On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 7:30 PM, Manu Abraham <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 6:17 PM, SonWon <[email protected]> wrote: >> What is the purpose of open free software? > > The original purpose of open free software is that recipients/users of > the software may modify, fix the software to their own tastes, without > a lockin to happen. As simple as that.
lock-in: i.e. abuse of power. if you don't have the right to modify the source code, then you are forced to reverse-engineer back to the metal. i don't know if you've ever done reverse-engineering, sonwon: it's a fucking awful waste of good engineer's time. i *have* done reverse-engineering, sonwon. in 1996 i was forced into a situation of reverse-engineering NT domains encryption (which resulted in a lines-of-code per day metric of ONE THIRD - 0.33 - i.e. it took me NINETY days to create 30 critical lines of code). i was forced into a situation to reverse-engineer the NT Domains networking protocols: it took 3 years of my life, and with help from five or six volunteers we managed to create about 150,000 lines of code implementing full NT 4.0 Domains interoperability. i was also forced in 2004 to do reverse-engineering of wince HTC smartphones, to get linux onto them. one of those phones took *only* six to eight weeks to get everything but suspend/resume working, but the others took months to get only partial success. then, also, in 2010 i was forced to do *more* reverse-engineering, this time of a GPL-violating 2.6.24 ARM-based netbook. i had persuaded 20 people to buy the device but incredibly embarrasingly the supplier did not honour the GPL, because *their* suppliers had violated the GPL. so i was forced to spend three very intense weeks reverse-engineering a 2.6.24 kernel back onto this device. the point is, sonwon, that i personally have the intelligence to compensate for the abuse of power that *not* providing source code forces onto me, and even i get pretty pissed off because i could be doing other things with my life and with my time. now imagine asking the average programmer to do that kind of thing. what do you imagine they're going to do? they're going to walk away, aren't they? btw: during that linux 2.6.4 kernel reverse-engineering, we discovered that the linux kernel had had a number of "security" lock-in attempts added. as they were software-only, the reverse-engineered kernel of course didn't have to check their "security" measures so we were free to run anything that we wanted. now. another question. why are we discussing this on a list that is dedicated to the discussion of GPL legal issues? l.
