I think I've seen this argument for the first time in a Slashdot comment, years ago. I've since adopted it, refined it, and used it a lot myself; but now in light of the Android release, I think it's worth mentioning again.

The big problem I see with “Open Source” is that there are, in fact, two groups there. Fortunately the same is not true of Free Software, but even our arguing that it's about freedom still doesn't help... well, read on.

The thing with “Open Source” is: who is it open to?

Arguably, Open Source, as a vague, undefined thing, has existed for decades. But as a conscious, named movement with its own marketing, it spun off from the Free Software movement in the late 1990s, after the “open-sourcing” of Mozilla and the publishing of The Cathedral and the Bazaar. (Or, according to some, it spun off a few weeks later, when RMS noticed those guys were talking about something else and split off from the Open Source initiative.) Still, in hindsight, one can say things like the BSDs, and even the original Unix, were done more in the spirit of Open Source than of Free Software.

Now Free Software, with all its GNU/FSF writings, has always been very clear about its goals. We're here for the freedoms of the user. If you get a piece of software, you have a bunch of inalienable rights, rights that aren't being respected by most software, and which we intend to uphold and defend. Nice, eh?

Open Source people, on the other hand, seem to be a little confused about this. It's like watching two madmen (or drunks) arguing, each founding an argument on an entirely different premise. Some, perhaps still in touch with the “origins” of Open Source in the 90s, believe it's about being “open” to the users of the software. Others have adopted the belief (from BSD maybe?) that it's all about “openness” to the developers.

(More importantly, some of them don't realise Free Software ≠ Open Source, and mistakenly argue this in even more confusing terms; like the old fallacy that the GPL, and viral licenses in general, are bad for Free Software because they give “less freedom” than BSD-style licenses. They do, if you're thinking of other developers, who will then have the “freedom” to “steal” my software and use it in their own closed software, and not give back to the project in any way. I don't care the least about those; I'm writing software for the freedom of my users, and those have their freedoms enforced by a viral license. Now are viral licenses bad for Open Source? Honestly, I couldn't care less.)

The Android platform seems to be firmly planted in the latter camp, sadly. (Or maybe not so sadly; I rejoice with every Java-based product that fails.) It's “open”, first and foremost, for handset makers and network operators, and a distant second, to application developers. “Openness” for the end-user doesn't seem to even be a consideration. Now of course, both things are pretty much incompatible; being “open” to the operators means, really, “open” for them to “close” it in whatever ways they want; so yeah, no VOIP.

Oh well. At least I don't need to be conflicted about whether I want an Android device, whether I can stand Java long enough to actually like the OS. Clearly, that won't be a consideration, and OpenMoko — or, if they fail, someone else, probably using LiMo or FSO stacks — will be the mobile phone for me. Eventually :-)

A Free Software or Open Source project has to have a website, right? Well, no, actually it doesn't; it's perfectly acceptable if there isn't one. But most developers don't seem to think so, and most serious projects have a website, maybe even their own domain.

I don't consider myself any kind of web expert, but I've been a web developer for about ten years, and most of all, I'm a critic user; so I'd like to say a few words about the Free/OSS websphere I've seen.

Tom's comparison between his own commercializing plan post versus Jono Bacon's OpenOffice article strikes me as a perfect example of the two languages that are being spoken these days.

Essentially, Tom says: "the freedom to use, study, improve, and share source code", and then goes on to "The intractability of the stack means that the hard won software freedoms which apply to its source code apply more "on paper" than in practice" , finally proposing to "advance software freedoms, take a worthwhile leadership role in determining the future of personal computing, and earn a profit".

In contrast, Jono goes on about "the responsibility for the suite to help the push to Open Source", "marketing", and "software blessed by the Open Source methodology".

Tom describes the article's plead for more developers and shorter release cycle as "rearranging the deck chairs". From the point of view of Tom's post, it surely is; on the other hand, from the point of view of Jono's article, Tom's post is trying to solve a solved problem.

Maybe I'm still under the effect of dinner with RMS, but this sounds to me like one of those Free Software vs. Open Source things.

...and now that you have the history behind it, let me try to put in words my basic point of view on computers.

