Re: [Fsfe-uk] BCS on Open Source

[Chris Croughton]

On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 12:18:15PM +0200, address@hidden wrote:
> I don't think that the article deserved the response that it got.

I'm wondering whether any of the commenters actually read it, or did
they just see "ZOMG sumwun is kritisizin OpenSors ILL FLAEM THEM!!1!!!"?
I read it.  OK, it isn't overwhelmingly in favour of FLOSS, as it says
there are many things to consider of which security is one.  As they
also pointed out close applications also have security problems.

> More importantly I don't think that this kind of reaction does Free Software 
> in the UK any favours. The first comment is totally inappropriate in style, 
> and 
> there are not really any balancing comments to counteract this.

The first and several others.

> From reading those comments many people would think that Free Software 
> advocates are extremists. That isn't helpful.

Unfortunately, vocal advocates of anything are usually extremists.
Those who just "get on and use it" don't tend to get irate or to comment
much.

> Also this really wont encourage the BCS to publish other documents, and if 
> they cant publish articles that are critical of Free Software, then their 
> journalism serves little purpose and is unlikely to attract a much wider 
> audience than it already has.

As far as I can see this article wasn't even particularly critical of
Free Software.  It pointed out some very valid points -- while well
managed projects like the Linux kernel are good about making the
software as bug free and secure as possible, and indeed better than many
commercial projects, there are many others which are just thrown
together and released with no accountability.  I have commented before
on the state of FLOSS music software: while Audacity is usable and not
prone to crashes I can't say the same about the music scoring programs.
And many FLOSS projects end up with no support at all -- it's all very
well to say "fix it yourself" but most people can't do that (I'm a
programmer but I know virtually nothing about GUI software, my expertise
is in communications, I don't know where to start with the GUI
libraries).

(I'm not a BCS member, nor do I want to be, their aims are not mine.
But the Free Software community will suffer far more from those comments
than from the article...)

Chris C