source and Proprietary code bases.  They found that for small to large software products the code quality difference between the two was roughly the same.  However, for very large projects--the approximate cut off they gave was greater than 1 million lines of code, the code quality of proprietary software generally exceeded that of Open Source.

I personally do not like to use things like LOC(Lines of code) to determine code complexity and scale.  In my opinion it is a very antiquated measurement. 1 million lines of well structured OO code is usually going to contain more functionality than 1 million lines of well structured procedural code, not always, but usually.  But I think they were using that as a good cut off point.

There are good and bad Open Source products and there are good and bad Proprietary products.

Windows is horrible--and so is pretty much every Microsoft product--and it is proprietary.  OS X is a great OS and it is mostly proprietary.   Linux is a great OS, and it is Open Source.  And there are lots of other examples for and against each.

8

Should all software be forced to be Open Source?  No, that should be the choice of whoever creates the software.


Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything.

Regarding Coverity, I am genuinly interested in how they came to their conclusions, not to argue over it, but to confirm or refute my own conclusions.

9

Maybe I misunderstood the OP’s question, but I thought he was asking whether or not we thought all software should be Open Source.  If that is the question, then my answer is no.  It should be left up to each product’s software development team to decide whether or not their product should be Open Source or proprietary.

I just checked Coverity’s website, and it looks like they were just purchased by Synopsys last month.  In the interest of full disclosure, I want to state that I used to work for Synopsys.  That was a very long time ago, before Coverity was even a company, but if I put links to things, I always like to state any affiliation I have or have had in the past—lest I be accused of working for Coverity, like I have been in the past of working for Microsoft and Apple.

Here is a link to an overview of Coverity’s annual Open Source vs. Proprietary software scan report:

http://www.coverity.com/press-releases/annual-coverity-scan-report-finds-open-source-and-proprietary-software-quality-better-than-industry-average-for-second-consecutive-year/

It reports the results and briefly goes over how they conducted their measurements.  The presentation at the tech conference had more detail, but there is a link at the bottom of the webpage that will allow you to download the full report.

The funny thing is according to their report; Linux is the “gold standard” for software quality, which runs contrary to their conclusion.

10

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.

My opinion is that a company that uses a proprietary tool to verify the quality of proprietary software is not credible because an independent third party cannot verify their claims. At least they came to the conclusion that Linux code is of high standard. :)

11

Can you adapt proprietary software to your custom needs?... no!

Can you verify the code of proprietary software?... no!

Can you integrate proprietary software in a hardened system (RBAC/MAC)?... no!

If proprietary closed source software is as good or better than open source software, why does it ALWAYS have more code for less functionality?... yeah right...

If the standard of comparison is the performance on hardware platforms for which there is no open source software possible because of lack of documentation, then it's easy to tell people that closed source software is as good as open source software... but that's why only dumb people buy hardware with bootlockers and only proprietary drivers right...

Open source always develops further than proprietary solutions, leading to better results. Look at Dalvik for instance, based upon the ideas of Oracle with JVM, which is being replaced with ART. Oracle just can't make that evolution, they can't make that step, because they don't want to open source completely, so once ART becomes mainstream (which is probably going to be very soon), Oracle will have a tough time convincing embedded Java integrators to stay with the Oracle solution and not look to open source solutions that will probably use less power and have more performance, and cost nothing in terms of licenses... hmmmm... so all the benefits for less cost... yeah, tough decision...

Closed source ends where open source starts, that will always be the case. Even the richest software manufacturers do not have enough money to afford the equivalent of open source development. Even Apple had to steal from open source to make OSX/iOS work, they just took OpenBSD because it has an Apache License and not a GPL license, otherwise they would have taken Linux. Lesson learned, BSD was pushed back, and all major innovative projects are Linux/GPL based. Even proprietary software that was stolen 1:1 from GPL open source software, like Intel's VxWorks, don't work as well as straight open source software, best example being the Curiosity Rover. IBM has statistics about reliability and performance on big data systems on its website, those statistics are more than indicative enough: open source software always wins by a large margin in terms of quality.

There is hardly a single presentation of a launch of a proprietary software product that doesn't at some point involve technical problems. Apple had that, Microsoft had plenty of that. These softwares crash in front of the audience at the presentation, which basically means within a few minutes. Has anyone ever seen that happen with open source software? No! Because it wouldn't be released until it's finished and of good quality. An open source alpha software is often better than a repeatedly service packed and years old closed source software. Example: Manjaro is still not at version 1.0 by a long shot, yet in it's alpha/beta stage, it's a thousand times better than Windows 7 with the latest service pack, and it's a whole lot more innovative and offers a whole lot more performance and features, and works on a whole lot more hardware, including with things like the Microsoft Fingerprint Reader, for which Microsoft broke compatibility with its own Windows operating system after Vista... if they can't even assure compatibility with their own products, what can they do? Oh right... lie to people about the security and privacy of their closed source software... lmao!

The license model has nothing to do with the copyright. By licensing software as GPL, a developer doesn't give away any copyrights. In fact, he couldn't give away the copyright of an open source software if he wanted to, because it's inalienable, whereas he wouldn't even acquire the copyright of a proprietary software made for a corporation. Open source protects developers, closed source is the death of developers. Software patents must just die as soon as possible, and software should all be open sourced for transparency reasons, because it's the only way to stop the huge fraud that is happening. That doesn't mean that software should all be free as in libre, or as in free beer. If a company has a hardware technology that is so advanced that others can't copy it, and registers a hardware patent so that others can't copy it for cheap, why would they not ask money to use the open source APIs for the hardware product. But if another company makes something better, that's where patents become stupid, because at that point, they block innovation and progress, and that's against the interest of humanity.

12

Personally, I don't think there's anything related to software and intellectual property that I don't agree with Stallman on. I think a lot of people try to distance themselves from him because he's not really... PR-friendly, we'll say. He very much practices what he preaches, and it's off-putting to some people.

I think "open source" is just free software lite. Open source sells the functional benefits of having open code, but dispenses with the idealistic vision and moral arguments of the FSF. That makes it more business-friendly and easier for average folks to get behind.

13

the average joe just wants something that works.

14

Just so some don't get pissy, please realise there is a difference between open source software and free (as in freedom) software. Richard stallman publicly dismisses open source software.

Personally I think open source and free software can live in a tranquil world together with just a little bit of effort, mixing the two idiologies into something like open-free software.