[Gllug] An article for you from an Economist.com reader.

Pete Ryland pdr at createservices.com
Fri Jun 18 14:07:45 UTC 2004


On Thu, Jun 17, 2004 at 07:43:26AM -0400, gllug at minty.org wrote:
> 
> But building, say, an open-source car is rather more problematic, since
> information (in the form of design and specifications) constitutes only
> a minor ingredient: the costs of materials and manufacturing would
> remain.

In one way, they're missing the point.  In the car manufacturing industry,
there are certain standards that they adhere to.  There is a standard socket
size for example[1], meaning nuts and bolts can be sourced from anywhere and
backyard mechanics can buy a cheap toolset from Tescos.

In the computer industry, however, the law, and the population in general,
do not understand, and so do not demand open standards within software.
This, in my opinion, is why us tech-heads have adopted free software -
because it provides us with the most transparent and explicit open standard
against which to work.  We can verify and tinker with the code, and can even
collaboratively improve it.  As a bonus, there's an easy channel for our
improvements to be shared by all.

> The model has other limitations as well. It is not clear, for example,
> that the open-source model can be genuinely innovative--most
> open-source software merely imitates existing commercial products.

Well, that's a bit unfair, but mostly true if only for the fact that Linux
and tools are based on the POSIX standard.  However, there are plenty of
innovative tools on top of that IMO.

But anyway, I could pick at the article all day, but I'm not really
complaining - on the whole it was a good article and good publicity in a
reputable place. :-)

Pete

[1] well, ok, you have metric sockets and imperial ones, but either way
they're standardised.
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