cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/113521

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/113520

Some quotes

Twenty years ago, the phrase ‘open source’ had a definite meaning in computing which is quite different from the sense it has now…

Why is Free Software so Bad in Quality?

Most free software is poor or unusable. This is heavily disguised because protagonists like to use the isolated points fallacy to sell the idea FOSS is great.

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…if you’re lucky enough to attract such a team you need to keep them together. And for that you need capital and that is exactly where FOSS falls down. This is the main reason why so much FOSS is of poor quality.1

FOSS was Built Out of Corporation and Tax Money

Open Office was derived from Star Office which was the product of StarDivision and Sun Microsystems. It was not put together by a hacker living in his mom’s spare bedroom…

Emacs was supported financially by people working at the MIT AI Lab, which means that it was funded by Uncle Sam…

Linux is…mostly a copy of Unix, despite howls to the contrary it is deeply unoriginal, being based on ideas going back to the time of the Vietnam War. These ideas were in turn evolved within Bell Labs by its creators who were also well-paid professionals. Linus Torvalds really copied an idea whose basis had been funded by university and corporation money and without that basis there would have been no Linux.

Free Open Source is not often Innovative

…lot of FOSS is poorly written reverse-engineered copies of existing commercial software. Innovation is hard; it requires time and brains. Reverse engineering is a powerful disincentive to innovation since anybody who does spend R&D capital in innovation, can have their ideas reverse engineered.

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