Open source radicals--eat cake

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A bit late to the party...Proprietary == Open Source

My ADSL has been playing up...

Firstly John, analogies are only good for proving a single point, not an entire argument. Your recipe analogy is good because it highlights the issue of "why should I let you see the recipe?" but fails on every other count (as you say, cake ain't software).

My 2 bob's worth is that "open source" and "proprietary" software are not mutually exclusive.

Ok, they aren't identical or equivalent, but they are not opposites.

Proprietary just means "owned". The GPL, the classic Stallmanesque licence, retains copyright for the author of the code. This guarantees ownership, hence all GPL code is proprietary.

What we are really talking about is open versus closed. In open source, the author retains ownership but decides to publish the source code. The GPL wants you to give it away free, but only in software covered by the GPL. You can still sell your code - the exact same code that is covered by the GPL - but under another licence.

Closed source is published as something other than plain code - usually a compiled binary - with a licence that prohibits you from doing anything that might reveal the underlying code, such as de-compiling (though from what I've seen, de-compiled code looks nothing like the original).

The difference is that with open source, you can see exactly how the code works and the APIs that are available (or should be available...). You can either build a better version or write other software that integrates as best it can. You can even suggest modifications to the author, submitted as source that is ready to compile.

Close source however only reveals what the author wants you to see. You can't see how it really works, nor can you see any APIs that the author doesn't tell you about. You can discover some by trial and error, but that is fraught with danger - you still don't know how they really work.

The classic Microsoft tactic was not to reveal Windows APIs to application software competitors. Only Microsoft could write decent Windows software (ask Borland and WordPerfect). That MS got away with it is history, but it remains fundamental to their dominance of the industry - they absolutely will not let others see the underlying platform. To this day, Microsoft refuses to reveal the full details of Word or Excel files. Companies have perhaps billions of dollars of information tied up in proprietary file formats that remain closed - how crazy is that?

And that John, is the real open versus closed argument.

Posted by: Fred Fredrickson   Posted on: 03/08/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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