Forums | MacLife

Iritscen · 2008-11-23 1:23 pm

It seems that you like controversy in this Free Thought forum, so here's a controversial idea: free open source software is harmful and should not be allowed to compete with similar-but-commercially-available software. The focus here is on open source software ("OSS") that is free. Not all of these points apply to software that gives away its source but attempts to charge for it. Such products are not part of this debate, so when mention is made of "open source", assume it is free OSS, or FOSS. I think that "open source" is a safe shorthand to use without always appending "free", because most OSS is free.

Point #1: Open source software is developed by people who are either (a) independently wealthy or, more likely, (b) have ample free time that they are willing to devote to a project that they will not be paid for, while also working a day job that does pay them.

Point #2: Being that open source software is not subject to the economic laws of supply and demand when it is offered for free, allowing open source products to mix with the commercial market stifles development of commercial products by depriving the professional software industry of revenue ($60 billion so far according to the Standish Group). As FOSS continues to increase its market share beyond its current 6%, it is having an increasingly destabilizing effect on the software industry as a result.

Point #3: Corporations have greater accountability for their products, and there is also much higher expectation as to documentation and tech support.

Point #4: FOSS rarely provides "official" tech support, allowing message boards, mailing lists, and other user-driven fora to serve as the main problem-solving resources. Message boards and mailing lists are inherently more poorly-organized solution providers than manuals.

Point #5: FOSS often does not provide up-to-date documentation, and the docs that are available are likely to be incomplete as well. Naturally, FOSS does not employ paid documentation writers, although this is common in the corporate sector because of the inability of programmers to write lengthy docs for all of their work.

Point #6: In light of the relatively poor attention that is given to FOSS compared to its commercial kin, there has been a barrier to greater numbers of users switching to FOSS solutions. However, most of the barrier is a problem of awareness among non-savvy computer users, not a refusal to use software that is not fully documented or supported. This barrier of a lack of awareness is likely to lessen over time as a new generation of computer users both is aware of, and expects, more and more products and services to be delivered free of cost to the end-user.

Point #7: It is a long-standing economic reality that a majority of consumers will use a product that is cheaper even if it is somewhat lower in quality than a higher-priced alternative, but not much lower in quality. The market naturally favors products that provide an "optimum" ratio of quality to price. FOSS provides products that are generally at least acceptable in quality, and have no price point at all. Therefore, they can wildly skew the market in their favor even though their downsides are potentially dangerous (see following two points).

Point #8: FOSS projects are prone to disorganization and frequent abandonment by contributors. For projects that are maintained by a handful of developers, or only one, the potential for a disruption in providing updates and bug fixes is a constant threat. Since corporations fill jobs in a hierarchical manner, with paid and benefited employees, turnover and disorganization are significantly less common. This results in a more stable product with a longer-term guarantee of support for the end-user. Companies need to use software with such support; in the case of an emergency with a piece of FOSS, obtaining solutions by way of user-based fora is not considered acceptably fast or acceptably authoritative in its results.

Point #9: The very nature of FOSS is a goldmine for virus writers and hackers who can examine the source code with no need to even reverse-engineer a compiled product. As market share of FOSS products increase, the potential for widespread damage done by viruses increases. If FOSS is in use at an office, it is providing yet another "in" for hackers, besides the OS itself (by far, usually Windows), because offices rarely keep their computers' security holes fully patched or even nearly fully patched.

Point #10: Programming free software can be called an act of altruism; however, the monetary benefit to each individual is no greater than the cost of the commercial software that the FOSS provides a free alternative to. At the same time, this act of seeming altruism denies paying work to authors of shareware products that may have offered the same features, but for a small price. The cost to those programmers on an individual basis is potentially hundreds to thousands of dollars. With enough FOSS products available, the opportunities for paid non-corporate work will decline sharply. Therefore, when viewed on an individual basis, FOSS does far more monetary harm than good. The work being done by programmers who can afford to program for free defeats the potential for work by programmers who wish to use their skills in exchange for remuneration, which is a basic right that capitalism is intended to offer every citizen.

Point #11: When viewed on a societal basis, that is, the good it does for society as a whole, FOSS provides little demonstrable benefit. It is often unsuitable for, or undesired by, corporations due to the lack of support, therefore FOSS contributes little in the way of true cost savings that would benefit the economy. The benefit to the mass of end-users is the saving of a modest amount of money that is unlikely to encourage them to spend that money on other software, therefore the economy does not benefit on that basis either.

