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Comment by benevol | Hacker News Reader

This, it's so important for society. If we want real democracy, software needs to be open-source.

Please everybody, never stop promoting open-source solutions to your friends & family.

Open source hardly guarantees anything. Governments armed with everything under the sun can make the lives of privacy advocates a living hell. When I was younger (no kids) I could think of standing up against it if need be. Things have changed, almost irrationally, with a family. Irrational because I would hate for my baby to grow up into an Orwellian dystopia but the fear of immediate consequences to the family keeps me from action. The point I am trying to make, is that government will not need to crack down on every one. Just a few brave snowdenlikes, the rest will either believe the government narrative or be afraid to rise up against it. So yes, open source is great, but we absolutely need corporations to stand up to government. Because let's face it.. In our society cash is king and a corporation like Apple has the cash,visibility and might to wield a sword for privacy even if they are possibly motivated by something other than concern for individual's privacy.

> Open source hardly guarantees anything.

{ obligatory recommendation to watch PHK's "Operation Orchestra"[1], which discusses ways free and open software projects can be manipulated }

[1] https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/schedule/event/nsa_operation...

> but we absolutely need corporations to stand up to government

We need solidarity - the people and corporations - to stand up to problems in government. We also need the people and government to stand up to problems in corporations. Hoping that our social problems will be fixed by other people or some other group is a terrible defense strategy. There will always be people that try to control power or money; this requires constant vigilance and push-back from everybody; failure to do so creates more potentially exploitable attack surface.

The technical people that actually implement modern society hold an incredible amount of power. Unfortunately, the people involved are easily distracted with off-topic minutia and vague threats.

Corporations and governments aren't actual concrete things, they are labels put on certain actions of people (and corporations, specifically, are just names for certain actions of people through government.) So "people and corporations" and "people and government" are both just people.

That's correct. I'm making the distinction because of the comment that we "need corporations".

The distinction is important because people in government and people in corporations usually have different motives than people in general. (Particularly people in leadership roles within these org's)

I can't start promoting open source solutions to my friends and family because for most of their tasks, open source solutions aren't adequate. Some examples (taken from my wife):

- Art: Photoshop, Illustrator and Corel Painter are required by employers and educational institutions. GIMP/Inkscape etc. don't have feature parity so often can't be adopted.

- Messaging: Friends and family use Skype and Whatsapp. Network is too large to convert to an OSS alternative. No OSS alternatives are sufficiently developed to be viable regardless (Signal lacks a desktop/web (not Chrome) client, XMPP, Tox have no decent mobile story, Matrix clients are hard to sell).

- Browsing: Chrome's built in translation doesn't seem to have a viable alternative in other browsers like Firefox. Chromium lacks auto-update which is dangerous.

- Documents: There isn't any open source alternative I'm aware of to Google Docs that is nearly as convenient or easy to use.

- OS: Linux/BSD can't run the software needed for work/study so they're a no go.

It's easy to think in our little tech bubble that OSS is wonderful and we should be screaming from the rooftops to get people to use it but I just don't think it's ready yet. I can't even get my wife onto one OSS application and the same goes for most of the people I know.

It sounds like the problem is that they value convenience more than freedom. That is their choice and the only thing you can do is to explain that to them and to choose differently yourself.

No, that isn't the problem at all.

When you understand why, you'll be better-equipped to work towards real solutions.

But you don't want to teach me what the real problem is quite yet?

You could start by listening to the users, instead of talking down to them.

I am actually curious what you think the problem is as well. I have been modeling possible fixes to the general issues with privacy, consolidation and restricted freedom to use the internet/communications. There are a lot of problems which I will try and list breiefly:

1. Consolidation & definition of protocols as well as inroads to making use of communications tools are controlled by gatekeepers:

1. Google

2. Microsoft

3. Apple

4. Other providers in non-english speaking countries.

I wouldn't call this easy to fix, but I don't think it is super difficult to fix this.

