A couple of lessons on the hazards of proprietary software [LWN.net]

A couple of lessons on the hazards of proprietary software

Posted Aug 10, 2006 20:53 UTC (Thu) by jstAusr (guest, #27224)
In reply to: A couple of lessons on the hazards of proprietary software by elanthis
Parent article: A couple of lessons on the hazards of proprietary software

Proprietary software *is* the problem here. With freely licensed open source software the problem does not exist. If you are allowing someone else to store your data, that is a different situation with similar problems. However, it does not reduce the multitude of problems with proprietary software. If *all* people were honest, trustworthy, and put the well being of others at least on equal standing with their own well being, then proprietary software would be less problematic. The security and other risks of proprietary sofware are high and hidden. Free access to your data is only half the problem, your data really isn't usable unless you intend to reproduce the program that accesses that data. Don't be a fool use FLOSS.

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A couple of lessons on the hazards of proprietary software

Posted Aug 11, 2006 6:50 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

if you can understand the data format you don't need any particular software to access it.

and FOSS software doesn't nessasarily equal flexibility in accessing the content (see the articles about the gimp not having a documented file format until the last week or so as a prime example)

yes, with FOSS software you can reverse engineer a data format more easily, but unless the software authors agree with (and maintain compatability with going forward) the specs that you reverse engineer it's a purely temporary documentation, which could be as bad as any propriatary software (albeit without as strong a lock-in, but for many large FOSS projects, the users are mostly along for the ride, and have to adapt to whatever file format changes the project introduces, until such time as the annoyance factor growes large enough for the project to be forked, so don't completely dismiss the lock-in aspect)

A couple of lessons on the hazards of proprietary software

Posted Aug 14, 2006 21:04 UTC (Mon) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link]

Obscurity through complexity is NOT the same thing as obscurity through secrecy. So long as you have access to the source code to the version of the GIMP you are using, then you have a 100% accurate set of "documentation" on how to load and manipulate the data. Yes, you could lose the source to the version you are using, but then all your hard drives and backups could gte destroyed in a fire, too. Storing information in digital form is fundamentally risky, and losing the source code to a critical peice of infrastructure is something you can screw up, but noone can walk into your place of business and TAKE the source code from you. With closed source software, they can. That's the point.