Opensource and Science

On a similar tack to my last blog entry, I will continue to talk about open source software. Last time I likened the importance of software in general to politics because of the power it wields over our lives. Now there are plenty of analogies we can use and another useful one is that of science.

Science is a field which dictates many of our developments in society by allowing us to better understand and manipulate the materials around us. Likewise, software is a development helps our society develop, helps us be more productive and allows us to work better with the hardware we have available to us. I first heard of the likening of science to software development in this video by Stephen Fry.

Stephen points out that there is a major difference between the way in which our knowledge about software and science is developed. Most of scientific knowledge is in the public sphere, while the people who develop software keep their knowledge hidden away from the rest of us. The downside of this I feel is that the development is not as quick as it could be and the resulting experience is not as rich.

To take a real and well known example, Firefox has in most-people-who-use-it's opinion far outstripped Microsoft's Internet Explorer in terms of usability, functionality, security and aesthetics. In fact I have not once heard somebody use Firefox, complain they don't like it and go back to Internet Explorer. And in most cases, most people don't use Firefox simply because they have not heard of it. And when they do, there's no going back!

This example of opensource success is a beacon which tells us that by collaborating in planning, development and evaluation we, as a community, can out perform even the best paid brains and produce a much better product. The reason most opensource software projects are not as successful as this is because their following doesn't reach a critical-mass which would allow development to propel forward. So this is why even just using the software helps to develop it.

In science, most information is available in the public domain (with some notable exceptions). Most of it's free (or cheap) and easily available. Academic teams expect to have their developments improved upon by competing teams all around the world. They expect to be marked by peers. Nobody minds having their work used by teams elsewhere (in fact it's a pleasure and honour) as long as their work is properly acknowledged. In that way, as soon as one developmental stage is reached, several teams somewhere around the world are working away to take it to the next stage.

Software and the development thereof is in its infancy, and so far like the alchemists of yesteryear most software developers have kept their knowledge to themselves. And just like science, it will play a major part in our future human developments. Opensource is a way of thinking and developing which will deliver us from this early and mistaken stage, into a fairer, faster, more competitive, and more productive stage of development.

Why We Should Care About Open Source Software

While more and more people are talking about open source software these days, the majority of people are not sure what this is and what it means.

If you're not sure what open source software is exactly, in nutshell it is software that has its code (the behind the scenes stuff that makes the computer run the program and do what it's meant to do) published and freely available to download, read, check for errors, modify and improve.

Now you are probably asking why this is in any way significant. Why is this important? Why should I care? I intend to show you exactly the answers to these questions.

In my opinion, it can't be understated just how important software is in our lives today. Our modern world-is software-run. And that means that many of our advancements and the things that we take for granted are directly dependent on software. This is especially true in areas of information sharing and communication.

Think, if we took software away, the computers couldn't operate. Immediately we would have a severely impeded banking system, air traffic control, national defences, traffic controls, work environment, communications system, automated agricultural controls, engineering planning...etc etc. The list goes on and on. The knock-on effects of all this would be a near total collapse of the economy, society, probably widespread food shortages and other catastrophes.

So beyond any reasonable doubt, software and all things related to the control of it is significant in our lives.

Indeed, I would go as far as to say that it is clear that we need computers (and the software that runs on them) as much as we need say, politics. That said, let's take that as an analogy and ask ourselves what kind of political system is locked away without the scrutiny of the larger public domain? A tyranny.

An untouchable and absolute power over so much of what runs our lives is exactly what the software giants have these days. This is something we should all be concerned about. But just like politics, most people will never care about this, they just care about the result. “If I can use it, then I am happy”. However, just being able to use something may well mean that you are not getting the best out of it. Just like the citizens in a dictatorship, the majority of people are blinded to their lack of free choice because they have never had such liberty. And as long as those citizens are not starving, they won't kick up a fuss.

As we can see from the dictatorships around the world - this undercutting of liberty and hemming in of creativity and choice is not the best way to allow humans to develop.

If you are the sort of person that cares about what rules your life (rather than just the result of that ruling) then you too should care deeply about where our software comes from and how much say you can have in that. You don't have to be a politician to care about politics and you don't have to be a programmer to care about software.

Just think about what you use and what your choices are, and don't just follow the crowd.