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Let's assume you disaggregate some of the above and fragment it out enough where information is semi-balkaninized. I actually skipped over the initial problem referenced above:

It isn't people favor convenience over privacy (although they do) most people just DGAF. I think, and I have been considering this a fair bit lately, gov is actually pretty reasonably modeled (at least in the US) after society. No one actually values organization, deferred gratiofication, privacy or many other things I had previously assumed. So you actually just have to provide something really really great, get all the users, and provide them privacy for free and they won't care but will be semi-protected.

But, to resume here. If you build something people use, priovide them privacy, and dethrone incumbant internet companies, you still have huge obstacles:

Infrastructure. Broadspectrum is ~10 Billion for a band that can reach 200M people. Verizon is a 200B company (market cap). Comcast, Timewarner etc.

This is super hard to sort out. I actually think it is doable as well though. Let's wave our hands at this.

=======

Let's assume you have done the impossible: users all prefer amazing privacy by design top shelf UX open source software running on distributed systems in a decentralized network. You own bandwith and hard lines and insure you can protect and distribute signals with minimal interference. What do you do?

=====

No idea, pretty stuck here. I was thinking you return control to the people, but that doesn't seem to work. Obviosuly, I am sure there are some other constraints around just this general simplified model I presented, but how do you do decentralized governance. It isn't working well for Bitcoin. Interested to figure this out.

Yes, they value convenient tools they need more than some imaginary freedom they have no use for.

"Friends and family" are perfectly fine with gimp or even something simpler.

Telegram owns Whatsapp across the ceiling and down the walls in every aspect (only one I'm not sure about is security and for that one I don't know.) We already converted the inlaws (yep, big family) few months ago and it works like a charm.

An 50 year old electrician was the first to show me Ubuntu back in 2006 and he was enthusiastic about it.

So no, I don't buy it.

Of course many of them will never care, but that is because they don't care, not because there aren't alternatives.

Edit: saw employers mentioned. In that moment we are suddenly talking about professionals who just happens to be friends and family as well. In that case Photoshop might be a good solution.

> "Friends and family" are perfectly fine with gimp or even something simpler.

Uh, you're not really in a position to say that.

> We already converted the inlaws (yep, big family) few months ago and it works like a charm.

You're totally ignoring the network effect. Nobody I know who uses WhatsApp uses it only to contact me. So now you've just introduced yet another messaging app they need to have installed and use to message me.

> An 50 year old electrician was the first to show me Ubuntu back in 2006 and he was enthusiastic about it.

So? I can't run Linux on my desktop because of some of the applications I need to run.

While I'm a huge proponent of open source, if you force it on people when it's not suitable you're going to encounter a massive backlash and turn them off it, undoing all the hard work that people are putting in.

You've accurately described the thirty pieces of silver for which you're willing to sell your privacy.

Choosing closed source software is not selling my privacy.

Statements like this make the OSS community seem toxic.

> Choosing closed source software is not selling my privacy.

With hypothetical closed source software in the abstract this might be a reasonable claim, but the software mentioned above includes a bunch of software which is known not to protect your privacy.

You can't seriously claim, for example, that Google employees don't have more access to your Google docs than you do.

Well in a democracy, people can use whatever they like the most, but usually "open-source" goes hand in hand with "pain in the ass" and "doesn't have the user base".

Don't tell me what to do and I won't tell you where to go. Democracy has nothing to do with open-source software and I will recommend the best tool for the job, open or closed source, thank you very much. OTOH maybe fewer peopel thinking that they have it all figured out and know the best what is good for society would be indeed good for democracy.

Agreed open source is very important.

Does anyone here think all software should be open source?

I'm interested to debate someone about that. I can't see how that works unless the whole world stops using money.

Well, the WordPress scene tends to make most of their software open source, including the stuff they charge for. For example, every official WooCommerce plugin is under the GPL, as is Gravity Forms and Easy Digital Downloads.

These are also paid plugins. What this means is that once you download them, you can theoretically use them on as many sites as you like, release edited versions yourself or use them for as long as you need to.

What they charge for is basically the following:

1. Updates, since otherwise you have to find and install any updates outside the WordPress dashboard.

2. Support from their support team

That's how the WordPress scene in general works for paid products. The products themselves can be used however you like, but a paid license gives you access to support and much improved ease of use as far as updates and things are concerned.

So you can make money from open source software, and it would theoretically be possible to have all software as open source.

