Forum Moderators: phranque
On one side is Richard Stallman and his Free Software Foundation. When Stallman says "free" he doesn't mean price, he means freedom. He believes all software should be freely available to be modified by the public. And for him, this is nothing short of a moral fight.On the other is Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux. He and others in his open-source camp believe that freely sharing code simply produces the best software, but if other people want to hide their code, that's fine, too. Companies will just vote with their feet.
Business Week Article [businessweek.com]
I assume by 'closed' in this case you are referring to 'unmodifiable' software
Closed is unmodifiable in the context of CE compliance, but most of the time it is also undisclosed source, because of competition.
I agree with you that in such systems the owner/operator shouldn't try to change the software installation, even if he could, but I have seen many situations where a "harmless modification" had disastrous results.
I once met an all too ambitious system administrator installing a virus scanner on a Windows NT based machine controller (the controller had no external connections and the risk for viruses was zero). The background virus scanner used so much processing power that the process timing was completely wrong and the attached machine worked like it had just emptied a bottle of whiskey.
So for this type of embedded systems, closed is really the safest option.
But we can stay closer to the home of the average computer user. Many people use external disks, with an USB or network connection. Often these systems use a small version of Linux. The manufacturer sells them as closed packages, but with the current draft GPL3, they have to be shipped with source code and access. And there are many more systems like large copiers etc which internally run on a combination of open source and proprietary software.
Many people use external disks, with an USB or network connection. Often these systems use a small version of Linux. The manufacturer sells them as closed packages, but with the current draft GPL3, they have to be shipped with source code and access.
Actually, with the current GPL v2, they have to provide source code as well. If you use GPL'd code in a system such as you've described, essentially distributing the binaries, then you'd have to make the source code available to anyone that had your binaries and requested the source. Just because some manufacturers don't do this doesn't mean that it isn't specified in the GPL v2, it just means that these manufacturers are committing GPL violations.
Actually, with the current GPL v2, they have to provide source code as well. If you use GPL'd code in a system such as you've described, essentially distributing the binaries, then you'd have to make the source code available to anyone that had your binaries and requested the source.
The problem is some manufacturer like Tivo will provide the open source code. But to run the code on Tivo box, the code has to be signed by Tivo. And Tivo will not sign your modification. Even without any modification, if you compile the source into binary, you won' be able to run it on Tivo box. Basically Tivo could be providing you with the wrong code, and you won't be able to tell the difference. Even if there was no malice by Tivo, the code is useless, as the box closes the system.
This will be more of a problem with cell phones and mobile devices in the future. Comapines will use the open source, but you will be locked out of there hardware. As I see it, companies get all the benefit and the community none.
