open source tyranny exposed

[Eric Dunbar]

On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 18:46:26 -0800, Bob Nielsen <nielsen@> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 15, 2005 at 02:44:27AM +0100, Philippe Landau wrote:

> >  So what can you do about it? Not much, unless the kernel maintainers
> > ease up a little, and stop being such fundamentalistic turds.
> 
> While I understand your frustration, one could make an even stronger
> argument against the companies who will only supply binaries (which some
> say is worse than no support at all).  If the source were available to
> put into the kernel (or sufficient detail released such that a third
> party could write the necessary code,) this wouldn't be an issue.

At the risk of saying something blasphemous -- CLOSE SOURCE IS also
GOOD. OSS is also a good paradigm for software development, but closed
source (binaries) allows for something that OSS doesn't -- a monopoly
and rapid return on investment.

And, although I agree that large monopolies are harmful (Bell,
consolidated media ownership, Microsoft, diamond distributers, etc.),
smaller ones _do_ serve a purpose and do encourage a certain level of
development (I'm sure they also hamper a lot of (rapid) development).

We've all heard the US government sanctioned propaganda that
short-term protected IP-rights (patents) encourage companies to put
R&D $$ into new ideas. There is a kernel of truth there, even  if the
"developed" world wants to apply a double-standard to the execution of
IP rights in developing nations -- the US stole like crazy from Europe
in the 19th century, and Japan et al. from Europe & NA in the 20th
century and now those nations want to restrict what developing nations
can do...

Anyway, the crux about OSS is that you are free. Free to do with it
what you wish, and providing a hook to binaries which otherwise would
be unavailable fits entirely into this philosophy. Removing hooks
(which don't harm the kernel) simply for the sake of philosophical
"purity" runs counter to the principle of *free* (of course, I don't
know if that was the case).

Binaries allow a company to keep their trade secrets SECRET from their
competitors whilst allowing the "free" community to use their
hardware/software. In THEORY a company could release their code into
the public domain with appropriate licencing restrictions, but, in
practice other companies will be perfectly happy to ignore such
"limitations".

As an example of such "limitations" meaning nothing... someone I know
is a senior software developer for a company that designs software for
a specific industry (not computer-related) -- this company built their
initial software on "borrowed" software (before his/her time) and also
on "misappropriated" OSS software. Now they are growing, they've gone
through the expense of making everything legal by going completely OSS
and correcting their OSS violations (before anyone found out).

This is by no means an isolated incident so I can't blame a company
for providing only a binary and not releasing source. Rather than
criticise them for providing a binary, I think they ought to be
commended for going to the expense of doing so. *nix is still a *tiny*
market in the grand scheme of things so they could just as easily have
ignored *nix.

Anyway, I'm sure this topic could be discussed to death.

Eric.