Re: [dev] Open Source DIY ethics

From: Thomas Levine <__AT_thomaslevine.com>
Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2018 05:11:00 +0000

I find the article and the subsequent comments from Jan and Sylvain
to be very accurate. They have led me to remark that "do-it-yourself"
describes my software interests better than "open source" or "free
software" does.

I am mostly interested in software that works as I want it to.
Consequently, I pretty much require that the software be freely
licensed, that the source code be short, and that the software be
developed by volunteers. The terms "free software" and "open source"
describe only the first of these points; they may suggest DIY, as they
originate from hacker groups, but they technically only describe
particular legal mechanisms that happen to be useful in the context of
DIY software. Furthermore, elegant software is often easy to
reverse-engineer based on the documentation and interface, so the free
licensing of the source code is not necessarily important.

I imagine that "DIY" will lose meaning as companies market proprietary
products (perhaps internet of things) as DIY, but, for the moment,
I think "DIY" suggests that people are encouraged to learn, run, and
modify the software to suit their own wishes.
Received on Sun Dec 23 2018 - 06:11:00 CET