Summary: Free open source software injures the normal balance of competition fostered by capitalism; deprives some hobbyist programmers of money that allows them to either maintain programming as a side job or to parlay it into a full-time non-corporate career, thus removing jobs from the market; creates software that is especially vulnerable to viruses and other malicious activity; deprives of money the corporations that provide better-supported products.

Conclusion: Therefore, FOSS should be legally controlled where it competes with similarly-featured commercial (i.e., sold by either a corporation or an LLC) software. Just as tariffs are used to protect the balance of a nation's economy, so FOSS could be "tariffed", that is, made to sell for a price. The price could be based on the estimated development costs (man-hours it took to develop, at the rate of, or exceeding, minimum wage), and a reasonable simulated profit margin; this money need not be forcibly distributed to the developers, but rather could go to various funds that would benefit the public.

Rules:
1. Stick to either debating the above facts with your own facts or adding pro-OSS facts of your own that you feel justify the existence of free OSS by outweighing the negatives stated above.

2. Ad hominem replies are pointless ("What did open source do to YOU to make you hate it?"). Don't assume that I actually have or do not have the opinion "FOSS is harmful"; it's a proposition or talking point, not an attack or a rant.

3. Saying "I don't think [some issue] is as bad as you say" is not a valid response. If you wish to question an assertion made above, by all means do so, and I (or someone else, if they wish to) will try to provide hard evidence for that point; if you can provide evidence to the contrary of such an assertion, that's an even better way to debate the point. But avoid weasel words ("I think" and "it doesn't seem"). It's true that the above facts do not cite any sources (but one) at the moment. I only have so much time to make this post, and I am curious to see which points are hotly contested, and which are generally agreed with and therefore need no supporting hard evidence. In other words, I am trying to be save myself some time and go with the flow of the devate; I'm just one man here smile

4. The facts are numbered for a reason. If you cite its number when arguing a fact, it not only helps keeps the debate on target, but makes it much easier to collate the responses if I later decide to provide a summary of the debate point by point.

Okay, please discuss. big_smile

Chickenhawk · 2008-11-23 1:36 pm

tl;dr

Chickenhawk · 2008-11-23 1:39 pm

Point #9: The very nature of FOSS is a goldmine for virus writers and hackers who can examine the source code with no need to even reverse-engineer a compiled product. As market share of FOSS products increase, the potential for widespread damage done by viruses increases. If FOSS is in use at an office, it is providing yet another "in" for hackers, besides the OS itself (by far, usually Windows), because offices rarely keep their computers' security holes fully patched or even nearly fully patched.

That's laughable. You do understand that the most secure OSes out there are FOSS, right?

Something like 70% of the server market runs Linux or UNIX. All (rather most) being FOSS, with heavily scrutinized source code.

jkahless · 2008-11-23 1:44 pm

Yes it is harmful, to money grubbing corporations.

ShnickyShnack · 2008-11-23 2:00 pm

Anyone can build a car, but only Honda can mass-produce the Civic.

I think there's plenty of room for both.

Jdude · 2008-11-23 2:26 pm

Rules? You set rules?
bwa a ha ha ha ha!@!!!!

Despite your assertions, open source software does compete in the open market. Let's take claris works and photoshop as an example. I do not have 800 dollars, nor are my requirements that of a full fledged photo manipulation program. The price(zero) and quality(enough) of claris works perfectly fit my skill level and needs.

Should you impose a tariff on a decade old program that is given away free now? If so, why? I am certainly using it instead of a competitor's program that I must pay for.

Who would benefit from the tariff? How would you ensure it was being collected? How would you stop guys like me from simply getting pissed off about the tax and pirating it? Since the government would be the one losing out, and not the actual artist or programmer as they issue the program for free, I would zap copies of the things all day and hand them out to hobos or something. How would you handle that?

And finally, if someone writes a script for me to automate a few simple tasks for my home or office, will you tax that as well? The programmer provided a service that (probably) has a paid-for commercial counterpart out there.

Walking is free. Cars are not. Yet people buy them by the millions. Tap water is free. Bottled water is not. Again, people buy bottled water by the millions.

If your product cannot compete with a free alternative, your product sucks.

-Jdude

jerwin · 2008-11-23 2:56 pm

Jdude wrote:
Rules? You set rules?
bwa a ha ha ha ha!@!!!!

I think Iritscen is confused by the thread "Prop 8: voters vs the courts", and believes that this is a debate society, with formal propositions and Resolutions.

Free software is useful, in a way that Closed source software is not.

Last edited by jerwin (2008-11-23 2:57 pm)

radarman · 2008-11-23 2:57 pm

Your bottom line appears to be that people should be legally prevented from giving away their own work, or to collaborate with others to give away their combined work. Why not ban habitat for humanity, since they effectively do the same thing. Surely a paid builder would benefit from that job.

