The downsides of Open Source Software

Recently I was asked to drop some songs into a Philips Gogear m3 player for my cousin. I’m going to imply that all the music was acquired legally, for various reasons. For this blog post, you will see why I make the implication.

After assesing the physical state of the player, I figure it would be a simple drag and drop via USB. Mounting the drive proved troublesome and I got this output from dmesg | tail

[17180988.752000] sde: assuming drive cache: write through
[17180988.772000] SCSI device sde: 3951360 512-byte hdwr sectors (2023 MB)
[17180988.776000] sde: Write Protect is off
[17180988.776000] sde: Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00
[17180988.776000] sde: assuming drive cache: write through
[17180988.776000] sde: sde1
[17180988.780000] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sde
[17180988.780000] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0
[17181002.176000] FAT: Unrecognized mount option “flush” or missing value
[17183741.120000] FAT: Unrecognized mount option “flush” or missing value

Some research showed that there was a program called OpenGoGear, to help with these sorts of issues. I tried to install the .deb file and there was an issue extracting the file. My next attempt to install from source gave me a dependency issue. An attempt to fix the dependency showed I needed ANOTHER, uninstalled library. At this point I gave up because dependency hell is not for me.

And then I plugged in the brand spanking new ipod-mini-touch-screen-video-toaster-in-a-pocket. My computer was unable to figure out what to do with this player. FAIL. If hardware companies want my money (and for that player, it requires lots of it), then I need a reasonable guarantee that it will be compliant with my software. Attention Apple: It’s an mp3 player. It lets you play music. Not the arm codes for a nuclear device. There is no harm in taking 3 days out of a 6 month development cycle to guarantee that your players are Linux friendly. Get over yourselves.

And then I see this gOS system being sold at Wal-Marts all over the United States. It’s an Ubuntu derivative, but that doesn’t make it Ubuntu. From my understanding, it has many non-free components out of the box. Also, it was my understanding that Canonical was in talks with Wal-Mart to get Ubuntu installed on the computers, but it appears that one didn’t go through. So, we have a tiny, tiny company profiting from a (in all likelihood, deliberate), deployment of Linux to a large retailer where the demand far outweighs supply. We can expect this company to grow by leaps and bounds however.

And in the news, I read about the MPAA using Xubuntu to run toolkits on university networks and sniff out p2p traffic. Tax dollars should not be spent to support the MPAA’s business model, versus that of technology’s pursuit of enabling content to the people. Legal or otherwise. Of course, when 60 million Americans are using p2p, then the issue becomes not ‘is there downloading?’ but ‘how do we fix this?’ I am proud of my stance against the MPAA because it seems obvious to me that there is no possible way their organization can fix what they perceive to be a problem.

The problem extends beyond p2p and downloading. It extends to the very spirit of software libre. Simply using GNU/Linux is not enough to change the world’s mind about computing. Look at the struggle of the community between mp3 support and freedom. It is obvious that those who believe in the fundamental awesomness of computing are not the ones who necessarily dictate the direction computing will take. Because the MPAA uses toolkits to protect proprietary content and formats, they are violating the spirit of free and open source software, regardless of which distribution they developed their software on. “Show us the code” is not enough, because the implications and implementation of the code are what matter. The code may be the most basic part of the computer, but the latter is what will vibrate through society, which is what makes the MPAA’s actions so unsavory, and why I am proud to oppose their actions. I don’t care what organization you belong to, when you take my hard work and effort to support an open and free society, and use it for a restrictive action, I will stand against you.

My final point is this: If you develop open source/free software/copy left content, there is no guarantee that the uses will be ones you agree we. Law and opinion are thankfully two different fields, with some overlap, but in this case, I would like to see more freedom and less protectionism.

-Eddie