A recent interaction I had with a fellow colleague graciously reminded me of how effective the propaganda is. The current mainstream narrative seeks to instill Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt (FUD) into the hearts & minds of tech practitioners & the public regarding open source — namely that “open source = bad”.
I feel a wave of both sadness and inspiration when I encounter such moments. The sadness is because it demonstrates that if technology practitioners are this persuaded by the lie that open source projects = bad, then imagine how confused and easily manipulated the general public is.
Fundamentally, public technology assets — which I define as the research & development artifacts (like source code) that built the tooling being publicly accessible to all for use as well as the social artifacts that went into the asset’s creation also being publicly accessible — are superior than proprietary tech assets.
It is true that a technology asset, be it a pharmaceutical drug or a software solution or hardware product, is oftentimes by necessity proprietary in its initial stages because it can be more cost effective and faster to develop a minimally viable product under such tight control and limited access. However, these benefits do not extend once a product gets into the hands of users. Design flaws are discovered, user needs change, and managing all of this becomes an undue burden to bear by a single proprietor, especially at scale.
This natural evolution necessitates that the entire lifecycle of the product be public, which is to say that its design methods, the code, its manufacturing process, and all other information should be publicly released — and doing so comes at great benefits for everyone, including the original contributors.
Imagine if the chemistry for a life saving drug was kept proprietary and the pharmaceutical company strongly insisted you “take our word for it bro”. The good news we don’t have to imagine this and sadly, there are countless cases where people suffered grave illnesses as a result of such snake oil concoctions — hence the origins of the name “snake oil”.
With that out of the way, let’s get into the reasons why public tech assets — from software to hardware to pharmaceuticals and beyond — are superior than proprietary counterparts.
- Complex projects will ALWAYS require significant investment. All of the current major OEM companies and software tech companies received significant public dollars to fund the research & development of various technology assets, in addition to the private equity they raised. Without these public funds, they would not have been able to create said assets. Hypocrites talk about capitalism and rewarding those that took major risk.
The public takes significant risk by sacrificing their public funds to invest into these companies. These public funds could have been instead used to pay for home health aide workers, daycare programs, foster homes for abandoned children, homeless shelters, and domestic violence safety shelters. I would say that NOT investing into public welfare programs to protect children and the elderly is a significant risk.
Where’s the empathy for children and the elderly not getting the care & protection they need & deserve? Why only extend this empathy to companies that, regardless of whether they succeed or fail, face no repercussions thanks to the corporate veil that gives them a safety net? That same safety net could and should have been extended to children and the elderly.
- The public deserves — nay, is entitled to — a direct return on investment for supplying funds to develop these assets, just like private equity investors. There is an amicable way to mutually serve a return both to private equity investors and the public. This method is by simply making the technology assets public. With software projects, we have a proven track record of effectively doing so, with the Linux operating system being the most popular success story. Similarly in the pharmaceutical realm, releasing the chemistry makeup and manufacturing process to fabricate a drug publicly allows for mass production of the drug, with cheaper non-name-brand options that perform at the same quality as the name-brand option.
This stewardship of public assets is deeply ingrained into the very fabric of our psyche. Our ancestors survived and thrived because they were good stewards of farm land by protecting it from being over grazed and keeping trash out of the water supply. Being a good steward of these public assets — land and water — seamlessly transitions into technology assets as well. There is no legitimate reason to refuse publicizing technology assets — unless your mission is to prevent the public and customers from truly owning the things the pay for.
- This process of information sharing and public ownership of assets happens to also be a recipe for combating wealth inequality. The basics of understanding wealth inequality is just by looking at what pathways exist to create and own assets, who presently owns the most assets, and how these owners came to control said assets.
The beautiful part with public technology projects is that even if the business that conducted the initial research & development fails, all the information remains in the public domain for another competitor to come along and improve upon.
- Proprietary systems lack of transparency at every level. It is for this simple reason that agencies like the Department of Defense are hesitant to invest into proprietary commercial products. The real key to security is being able to independently audit the entire system at all times. To do so, the entire technology must provide absolute transparency at every level, which is only possible with open source projects. Bad actors will always happen and bad design will always exist. The “security through obscurity” approach is a charlatan’s approach to being “secure”. Furthermore, the DoD also does not want to pay perpetual licenses for products that they cannot enhance on their own accord. They, just like every manufacturer, want tools that they can customize on their own at any & every point in time after purchasing. Proprietary tech simply does NOT allow you to do so.
- There is a positive return to all investors and users of these technology assets if they are public. The biggest return is that each subsequent user of the project did not have to cough up the initial capital investment to make the viable product. The next benefit is that publishing the work publicly saves on duplicated efforts. Why try to completely reinvent the wheel, especially in cases that do not need it, when you can simply build off of the existing technology?
The most significant benefit that public tech assets have is they enable true competition by providing a level playing field, whereby everyone has the same level of access to assets to compete with. This helps ensure a healthy level of competition and promotes upward mobility, namely by providing a real option of asset ownership. Regardless of whether somebody takes that option up, the important issue is whether the pathway exists and with proprietary assets, the option simply never exists.
These 5 fundamental issues are why I wrote my original piece titled “Open Source Has Nothing To Do With Technology”.
The premise remains the same in this article — it does not. The fundamental issue has always been and will always be the matter of ownership and control of assets.
Regardless of whether the technology we are discussing is a pharmaceutical drug or a telecommunications edge device or a human-machine-interface software application, the fundamental issue is who owns the asset. This question of ownership then feeds into all other facets that many are familiar with in the technology sphere — cybersecurity, quality, the ability to adapt to user needs, and so on.
The question of ownership and control of the asset supersedes the ability to address these tangential facets. Public technology assets are more secure than their proprietary counterparts because of the absolute transparency at all levels they provide which in turns allows for everyone to independently audit its operation, they are more adept at changing to rapidly meet the needs of their users thanks to the direct channel of communication to users, and they have a higher quality because they allow equal access by all which in turn allows for competitors to arise and improve on its flaws.
The current narrative around open source and right to repair advocacy would have you believing that these tangential facets can be discussed without ever addressing ownership and control — that if you just buy more into the consumerist mindset & purchase “the right product”, then everything will be alright. This is simply false. This narrative is what I like to call “capitalism for me but not for thee”. It is fake capitalism, whereby you are politically astroturfing being in class solidarity but in reality you cozy up to billionaires because of the personal gains it brings you at the expense of others.
Thanks and I’ll see you in the next one.
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DISCLAIMER: I am not sponsored or influenced in any way, shape, or form by the companies and products mentioned. This is my own original content, with image credits given as appropriate and necessary.
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