It’s Not About the Software

This is actually quite a good blog post. I need to think about it, but the concept ("libre software is an idea") seems interesting, and might change the way I think about FOSS.

Personally, I've always been driven to FOSS by curiosity, and once that's satisfied, by the desire to control my own. I liked Unix more than VMS or NOS or NOS/BE, and I liked NetBSD and Linux more than Unix for those reasons.

But...but...but...

NetBSD is Unix!

/me ducks and runs

i was going to say that linux is unix too, but some time ago i discovered that Linux is a recoursive acronym like Gnu is Not Unix: Linux Is Not UniX

;-)

greetings, eMBee.

Nicely written for a high school student, but lack of perspective leads to one very serious errer:

Quoting:The need to hire someone to do one’s work is not freedom. Other than having a wider choice on developers to hire, it might as well be proprietary software.

This statement is patently absurd to anybody who has actually spent time in the world of business, where EVERYTHING must be paid for. One reason why I stopped using the term "Open Source" and reverted to the older "free software" is that businesses -- especially startups -- rely heavily on the freedom of free software even more than they rely on the source availability. However, having source available to your employees to inspect (for security audits or to be sure it's really doing what you think it's doing) or to modify is no small deal, and is absolutely a freedom not generally afforded by proprietary software.

Is it valuable? You might want to ask the folks at Google about that. I hear they've made a buck or two on the stuff.

i agree, it is totally absurd, also because it misses the fact that for proprietary software, there is no choice at all as to who to hire, it is the author and no one else, which means not only that i can't negotiate a good price to get the work done, but in many cases i can't negotiate at all because the author does not care to fix a problem for a single user.

dinotrac wrote:businesses -- especially startups -- rely heavily on the freedom of free software even more than they rely on the source availability

i don't follow you. which freedom is there without source availability? are you talking about the cost?

greetings, eMBee.

@mbaehrixer --

Perspective again, I guess.

The freedom to use software as you need it is a big deal.

You can bring up new machines, create clusters, etc, with far less concern (and cost) than in the proprietary world.

Free software lends itself to pilot programs in a way that proprietary software does not.

Don't know if you've ever seen pictures of the original Google system at Stanford, back when it was called Backrub, but it was an interesting collection of pieces including, umm, borrowed machines and even some Lego (or were they Duplo?) blocks. With free software, a pilot program can be done on a relative shoestring. Proprietary software introduces some subtle roadblocks. Not only is there time spent getting purchase approvals, but now -- how do you justify using some old machine you've got laying around when you need to license several thousand dollars worth of software? Things have a way of spiraling out of control.