One of the worst thing that comes out of not being able to see how software works from the inside, is that it becomes harder to understand how it works. Not only that, it prevents to make modifications to make it work on how the users want it or to make another program all together.
What's more, it prevents any work to make any software better. In order to understand how a certain piece of software works, one need to be able to see how it's put together and how those parts interact with each other. Without that know how it becomes impossible to study and learn how it works, therefore it's not possible to work to improve or modify it by any one that doesn't have access to the source code.
This situation puts the users on the losing side, since they completely depend on a third party to keep the software not only current and safe from attacks. They depend on that third party to keep the software available to them at any moment, and have to trust that it doesn't go under taking the access to their data with it.
At the end, closing the software to the study and modification by the user is a bad thing in general. It only benefits the company that makes the software, and just on the account of keeping the users out from seeing the source code. But, it loses from any improvement that might come from an user tinkering with the source code.
The users lose the most, since they lose all the ability to control what happens on their machine and how to manage their data. They are at the mercy of whatever decisions are made by the vendor, and have to go down any road the vendor chooses if there aren't any other options to the software they use.
Having open source software is beneficial to everyone. Users can study and modify their software according to their needs, making it work better for their individual needs. Companies benefit from having third parties checking their codes for any bug or vulnerability that they could have missed, and being able to add any improvement to their code made by third parties.
Closing the source code it's a sure road to stagnation, since it makes any innovation hard to get to. It closes all roads, making hard to make any corrections in course.
It's in everyones best interest to avoid closed source, or proprietary, software. Use and support open source software, it's for the benefit of all.
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