Examining Some Open Source Myths

Neil Gunton writes "I wrote an article distilling some thoughts on Open Source myths. Perhaps unusually, these are not myths propogated by the anti-OSS crowd, but rather dogma that is more frequently spouted by OSS proponents. It is not intended as an anti-OSS argument, but really more as observations and reactions to specific things people say without really thinking about it, such as 'You shouldn't complain about it if you don't want to put effort into providing a fix', 'OSS lets you get under the hood to fix problems', 'All software should be free', 'Scratching the personal itch', etc."

Comments

Re:A fair treatment, but I still disagree

[sosegumu]

Whereas if someone intentionally copies material and misrepresents it as his/her original, that is plagiarism

Or a Master's Thesis

More a commentary on software than open source.

[jbn-o]

You should also disagree with section 3 ("All software should be free") because the author purposefully uses the wrong definition of free (the one pertaining to cost, not freedom) to conflate the differences between the two movements. Furthermore, the author apparently has no idea what RMS stands for:

3. "All software should be free" One of the central tenets of the Open Source philosophy (as it seems to be understood by the average person, at any rate) is that all software should be free.

This is wholly untrue. The open source movement has never pitched its message based on software freedom, it was founded to reject software freedom and pitch instead a practical software methodology message--programs are better when they are less buggy, cheaper to develop, and run faster--because it is believed that this movement's audience (chiefly businesses) are scared with freedom talk. There's nothing wrong with these practical values, but they are not the values of the older free software movement, they don't give you software freedom, and they don't speak to the same audience as the free software movement. Continuing with the article:

[T]his all started because some people (RMS et al, for whom I have nothing but respect) wanted to share code with fellow developers, which also has its basis in the longstanding scientific traditions of sharing knowledge.

RMS has never said he was a member of the open source movement nor did he start the Open Source Initiative which defines that movement's goals and terms for license acceptance. RMS has asked explicitly not to be lumped in with the open source movement. RMS started the free software movement about 20 years ago, well before the open source movement started, and co-wrote the GNU GPL with Prof. Eben Moglen, and RMS started the GNU project in order to spread software freedom (the freedoms to inspect, copy, run, distribute, and modify computer software at any time for any reason).

This author is making (and getting lost in) his own economic-justification message. Meanwhile the Free Software Foundation tells us that distributing free software for a fee can be okay, and that we should make as much money as we can from distributing free software for a fee and building paid services atop the software. I would add that it is not the FSF's or the free software community's job to define how businesses can make money with free software (however the FSF does have some suggestions which they give us in their talks). It is a businesses responsibility to define how they will make money. The FSF is not a business plan nor was it ever intended to be. If the open source movement wants to be seen as such, they are choosing to take on that job.

Also, in section 6 ("More choice is always better") the author falls into the trap of thinking choice is a key value: Freedom of choice is deceptively attractive because people who focus on choice can easily be undermined. If we only had 3 web browsers to choose from (say, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, and Netscape) choice would be satisfied. We would not have software freedom, however, because none of those browsers are free software. They are all proprietary programs. Choice is not bad to have but it is not the heart of either the free software or open source philosophies and choice alone will not bring you the ability to share and modify software.

I'm left thinking this report is little more than his view of what's right and wrong with software today, not an informed essay on busting "open source myths" by examining what the open source movement stands for and how it goes about pursuing its goals.

I hate the particular page, it's old FUD.

[twitter]

Hello, Neil, I'm one of the kinds of people who perpetuate your "myths". You should spend more time on a Linux desktop or reading about free software. A nice little KDE 3.2 desktop will take some of the scales out of your eyes. Reading a few pages at the free software foundation, will show you that you are treading very old ground. In the mean time, I'll be happy to take on your list one, one by one.

1. "Don't complain." Sure, complaining is not criticism or bug report filing. People should not complain about free software any more than they should look any other gift horse in the mouth. Bug reports and constructive email rock. People should not be encouraged to "complain"
2. "Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems." God, but that's old FUD. Sure, the "average user" won't go coding. That does not make the software less free or that freedom any less of a blessing. He might as well take the next step and claim that free software will never make a friendly interface / GUI / usable kernel etc. Oh wait, he does.
3. "All software should be free" Uses a false analogy to argue that no software should be free. Software can be coppied without cost. The choice between free and non free software that do the same thing should be obvious to anyone. Because of this all software should be free and what is not will be sooner or later. "all code can somehow be developed for "free", without there being a price to be paid somewhere" Nope, there's no price to be paid with free software because there's no force involved. If free software does something you want, you are free to use it, modify it and share it. Generally, using free software as a base for your own projects saves time and money. Giving back your modifications costs little or nothing.
4. "Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software" I can say that free is better. I can also say that free software, despite Neil's FUD, develops quicker and becomes technically superior in time. KDE and GNome both kick Winblows ass, despite M$'s laser sharp attention to ... their bottom line. I'm not sure what you are using Neil, but newer stuff is better.
5. "Scratching the personal itch" - Yawn, I'm getting tired of this guy saying that there are no free user friendly tools. A good example of itch scratching working is gphoto2 and digikam. Digikam is KDE's digital camera front end and album keeper. It gets it's power from hundreds of camera drivers found in libgphoto2, which in turn was made possible by thousands of people scratching very personal itches, sometimes over $40 cameras. There's nothing like it in the commercial world and I expect it to continue to get better. When software is released GPL, everyone wins and it goes all the way back to the average user's desktop.
6. "More choice is always better" He acts like preselection of reasonable options does not exist. Neil, go get a copy of Knoppix of Mepis and see that a distribution can be made on a single CD that does EVERYTHING even the power user such as yourself could want. Amazing how all that "bloated", "designed by committee" software can do what no laser focused commercial software maker can, isn't it?
7. "Conclusion: It's Not So Simple". My conclusion is that Neil needs to check out some more free software. Anyone who still thinks that Windows has better interfaces is missinformed. Also, no one really thinks that "Sometimes restricting the choices might not be a bad idea." when it comes to themselves. Neil might be afraid of a free software desktop, but I'm sure he's glad he can have one if he changes his mind.

I've heard most of this stuff for years. Some of the user interface issues were once true, but they are no longer. Gnome back in 1998 was about as good and in many ways better than Windows 98. The people in Redmond would love for free software users to read this kind of tripe and n