Some things you can only do with FOSS [LWN.net]

Some things you can only do with FOSS

Posted Jun 5, 2008 7:12 UTC (Thu) by JesseW (guest, #41816)
Parent article: Open Source Software Shows Its Muscle (Law.com)

(I just posted this as part of a thread discussing this article at ubuntuforums.org. I thought it might be of interest to LWN readers, too.)

Things you can do with FOSS (Free/Open Source Software), that you can't do, no matter how much you pay, with proprietary software:

Benefit from independent review of the source code -- with proprietary software, independent review of the software is limited to treating it as a black box; and many things can be hidden in such a black box. Independent review is important to users, programmers or not, because it ensures that the software does not contain malware, or do things that secretly benefit the vendor. Even if a proprietary software vendor permits specific people to conduct "independent" tests, the reviews are not truly independent because the vendor can pick who can conduct them, and revoke permission to conduct them at any time. Only with FOSS can you have truly independent review.

Sometimes, painlessly switch to a competing program -- If you are using a proprietary software program, and you hear about a competing program that you would prefer to use because it has better support, or it's developers intend to add features you want, switching to it will always involve some amount of pain and trouble, since, because the program you are using is proprietary, the competitor must develop their code independently, and therefore introduce subtle differences and bugs. If you are using a FOSS program, and you want to switch to another program with better support or a better roadmap, in some cases you can do that while still using the programs exactly the same way, because the source code for the two programs is identical -- only the support / principles / roadmap is different. This is called a fork, and can't happen in the proprietary world, only in the FOSS community.

Don't have to "activate" it -- While not all proprietary programs contain "activation" requirements (i.e. requiring that you contact, by phone or network, the vendor to prove to them that you legally purchased the product), some very widely used ones do (like Windows XP, and Windows Vista). No FOSS program contains such a requirement, and if such a requirement was introduced in a future version, you could painlessly switch to a version that did not contain such a requirement (see above), assuming (very likely) that some programmers chose to fork the program requiring "activation" to remove the requirement.

Use both old and new versions -- You might wish to do this in order to run software that only runs on the old version, and software that only runs on the new version. While not all proprietary program licenses prohibit you from using old versions of the program after you have purchased a newer version, the Microsoft Windows XP Professional EULA does include such a clause. It's unclear if you can buy two licenses, upgrade one, and still use the older version under the other license; but it's unambiguous that, if you simply bought one copy, and expect to be able to switch back and forth between versions, that is forbidden. No FOSS license forbids this.

Rely on the "spirit" of the license not changing, even for updates -- Proprietary program licenses typically permit new licenses to apply to updates or add-ons to the program; and they make no restrictions on what those licenses can require. The GPL, the most common FOSS license, requires that the licenses for any updates to the program maintain the spirit of the original license; while this is vague, it does provide reassurance that updates won't require onerous or objectionable terms. You have no such reassurance with updates to proprietary programs.

I hope the above list will provide some more reasons why a non-technical, non-programmer user of software might prefer FOSS over proprietary solutions, beyond issues of cost or individual program quality.

Jesse Weinstein

P.S. The essay "Comparing the GPL to the EULA"(PDF) is a worthwhile read; it is a comparison of Microsoft's Windows XP Professional EULA with the GPLv2. I got some of my ideas above from it.

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