Let me begin by saying that, as of today (and this has been true for many years), all systems I know about, suck beyond tolerance. And yes, I have used OSX. It sucks too. (By "system", an intentionally vague term, I mean OSes, and GUI environments, the general UI/API paradigms, and so on.) And they are "improving" in the wrong direction - which means, in 5 years, they will probably suck more, but be more shiny about it.

The premise I'll work with is: there is very little limit to what a computer can do. It is essentially, as I realized when I was about 9, a programmable device; the whole point of its existence is to be customized, to do what you want the way you want.

Modern software is more in the business of telling you what you want.

It might be a "monopoly of magic" problem. Programming is potentially easy, at least for small tasks. But if everyone could program, how would "true" programmers make a living? So the big companies, who very much prefer to stay in business, want you to believe that it's a very arcane art, a burden they are taking away from you - and you should pay them for that. That is, IMO, one of the main reasons they are so afraid of Free Software and open source; we take the stance that, instead, programming is accessible to anyone, and that it's best done in groups (community), and worse, that it's fun. That even the small tasks you can learn to do with a few days of study, can be an useful contribution.

Or it might just be laziness.

To me, a computer which is not programmable, or not conveniently programmable, is at least 50% useless. That's why I eventually abandoned my PalmPilot to buy a VR3 on which I could run Python. Incidentally, that's also how, years earlier, I learned about Free Software, GNU, and Linux... after I was forced to abandon OS/2, I went on the net (which was a new thing for me) in search of a good C++ compiler for Windows, and stumbled on djgcc - which had a great page explaining what is Free Software, and a link to GNU. I was hooked.

But most people are content with what is dumped on them by the vendors; most don't even change the windows color schemes.

I guess what I mean is: I want more developers and less end-users. I want to turn all end-users into small-time developers. My dream system is an infinitely customized thing, where "upgrade" implies some revision-control-like operation of figuring out how the new features fit in with your customizations. Where sharing these customizations is routine, and the system itself gives you tools to do that.

(Yes, I know about Squeak. It's an awesome prototype of these concepts. It also suffers from many other problems that make it unusable as an actual system, most of which are off-topic for this article, but most important of all, being locked into a single programming language.)

The only desktop development that made me really excited recently was the OSX Dashboard (or gDesklets). Not that it's incredibly more accessible than writing an app with applescript or pygtk or even pyobjc; just that it encourages more people to try. But seriously, anyone in the audience whose mother masters enough html and javascript to write an actually useful dashboard thingie (or enough python for a gDesklet one) please raise their hands.

Even in the world of Free Software, we're still bound in "their" thinking, the "ball and chain" way, which makes our systems suck as much as "theirs" (in some aspects, less, in others, more, average 0).

We design our apps to be end-user friendly because, well, we want new users. But few, usually young, projects care about newbie developers (bzr comes to mind). We should do both; aim for a clear model that you can actually explain to someone who is doing high school, for well-tested code (so that people who are learning to program can see exactly what breaks the app), for code that an unexperienced programmer (or someone trying to became one) can actually read and understand, for a programmable interface (be it plugin system, client library, scripting system, whatever) that end-users don't need to be afraid of and that will encourage them to actually learn basic programming. For encouraging communities, where newbies know where to post patches and extensions, where those submissions are actually reviewed, often resulting in hints that help the new programmer improve. (Sometimes even, heh, in actually accepting the patch. The quality of submissions should generally improve with the amount of help available and the clarity of the system, until at some point, total newcomers can actually write usable stuff.)

Eventually, when enough people engage in this "meta-refactoring" principle of clear models and understandable systems, when enough users no longer perceive the tools they use as black boxes, I believe we will naturally suffer a few paradigm shifts in the systems as a whole (now I go back to using "system" in the sense I used on the top of the post), which can gradually help them get rid of the suckiness. My pet peeve is getting rid of the concepts of "application" and "process", which are rooted in Multics/Unix ideas from 30 years ago; but another good point, raised by Tom a few days ago, is that we need to outgrow the boundaries between "computers", and the notion that there are a few minimal components a "computer" must have. (The latter is pretty much dead already. You can run Linux (yes, mr. Stallman, I'm referring to the kernel here) on anything that has a cpu and memory.)

It may turn out that we need new languages, too...