Recent Events, FOSS and Security, Gaming Personalities

[tcpip]

Somehow I neglected to mention in my last post two excellent events which I recently attended. First was John Foxx's Tiny Colour Movies. I shouted dukeofmelbourne to the event as it was he who introduced me to early Ultravox some twenty years ago. It was excellent, an arthouse-style archive of movie fragments from disparate sources, combined with the Foxx providing backing music. The second was a more intimate affair, but one by a person who has probably affected more people indirectly; dinner with arjen_lentz who regularly visits Melbourne to provide MySQL training and do more work for OpenQuery. As usual it was excellent technical and friendly conversation and I quite enjoyed the contributions by laptop006.

Free and Open Source software is one of the areas where, it seems to me, the morally right policy is also the best technical approach. Widely reported, for example, has been a serious OpenSSL exploit which has affected Debian and Debian-derived systems (e.g., Ubuntu), which of course was widely discussed on Slashdot. Now despite the seriousness of the problem, it was found and patched remarkably quickly. Would this even have been discovered in a closed source model? Would the company holding the patents and copyrights admit the problem? Would they release a patch? With those questions in mind - and given the general usability of FOSS desktop UNIX-like systems, it never ceases to surprise me that people, every day, are still using MS-Windows and other closed-source solutions. It's morally wrong, and it's technically dangerous.

Over the years, I have realised the people who are attracted to roleplaying games are an interesting bunch. Many are people with either an incredibly systematic knowledge (it seems that every second sysadmin is a RPGer). Many (such as patchworkkid, artbroken, drzero for example) are people of significant literary merit and talent. But some however are special and not in a good way. For example, one has to be a "very special individual", to start an abusive tirade because an observer comments that a regular gaming schedule might work better than an inconsistent one. Such a "special individual" would include Ian Bouch (yeah, top-posting, start from the bottom *sigh*). Congratulations Ian; I don't often condemn people on my journal for their personal behaviour but you sir, are an arsehole.

Comments

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

But such flaws could exist yet we would never possibly never find out - although with a large company which is supposed to have sophisticated error-checking you would hope that would never happen.

I do see the argument that there can be a stronger vetting program in a project rather than a full "anyone can commit" method. For example, Drupal has a lot of people developing it, but very few people who have commit access to the project. This seems to ensure that the code has both the advantages of open source development but also with a good vetting method.

Part II:

[dputiger.livejournal.com]

(Continued):

In contrast, the debates and arguments over these issues have been known to polarize distro communities, lead to absurd forks, and generally fragment the user base of the distro. These concerns do not translate well to the interested outside observer (i.e., potential user), who has never been asked to consider the moral implications of their operating system or office software. While they may be curious about FOSS, individuals in this group are much more likely to wonder why its easier to get WMV support for Ubuntu than it is for Fedora, and, if they encounter Fedora first (and require WMV), might simply swear off altogether under the mistaken assumption that all distros are equal...because whoever heard of moral computing?

Having arrived at the end of this missive, I've realized that I probably could've just written "Mainstream users don't get moral computing" and conveyed what I meant. ;) I don't think the moral considerations that affect Linux development translate well at all into the Microsoft/closed-source world, and I think they may have actually helped slow FOSS adoption. My conclusion seems a bit weak for what I thought up at the beginning, but I think I'll stop here and see if you respond. ;P

Re: Part II:

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I don't think the moral considerations that affect Linux development translate well at all into the Microsoft/closed-source world, and I think they may have actually helped slow FOSS adoption.

Very insightful. It matches quite well with any historical sociology of moral revolutions which basically comes down to a revolution in intersubjective judgements. The initial uptake can indeed be very slow because it does require such a radical change in thinking. (e.g., "Women? Voting? Who ever heard of such a crazy thing!").

However if the argument can successfully deal with a real or perceived problem which cannot be resolved under the mainstream value system the rate of change can be exponential (especially with a dedicated cadre of moral revolutionaries). I think ultimately this is Richard Stallman's chief argument against "open source" rather than "free" software. For Stallman this isn't about something that is just technically better; this is also about changing values.