> I can't see how that works unless the whole world stops using money.

I think Richard Stallman addressed your concern in the GNU Manifesto back in 1985.

(I don't mean to suggest that his answers will necessarily convince you, just that the issue has been discussed explicitly for that long.)

For subsequent thinking, there is a Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-sourc...

> I can't see how that works unless the whole world stops using money.

I'm hoping Snowdrift.coop makes it viable.

Good idea short-term.

Long-term, it should be financed via our taxes (best case: international agreement).

Define "it". Certainly not all FLO software is of sufficiently broad interest for public funding to make sense.

One model that that could work is to start with a basic income. That would ensure that everyone has the option to simply spend their time as a low income inventor. Or perhaps part-time, well paid consultat, part-time low income inventor.

Perhaps the next level up is simply to allocate some money as simple grants. As long as you manage to produce the basic paperwork you get some additional money thrown at you.

I'm sure the lower end of such implementations are reasonably effective. After all their basic aim just to throw money around.

On top of that there's really not that many projects left, I'm sure we can continue to invent custom solutions for those.

I support a modest basic income. I do suspect that in that environment, we would see an increas in the range of projects tackled because people want to do them, want them done, want the fame, and similar.

I also think there are projects that a grant program could effectively support.

But I also think there is a really long tail of projects that some people would find worth having done, but that would not likely get done without someone paying, and would be difficult for grant issuers to distinguish from other projects that are simply not worth doing at all.

I think Snowdrift - or something similar - could have a huge role in such a world. In particular, a basic income would make it easier for more people to contribute to a project and also reduce the amount of money necessary to see a project move forward.

Snowdrift is certainly an interesting approach and agree, similar things are needed.

In an abstract sense, as i see it, we need to find a way to direct funding, in an accessible way, towards people just wanting to work on generally useful stuff, without being entirely reliant on capitalism and market economies.

I do fear that most schemes for selecting what to fund, grants, or capitalistic markets tend to promote the wrong things for the wrong reasons. Once serious money gets involved it gets ugly quickly and all sorts of gaming and failures take over.

I guess one failure mode of Snowdrift would be that high visibility projects, with a direct user facing component, will get loads of funds. But infrastructure kind of things, will be forgotten and be underfunded.

Perhaps not a real problem though, the funds going the user facing project might ripple down, so to speak, into the infrastructure.

In any case, the problem of selecting who should get money is hard, and you probably just have to accept that its a gamble with low odds of success. Maybe most of the things not worth doing, is worth doing precisely to find out how not worth doing they are!

I personally don't care about open source software, I care about free software <https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.....

While I don't have time for an extended debate at the moment...

The problem is thinking of software as a good (product). Software is not a scarce resource, so it is foolish to use tools such as capitalism (or other economic systems) as the model for the creation and distribution of software. Capitalism is very useful for optimizing the allocation of a scarce resource, but it doesn't apply for things that can be reproduced for free.

A better model is recognizing that software development is a service. We are moving quickly into a future filled with automation, data analysis, and everything we call "AI"; the demand for software development will be increasing dramatically. Just like today, most of this development will be for specific business needs, which are rarely useful directly to outside the specific use they were developed for.

Like plumbing, there will always be people who need software that is customized for their current situation. When you hire a plumber to install the waterworks for a new building, you don't expect them to develop their own type of pipe fittings; they use standard parts. Similarly, a business that has software needs should expect that the software developer they hire or contract will save time, money, and bugs by utilizing existing software that is available in the commons. The remaining bits of software that are necessary to customize the standard components for their specific needs are - by definition - not a "product" that is useful to others.

Open-source software benefits everybody and is economically the most efficient solution (the wheel does not get reinvented; instead, you just clone and fork).

One scenario could therefor be that open-source development is financed via taxes, meaning we should pressure the government to initiate that.

I think the main argument is that most customers, and certainly enterprise customers, will pay for software even of the source code is available.

Also requiring all software to use an open source development model is probably not necessary for security purposes.

Enterprise customers don't pay for software so much as support and accountability (that software firms often roll all this up into license fees rather than separating it out is irrelevant to what is motivating the enterprise purchase and justifying the cost.)

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