kerravonsen | Analogous

Speaking of Penguins... Last week I stumbled across this interview with the Linus Torvaldis the father of Linux, in which he said "I think, fundamentally, open source does tend to be more stable software. It's the right way to do things. I compare it to science vs. witchcraft. In science, the whole system builds on people looking at other people's results and building on top of them. In witchcraft, somebody had a small secret and guarded it -- but never allowed others to really understand it and build on it."

I thought "cool!" Then I thought "But he's using the wrong analogy. The place of (lucrative) secrets was alchemy, not witchcraft..." Then I realized he had the right analogy for the wrong reasons. The difference between Open Source software and proprietry software is like the difference between science and alchemy. The difference between Free Software (aka Software Libre, Liberty Software, free-as-in-speech software) and proprietry software is like the difference between science and witchcraft. Why? Because the Open Source folks just think that proprietry software is stupid, while the Free Software folks (well RMS at least) think that proprietry software is evil...