Closed-source considered harmful (was: JavaScript considered harmful)

Oleg Broytmann phd at phd.pp.ru
Tue Jan 8 12:37:30 EST 2002


On Tue, Jan 08, 2002 at 11:16:32AM -0600, Skip Montanaro wrote:
> I don't run a proxy/firewall at home, nor do we have a family policy about
> cookies (although my 12-year old has recently taken a liking to Trader Joe's
> Chocolate Cat cookies).  I'm the only person in my family that could be
> considered "sophisticated" in the sense Andrew used it.  Cookies are often
> used outside of corporations, and the risks, while of perhaps smaller
> absolute magnitude (on a case-by-case basis) than those of Fortune 500
> companies, are no less important.  Browsers that manipulate cookies need to
> provide sensible default behavior.

   Agree. But! Different people would use different sense for the word
"sensible". I know a company that produces a browser, and the company has
so much power that it meddles now almost in every business (damn on it for
exercisisng the power). That Bad Company certainly wants that its browser
supports "sensible" default... "sensible" for other business deals of that
company.

Resume:

1. Users must be teached to understand what is going on behind the
(browser) scene, and how (and why) to configure their software.

2. But not all software is allowed to be configured. Hence users must be
teached to prefer Free Software.

3. That Bad Company must be stopped. Modern software is too powerful to
allow one company to rule the world via its software. And any company that
will exercise its power upon people must be stopped. Again, Free Software
is our way to resist and survive.

4. That Bad Company (as well as many others) is trying to develop dumb
users - lamers that instead of understanding what is in their tools (I mean
any tool, not only computer, and I include computer in the list) just
ignorantly press buttons. That's another reason to stop them. Users must
understand their tools, because modern tools are too powerful, and pressing
incorrect button these days may easiliy lead to people death, or huge money
lost, and all that.

Oleg.
-- 
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.




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