10/05/2012

Open source is the path toward keeping our freedoms intact...

The only thing that can make things riskier for the user than closed source, is when the software they depend on for anything they do is control just be one vendor. Being dependent on one vendor means that your data it's tied to the faith of that company, if it ever goes down your data goes down with it.

The argument that a company is to big to fail has been demonstrated to be shaky at best, since in the past decade there have been at least a couple of companies with big names going down. And some others that had dominant positions on their fields are having trouble staying afloat.

This is why we must push to have all important, specially fundamental, technologies to be open sourced so that those technologies can be worked on not only by companies. Individuals should be allowed to work on them freely as well, to make sure that those technologies don't fall in hands on just a few powerful companies, or groups, but they remain free for the benefit of us all.

It's specially important when you realize how integrated technology has become with almost every aspect of our daily lives, we use it without a second though. To give a single company control over any technology is dangerous, since we would be dependent on the continued existence of that company, and we would be forced to never allowing it to go under not matter what.

Our freedoms could be jeopardized, since we wouldn't be able to really make those companies to account for their actions.

Open source gives us as users the power to choose what company we want to buy our technology from, with the real option to go to anther if the company we picked fails to deliver or it goes under for whatever reason.

At the end of the day, open source is not just about innovation. Open source is about protecting our freedoms and interests from third parties.

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