this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Free and Open Source Software
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He did. Back then you forget you had all closed systems. I spent something like $10K on my first Mac, all the hardware and software and that was 1988 dollars. Now we have open systems, open browsers, lot of open protocols. I have not used much for closed stuff since 2000. Also software and hardware costs have plumetted. FOSS won.
It does not mean that there are not other challenges. Hardware has never been really open. Products have never been really open. The public or business for the most part has not chosen open. The service and server nature of most produces these days is another issues. Another is that tracking and advertising is the business model of most of it. AI is another challenge. Patents and other monopoly supporting laws are still acting too.
The article is frankly a bunch of FUD.
I agree with all your points except this one. Considering the implications of the tools you create is a huge deal.
I mean, we literally just had a blockbuster movie this summer that was ostensibly heavily about the regret Oppenheimer felt over how his invention would be used, how he didn't foresee how damaging the mass casualties would be on his conscience. The back-half of the movie is about how his stance became anti-nuclear weapons after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
You raise really great points, but you're being dismissive of a huge personal issue for a lot of people: will they actually feel comfortable with the way the tool they've designed is being used? If they're anything like J. Robert Oppenheimer, they may struggle with their feelings on it if they don't do enough consideration of it beforehand. I think rumination on things like this is very important, and definitely not fear, uncertainty, and death.
Also, frankly, it seems short sighted attributing cheaper modern software only to FOSS and not to the explosion in sizes of tech companies (economics of scale) as well as documented examples of tech companies colluding to keep engineer pay low and globalization allowing companies to pawn off labor to third-world countries where they can pay people less (Google doesn't even use foreign labor, their janitors and bus drivers are contract labor, because that's cheaper than having them directly on staff). Or has dumping US workers and replacing them with cheaper workers overseas not been happening steadily since 1988?
Without a free OS the walled garden could well have been maintained. Same without an open browser the web would be nothing. I do not think that was inevitable.
Really only Unix and Windows were there and a crap MacOS with a nice UI. BSD and Linux paved the way to the cloud, Android, most of our routers, the web. Everything.
As far as software compared to the atomic bomb. I do not think it really compares.
What's a FUD?
fear, uncertainty, and doubt
Ok thanks
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The thing that put me over top was mentioning of some unrelated Stallman stuff that frankly was blown way out of proportion at the time. It was getting time for the FSF to bring in new people just as a sustainability thing. So not bad he stepped back.