Re: Free Software compared to Terrorism - looks like the ultimate in FUD

On Tuesday 18 March 2008, Omer Zak wrote:
> http://www.theobjectiveobserver.com/articles/technology03.shtml
> 1. I do not see as much hate-filled rhetoric among Free Software
> developers as the author sees.

I also see a lot of inaccuracies, over-generalisations, wrong facts, and lack 
of credit in the article (which I did not finish reading because I found out 
to be completely ridiculus). In the entire article, not a single link or 
reference is given. There are some quotations, but they are un-sourced and 
probably taken out of context.

> 2. The author claims that mentioning security vulnerabilities of
> commercial software is an attempt to use Fear to persuade people to
> switch to Free Software.  He ignores the other side of the coin - that
> commercial software developers, who do not design their products for
> security, are as guilty as pharmeutical manufacturers, who sell
> defective medications.

One should also note that security vulnerabilities in open-source products are 
publicised, and often quickly fixed. If a project exercises poor security 
practices, one is free to fork it, which cannot be said on most proprietary 
software.

> 3. Disregard of law by Free Software proponents - he ignores the
> official position of respecting others' intellectual properties.  Those
> who violate copyrights by file sharing are ones who would violate those
> copyrights even if there were no Free Software.  

"Intellectual property" is a wrong and misleading term - http://xrl.us/bhuyk . 
In the same link I argue why copyrights in the digital age, despite being 
valid, should not extend to trying to control the non-commercial distribution 
of copyrighted works, and why copying copyrighted files is fully objectively 
ethical.

But you are right that it is orthogonal to the free software/open-source 
issues.

He does mention violating patents in the article, but this is an issue that is 
not specific to free software. Recently Microsoft lost a case where someone 
sued them for patents covering the mp3 technology (despite the fact that it 
licensed it.). And there were many other cases mentioned on Slashdot.


> The other example of 
> "theft" cited - Bruce Peren’s admission of “stealing time from Pixar to
> work on Linux” - does not include evidence that Pixar considered this as
> a theft, or that it was harmful to their business (which relied upon
> Linux clusters).

Actually, back at the time Pixar used a Solaris-based cluster, or at least 
that is what they set up for Toy Story. They switched to Linux and 
Intel-based clusters later on.

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In any case, I think this guy is lying to himself if he calls himself "The 
Objective Observer". If you're interested in a really objective analysis of 
open-source see my own:

http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/obj-oss/

BTW, he has a "Valid XHTML 1.0" button at the end. The code running the 
validator is fully open-source and can be downloaded and installed (as I 
did).

Also see:

http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.theobjectiveobserver.com

It is running Apache on Linux, both open-source.

Saying that open-source is equivalent to terrorism is a bit absurd. Terrorists 
harm the lives and (tangible) property of innocent people. Open-source 
hackers don't do anything besides generating code, which by itself is 
harmless at worst and very useful at best. See my essay for more information.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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Shlomi Fish      shlomif-ik1l9ssToec+JF/[email protected]
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

I'm not an actor - I just play one on T.V.