FOSS vs Proprietary Cheatsheet
Tue 31 May 2016
#Politics
FOSS just gets better and better, feature-wise and ethics-wise…and it seems Proprietary keeps getting better feature-wise, but worse ethics-wise. Its got me asking myself why I’m not fullstack FOSS, and…its the money. I rather like my Silicon Valley, electric car driving, Napa valley wine drinking, private school for the kids, lifestyle. I don’t see a good way to keep my life and make FOSS software fulltime.
Here’s where I think we stand today:
FOSS
Pros
- largest potential audience, i.e. audience for free beer > $1 beer
- high transparency
- high developer and end user control
Cons
- low value capture by the authors
- low average ease of use
- lags many years behind proprietary on feature set, i.e. drivers
Proprietary
Pros
- largest existing audience, i.e. Windows, iOS, Playstation > Linux, Replicant, MAME
- high value capture by the authors, i.e. its easier to make a living, its easier to get rich
- high rate of new, user facing features
- high average ease of use, i.e. most software that’s easy enough for grandpa is proprietary
Cons
- vendor lockin, i.e. DRM aka a movie bought on iTunes cannot be played on Android, the video game publisher goes out of business and you cannot play the game you bought anymore
- low transparency–can and often is used to hide bad behaviour, i.e. invasive tracking, selling your data to others, installing ad or malware on your machine, hiding poor security practices
- low developer and end user countrol–you get what they give you
- high risk of unhealthy and/or manipulative treatment of users