Slashdot Mirror
Evaluating the Harmful Effects of Closed Source Software
New submitter Drinking Bleach writes "Eric Raymond, coiner of the term 'open source' and co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, writes in detail about how to evaluate the effects of running any particular piece of closed source software and details the possible harms of doing so. Ranking limited firmware as the least kind of harm to full operating systems as potentially the greatest harms, he details his reasoning for all of them. Likewise, Richard Stallman, founder of GNU and the Free Software Foundation, writes about a much more limited scope, Nonfree DRM'd games on GNU/Linux, in which he takes the firm stance that non-free software is unethical in all cases but concedes that running non-free games on a free operating system is much more desirable than running them on a non-free operating system itself (such as Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS X)."
I bought a MacBook largely for the same reasons. I needed what it offered and Linux couldn't compete without having to spend more time learning this and that or hunting for crappy software that it wasn't worth it. I'm with you on just not caring about the license anymore. Even Linus Torvalds finds some open source licenses way too much. GPLv3 is way too off the hook and most developers are now choosing other licenses like MIT, Apache, and even BSD. The BSD license is my personal favorite.
the point that this often repeated argument ignore lies in the "similar spec'd" part of the sentence. With a thinkpad or any other non-Apple PC you can choose your PC's specs according to your need, and not based upon what Apple thinks you will need. You can even, and this might come as a shocker to Apple users, choose NOT to go for the most expensive alternative because your budget doesn't allow for it.
When you buy a Mac, you have a very limited set of alternatives to choose from. When you buy a PC, you have tons of alternatives to choose from (especially if your choices are not brand-centric). This means that you can choose a PC that won't have a Thunderbolt IO port, but a couple of additional USB3 ports instead, for example, and it means that you can choose to have a cheap plastic case instead of an aluminium (or whatever the current flavour of the month in metallic cases is) if you don't see the necessity, or your budget won't allow for it. You can also forgo some aspects to have a similarly priced PC with, if you are a gamer for example, a better graphic card and more RAM while forgoing some other aspects which you might not need.
So, yes .. similarly spec'd PCs might cost about the same as a Mac, but why would you buy a similarly spec'd PC in the first place?
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
In mid-2000's, after battling with various linux variants I've came to the sad realization that what RMS and other F/OSS advocates talked about were anachronistic, misplaced, and impractical ideas.
I was a huge supporter of Linux at some point but now consider it to be plumbing for various technologies such as web servers, database servers, SoC, etc.
Linux works best when users don't know it's linux. Once you put it in front of consumers you're asking for trouble. Out of all linux distros there's not a single one that gets it right. They're all terrible, unusable, mired in petty license politics of the 90's.
It the end, I think it's largely irrelevant because desktop computing is becoming irrelevant. It's all mobile, cloud and vertical appliances going forward. Companies want to control the whole stack these days and linux is just a dumb component in that stack. To the point that it becomes meaningless if one aspect from the stack is open, proprietary, licensed, or patent-encumbered.
Given a choice between living in a walled garden in Switzerland versus a shack in Mogadishu, people will overwhelmingly choose the former.