Flamebait, Part III: In defense of proprietary software

I feel for Jo Shields, even as I applaud his writing--and probably send more jihadists to his blog. Honest to Pete, though, reading the comments following Here we go again - why Mono doesn't suck feels like I'm living out some socially-arrested version of Groundhog Day.

Feh. If software is a religion, I want to join the Unitarian Jihad. Look. I'm writing this with Firefox running on Ubuntu, and I still want to wedgie the FOSS fanatics. How many of those, mewonders, pay for their hardware and bandwidth by programming for The Man? In that Major Barbara scenario, is ranting about any software cootie-fied by contact with a proprietary vendor rooted in the same self-loathing as Larry Craig or Ted Haggard bashing homosexuals? Or, alternatively, how many are currently living off their parents? In either case, they don't have a teaspoon of credibility between them until they figure out how to pay their own bills with open source software.

Bottom line: Proprietary software and open source software both have licenses--something that the FOSSistas conveniently forget. Licenses, by definition, bind people to a contract. In the case of proprietary software, the buyer's contractual responsibility is discharged with money and an implicit promise to leave the software as-is (and, of course, not share it with anyone else). In the case of open source, that responsibility is met by "paying forward" any brainpower added to the software. Which is not necessarily inconsiderable--something that I think is too often hand-waved away. Knowing what I know about people and how Newton's First Law applies to their endeavors, I would--almost--be willing to bet that, as a percentage, the second contract is violated more often than the first.

Moreover, the Microsofts and Adobes and Apples of this world wouldn't be even 400-pound gorillas, were it not for the broken patent system and the oligarchical country club mentality that infests Washington DC and fifty state capitols besides. If proprietary software is indeed an eeeeevillll, it is the symptom, not the disease. Judging the entire licensing model by the ham-fisted cluelessness of the big dogs is no different from judging a city's "livability" by skimming the local police blotter.

One absolute statement that I'll make, though, is that arguing the superiority of one license over another for all scenarios is just stupid. As is the paranoia. Microsoft is laying off employees, and Apple can't possibly sell enough phones to pay for Congress to outlaw free software. And even if they could, this is the same government that can't keep its own data stored and safe, much less put everyone else's "tubes" under lock and key. The hackers would win, no question.

So I really wish that the energy and passion that went into these online food-fights could be channeled into something productive. Like, say--oh, I don't know--maybe...writing the next killer app?