We are taught from the time we can walk to share, not hoard. Somewhere in life, that gets switched around in most of us, but there are still a lot of people who haven't had that beaten out of them. Either that, or they just like the recognition as a smart coder - which can be useful in job interviews. People can cut their teeth on real systems, and see real results.

As for the rest of us, we get multiple benefits. If you know how to code, you can fix problems or add features yourself (I've done both). If you don't, you can probably find a few other people with the same problem, and one of them will likely know how to fix it. No longer do you have to wait for a commercial project to decide when (or if) it is profitable to release an update. I have commercial software that has NEVER been updated, and has serious bugs in it.

Also, it allows mere mortals to play with technologies that have previously been restricted to huge corporations. If I want to run a PBX in my house, I can. If I want to set up a file server, I can. If I want to build my own DVR, I can. Average people are playing with systems that were once exclusive to fortune 500 systems the way children play with Lego thanks to open source projects. This improves the potential pool of creativity where these systems are concerned. Simple DVR's have gone from Tivo-esque devices to projects like MythTV that create ridiculously powerful media entertainment devices. There are endless examples of people using commercial quality database software to categorize their music collections, etc.

Society gets far too much benefit from OSS to ban it because it makes life a bit more difficult for certain commercial developers; which brings me to your fairness argument. If commercial software can't compete with free software, well tough poop. Life isn't always fair. If, at some point free software lets everyone down, someone will either release a commercial app that solves the problem - or fix the free solution for everyone. This does occasionally happen. How many GNU tax packages have you seen lately?

Oh, and the US isn't the only nation with open source coders living in it. Much of the rest of the world is finally starting to see the advantages of open source projects, so I suspect getting them to outlaw them might be a bit difficult.

Macskeeball · 2008-11-23 3:46 pm

The "Free" in "free and open-source software" means free as in freedom, not free as in beer. The freedoms in question are the four freedoms outlined by the Free Software Foundation: the freedom to run, study, modify, and redistribute the software. It's completely possible to sell free software. Take Red Hat Linux, for example.

OpenBSD is widely considered the most secure operating system in the world. Security through obscurity simply does not work. By having more eyes on the source code, flaws in the code can be fixed much faster.

Two examples of FOSS that have greatly benefit the world are the Apache web server and Firefox, but I am certain there are many others.

Many companies build their business on open-source software. Google and Yahoo immediately come to mind, and TiVo runs on Linux. Mac OS X itself is built on Free and Open Source software. Linux runs well on low-powered hardware, allowing netbooks to take off.

In summary: the original post read as so much BS.

resedit · 2008-11-23 5:06 pm

Point #1: Open source software is developed by people who are either (a) independently wealthy or, more likely, (b) have ample free time that they are willing to devote to a project that they will not be paid for, while also working a day job that does pay them.

Bull smurf.

Most open source software of consequence is developed by people who are paid to develop it.

StaticAge · 2008-11-23 5:10 pm

Point # 1, 7: So what? You have listed some assertion that may or not be true; however, you have failed to make it into a reason of one sort or another by explaining why this is unfair or bad for the economy.

Point # 2: Value is not just based on price. It is a mistake to think that because something is "free" that it has no pull or place in a market and that it does not have a value of its own. People make swaps and trades all the time with all sorts of goods- by your argument they are ruining all kinds of business. If I trade a cd of Danny Gatton for a Youth of Today 7" w/ a batman stamp on the label, no record company is being hurt just because neither of us is buying a new item. If a new guy is at a show giving away free demos of his band, he isnt ruining any established bands chance of performing or selling music.

Point # 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 11: These points work equally to demonstrate why someone might rather pay a bucket load of money for a product that has "accountability," documentation, tech support, etc, instead of a cheap/free version. If these points are true, then there is no reason to suppose that FOSS does not come with its own costs that any reasonable person would weigh or be forced to deal with which might make them choose corporate wares that have these features. You might as well lay these arguments against the consumer versions of corporate software that lack key features you pay for in the pro versions.

Point # 10: If there is a problem of too many programmers and not enough wealthy corporations to pay them for products others are offering for free, then too bad. The economy does not owe someone a living because they want to be a computer programmer or artist or movie star and no one will hire them. Too many people in a trade means less money, which usually means that people look for other jobs and lessening the amount of people in that field who will eventually find work in it as supply and demand are worked out. Thats basic labor economics.

resedit · 2008-11-23 5:13 pm

Point #3: Corporations have greater accountability for their products, and there is also much higher expectation as to documentation and tech support.

