Reply to post: Of course..

Windows and OS X are malware, claims Richard Stallman

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Of course..

.. telling everyone that your way is The Right Way is not denying people a choice either...

I call (partial) bullshit, and not just because I want the downvotes.

I'm no fan of proprietary, but in certain circumstances I can see people not choosing the open route, and I think they are entitled to make that choice themselves. I also take issue with his praying on people's security fears to make statements that have no real factual basis, like the myth that Open Source makes it more likely (weak word) that flaws are found and fixed - we have seen clearly that that is open to debate. It's easier to get an independent 3rd party involved to check, but that does by no means guarantee that it actually happens. Proof in point are the recent bash and OpenSSL vulnerabilities which, despite being rather critical code, remained undiscovered for a very long time.

This is not to say that proprietary does any better, but the statement that companies prefer a shorter time to market over decent code eval is not one I see valid for all providers, and some of the more recent Open Source code I've looked at was a mess too.

Stallman seems to suggest that everything offered under the FOSS banner is ready for production and secure, just by the sheer fact that it is FOSS. Really? Even Eric Raymond has admitted that his famous "many eyeballs make bugs shallow" was more marketing than reality. That security myth is extremely dangerous because it creates a false sense of security that makes people careless.

So, to bring the statements in bold into the real world:

- Individually, by rejecting proprietary software and web services that snoop or track. As Google is built on Linux, is that then OK? The issue is actually spectacularly bad legislation and enforcement, not technology.

- Collectively, by organising to develop free/libre replacement systems and web services that don’t track who uses them (if a proprietary service can prove to me they do it right I don't have a problem using that, provided I can pull my data at any time - I'll get back to that in a minute*)

- Democratically, by legislation to criminalise various sorts of malware practices. (already exists, not a new idea) This presupposes democracy (no, it doesn't, even a less-than-democratic place like China has laws in place for that), and democracy requires defeating treaties such as the TPP and TTIP that give companies the power to suppress democracy. That's again rhetoric twisting to impose an own agenda. The correct expression would be "democracy requires open discussions and voting on the benefits, risks and content of treaties such as TPP and TTIP" which would be both factually correct and free of an agenda to push one point of view.

* Interesting, not a word about the one thing that really avoids lock in: Open Standards, maybe because Stallman wasn't really involved in developing those (please correct me if I have this wrong, if Stallman has submitted RFCs I'd be happy to be corrected). Open Standards allow anyone true freedom of choice by enabling interoperability between such choices, and makes it possible to revisit that choice later by migrating their data without problems. It also leaves people the freedom of choosing fits their specific needs instead of what fits Stallman's agenda.

True freedom is allowing people to make their own choices after presenting all the available facts fairly, honestly and without spinning it towards your own agenda. I have no problem with someone offering their opinion and debating it fairly because THAT is democracy. Anything else is pretend.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon