Recently a couple of us had an experience where we ran into a believer who felt it was unconscionable to use or purchase software from a particular company.  The individual had a pragmatic objection to "close source" software (close source simply means software that is written and maintained by a company), and a moral objection to using software from this particular vendor.

The moral objections were based on an instance of criminal activity that the company was tried, convicted and punished for around 10 years ago.  The company has changed dramatically as a result.  The remainder of the objections boiled down to the fact that the company in question is a company (a large company) and as such profits financially from its software.

This sort of attitude is quite rampant in the technology industry (and for most of us there are no prizes for guessing who the company in question is).  However, these sorts of opinions are really based on an ideology - that is a set of ideas about the way the world should be.  I get to spend a bit of time talking to people with these ideologies and in my experience they typically boil down to a small group of ideals:

• Big companies are inherently bad
• Software should be free
• Software X is more secure/stable/reliable than Software Y
• Software X is more flexible than Software Y
• I like to dig into the core of the software/operating system and proprietary (closed source) software doesn't allow this

Each of these are straw men propagated by a group of people who are not objective and begin with an opposing or negative or pessimistic stance and work to conclusions from there.

Firstly - software should be free?  On who's authority should software be free?  Why?  How is it wrong to build a business selling software?  The alternative is making money from services... which is more profitable?  Is profit wrong (see my other blog for my views on wealth)?

Software X is more secure/stable/reliable than Software Y.  If this is so there must be some facts and figures to back it up.  As a rule, people who state this haven't looked at the facts, they've just listened to the rhetoric without doing any investigation for themselves.

Software X is more flexible than Software Y.  My response to this is - so what?  If the product is a vertical product, this is a good thing within that vertical market.  If it is a generic product (e.g. an Operating System) this can actually be a bad thing for the average consumer.

I like to dig into the core of the software/operating system... same argument as the previous one.  If this is your thing, then go for it.  The average computer user just wants to get their work done and move on.  For those uber techo geeks who like to roll their sleeves up and roll their own computer system - more power to you!  But this is not necessarily something the average computer user can do or even wants to do.  At the end of the day - this is just a preference, nothing more - and it is the preference of a small number of people.

I'm going to post a Christian ideology on all this in the next few days.  This post is to cover the bottom line arguments and set the scene.