Point #4: FOSS rarely provides "official" tech support, allowing message boards, mailing lists, and other user-driven fora to serve as the main problem-solving resources. Message boards and mailing lists are inherently more poorly-organized solution providers than manuals.

Point #5: FOSS often does not provide up-to-date documentation, and the docs that are available are likely to be incomplete as well. Naturally, FOSS does not employ paid documentation writers, although this is common in the corporate sector because of the inability of programmers to write lengthy docs for all of their work.

If those are true, then commercial software has something of value to distinguish itself from FOSS.
I think you'll find that in reality, FOSS often has better documentation in more languages than commercial software.

Look at the Apache documentation, for example.

Most commercial software users get their documentation from third party sources - look at all the books on photoshop and MS office in the computer aisle at Barnes and Noble for example. The documentation that comes with those programs isn't really that much better than the documentation that comes with their OSS alternatives.

resedit · 2008-11-23 5:15 pm

Point #8: FOSS projects are prone to disorganization and frequent abandonment by contributors. For projects that are maintained by a handful of developers, or only one, the potential for a disruption in providing updates and bug fixes is a constant threat. Since corporations fill jobs in a hierarchical manner, with paid and benefited employees, turnover and disorganization are significantly less common. This results in a more stable product with a longer-term guarantee of support for the end-user. Companies need to use software with such support; in the case of an emergency with a piece of FOSS, obtaining solutions by way of user-based fora is not considered acceptably fast or acceptably authoritative in its results.

It's freaking amazing how often closed source companies go out of business or drop a product.
With Open Source, you at least have the option to pay someone to fix bugs and/or add features to a dead project you need. You see, you have legal access to the source code!

resedit · 2008-11-23 5:16 pm

Hmm ....
I just saw the rules.
I wonder if we have just been suckered into doing someones debate class assignment.

Chickenhawk · 2008-11-23 5:21 pm

I would like to point out the irony in a mac user pointing out that FOSS is harmful.

Farmerkev · 2008-11-23 5:24 pm

I'm thinking if the original poster doesn't add to the discussion it's going to go bye bye.

JakeTheTall · 2008-11-23 5:25 pm

"...allowing open source products to mix with the commercial market stifles development of commercial products"

lol

resedit · 2008-11-23 5:26 pm

An example of how OSS benefits the consumer.

Dad just gave me his Plextor ConvertX. It's a DVR device - you can use it to watch/record TV on your PC.
Plextor was bought, the product is no longer being supported.
Last round of XP updates completely broke the device on his system, he can no longer use it.
Plextor, a commercial company, paid to have an open source driver developed for Linux.
That means Linux still has a working driver, and probably will for years and years to come.

Iritscen · 2008-11-23 6:06 pm

Okay, thanks for the answers. Some responders missed some of the points I was making, but the main thing I got from your responses was that open source has been a valuable foundation for lots of web platforms and OSes; that docs for commercial apps really aren't that good either, a lot of the time (hence the need for all those books in the bookstore, as resedit pointed out), and that companies aren't always more reliable with fixes and upgrades as open source developers. Perhaps being open source actually allows patches to happen faster, as Macskeeball said.

The point that was a totally new thought to me was that companies who go under usually take their products with them, but open source is always open for new hands to come on board in case a maintainer bails out.

I won't revisit each point that I think was missed, but I will respond to StaticAge's response to #10. You indicate that if jobs are being taken by people working for free, that's the market's problem. If I was picking up immigrants to work on my construction jobs (if I were in construction), and paying them nothing, let alone below minimum wage (and for some reason that was okay with them), I don't think most people would just say, "So what if it's taking others' work? Tough, it's the market, find another job, you people who want to work for money."

Also, I never proposed that FOSS be banned or made illegal, only that it should be restricted where it competes with other software. It's fairly easy to say that writing open source software for Linux is not competing with commercial software that only runs on Windows or Mac, so anyone who was willing to use Linux (with the technical savviness that requires) would have a lot of FOSS to choose from as well.

And yes, Macskeeball, FOSS may actually be defined as "free to modify", not "free to own", but I wanted to focus on the truly free stuff, like Firefox or OO.o. However, your correction of my terminology was not lost on me, so thanks for pointing that out.

Finally, I was throwing this out there as an intellectual exercise to see the reaction, so I hope you don't think I'm crazy. I enjoy using FOSS as much as anybody and really appreciate the incredible work that's gone into much of it. Heh, this wasn't anybody's homework, I'm well past the age where I had to do homework. Sorry if the Rules were a bit excessive, I don't frequent the Free Thought forum, so I don't know how you guys roll. I should have given you more credit. Anyway, thanks for the responses, they were more informative than they were over-reactionary, which I was hoping would be the case.

