Slashdot Mirror
Why Human Rights Requires Free Software
andyo writes "Why Human Rights Requires Free Software: Report on a practitioner's view of the critical role free software plays in the work of human rights activists around the globe."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
That conversation snippit really got me thinking about this. What does everyone else think?
Many if not most of those who did survive probably owe their good fortune to one of the first "computers": the British Colossus machine that was used to crack German codes. This significatly shortened the war, stopping Hitler's plans before they were carried out to completion.
As well as it should be, but I believe that the effort to "prove" that the program used to process the data is trustworthy is going to be as difficult as "proving" that the collected raw data is trustworthy. One could, perhaps not easily, take the data that was collected and plug and chug it into another statistical program to see if the results were anywhere close to what the first presented results where. That could be considered one way to "prove" that the processing was legitimate, as long as the programs were not from the same software house.
But just go ahead and try to prove that the data were correct. But that's not the argument here.
I'm wondering if Oram's argument was more of an idealogical one rather than a practical one. I don't see why someone should be disbelieved just because they used a Microsoft product or a SAS product. I would also think it highly unlikely that a maker of shrink-wrap software would somehow be at fault, except perhaps through their own stupidity, for erroneous results, especially since their credibility is on the line.
On top of all that, wouldn't an open software package created mostly by, or presumed created by, a group of a particular nationality (KDE presumably made mostly by Germans, for one) come under more criticism if that particular nationality was related to the question that the(ir) software was being used to solve? Hmmm....
I'm starting to think that this article was an excercise in political correctness since I would highly doubt that someone would want to go through the effort in taking apart the program used to prove that it was correct. It would instead have to be an assumption that it was correct because it was Open Source. And how often have we had perfect Open Source programs that never needed patching?
Disclaimer: I use Open Source software, except for Quicken (sorry).
Is this thing on? Hello?
In fact, it is a simple task to bias results from an open source product. Just change the source to bias your data, and you're pretty much guaranteed that nobody will find out.
On the other hand, you can't change the source code of a commercial product, which as the parent post said, lots of people know how to interpret data from. This makes is significantly harder to dupe people with fudged data.
the documentation that comes with our software alone is worth the price
Well, then you can give away the source and charge for the documentation, right? It seems it might get you a new part of the market. These guys seem to choose Free Software because it's open, not because it's free. Like the article said, these guys pay for Free Software.
BTW: this is just an idea, not an attack on how your company chooses to do business...
NachtVorst
I too am getting a little sick and tired of all this 'preaching to the converted
/. are already converted?
What makes you think that the only people who read
"You can prevent your opponent from defeating you through defense, but you cannot defeat him without taking the offensive."
- Sun Tzu
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
It never ceases to amaze me how far afield people go to rationalize a belief. In this case the rationalization includes the supposition that the only way for human rights workers to attain the software they might require to accomplish their worthy goals is if ALL SOFTWARE IS FREE SOFTWARE. This argument ignores a wide variety of alternatives, such as charitable donation of said software, or purchase of said software with money obtained via charitable donations just to name two. Thus, rather than decimating the entire software industry by insisting that all software be free, maybe we should be critiquing those who do not donate their software to worthy human rights organizations, or make financial contributions to those organizations? These seem far less radical approaches to addressing the concern raised.