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.