Macskeeball · 2008-11-23 6:19 pm

Frankly, I don't see how it's possible in the first place for a government to restrict FOSS in an Internet age, where anybody can easily create their own web site and many, many new web sites are created every single day. It's something that by its very nature can't be contained or controlled. Not that it's something to restrict in the first place.

Last edited by Macskeeball (2008-11-23 6:22 pm)

resedit · 2008-11-23 6:19 pm

Also, I never proposed that FOSS be banned or made illegal, only that it should be restricted where it competes with other software. It's fairly easy to say that writing open source software for Linux is not competing with commercial software that only runs on Windows or Mac, so anyone who was willing to use Linux (with the technical savviness that requires) would have a lot of FOSS to choose from as well.

It does not take technical savvy to run Linux. Most Linux distributions are fairly easy to install and use.
Furthermore, most open source desktop applications are available for Windows as well.

The GIMP, OpenOffice, AbiWord, FireFox (yes, FireFox is FOSS), etc. all have Windows ports.

What you will find if you actually research is that a lot of FOSS development is done by paid developers who are paid to do it because the software is used by the company they are working for.

Some projects, like GnomeSword (a bible study program) are developed by developers in their spare time, but much of OSS development is actually paid for.

Also - with respect to documentation, companies like Sun, Novell, Red Hat, etc. have all paid for professional documentation writers to document GNOME - a FOSS desktop environment. SuSE and other companies have done the same for KDE.

zeitgeist · 2008-11-23 6:20 pm

If a big name company (like, for example, Microsoft) that has tremendous financial weight to throw around for development, marketing and research can't make its software good enough to compete with a piece of software that people are developing in their spare time and distributing for free...

Yeah, they deserve to fail.

resedit · 2008-11-23 6:22 pm

Macskeeball wrote:
Frankly, I don't see how it's possible in the first place for a government to restrict FOSS in an Internet age, where anybody can easily create their own web site and many, many new web sites are created every single day. It's something that by its very nature can't be contained or controlled. Not that it's something to stop in the first place.

Not to mention that a law restricting it in, say, the US would not stop a German website from offering the code.

Due to the first amendment (free speech) it is probably impossible in the US to prevent source code from being released, and released under a FOSS license.

Thus - unless you change the constitution, FOSS is here to stay.

resedit · 2008-11-23 6:33 pm

You indicate that if jobs are being taken by people working for free, that's the market's problem. If I was picking up immigrants to work on my construction jobs (if I were in construction), and paying them nothing, let alone below minimum wage (and for some reason that was okay with them), I don't think most people would just say, "So what if it's taking others' work? Tough, it's the market, find another job, you people who want to work for money."

If you picked up workers and paid them below minimum wage, that's one thing.
If people volunteered to work in your fields in free, there's nothing illegal about that.

People volunteer their labor all the time. Habitat for Humanity is a prime example. You don't get paid to swing that hammer.

Macskeeball · 2008-11-23 7:18 pm

In fact, posts on this forum and many other forums are an example of volunteering. We post here because we want to. People voluntarily help others out here and on other forums. People contributing content to Wikipedia is another example of volunteering.

FOSS can also spur innovation and competition. Take web browsers in general. It was the success of Firefox and other browsers that got Microsoft to improve Internet Explorer, which it previously allowed to stagnate.

Last edited by Macskeeball (2008-11-23 7:20 pm)

Forums | MacLife

#1 2008-11-23 1:23 pm

Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#2 2008-11-23 1:36 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#3 2008-11-23 1:39 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#4 2008-11-23 1:44 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#5 2008-11-23 2:00 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#6 2008-11-23 2:26 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#7 2008-11-23 2:56 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

Jdude wrote:

#8 2008-11-23 2:57 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#9 2008-11-23 3:46 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#10 2008-11-23 5:06 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#11 2008-11-23 5:10 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#12 2008-11-23 5:13 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#13 2008-11-23 5:15 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#14 2008-11-23 5:16 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#15 2008-11-23 5:21 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#16 2008-11-23 5:24 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#17 2008-11-23 5:25 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#18 2008-11-23 5:26 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#19 2008-11-23 6:06 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#20 2008-11-23 6:19 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#21 2008-11-23 6:19 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#22 2008-11-23 6:20 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#23 2008-11-23 6:22 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

Macskeeball wrote:

#24 2008-11-23 6:33 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

#25 2008-11-23 7:18 pm

Re: Proposition: Free Open Source Software is harmful

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