Episode: 782
Title: HPR0782: Technological ethics of Open Source Software
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0782/hpr0782.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 02:27:22

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on call this week. Are there still blood spot blogs or is that changed?
Anyway, Mr. Guedes.com, I used to have a little link to technological philosophy
and that's what I've always called myself, a technological philosopher.
And when I talked about that, what I really meant is philosophy and the philosophers of the enlightenment,
the things that occurred during that historical period, both of your religion, as well as science.
And in this case, when I called myself a technological philosopher, I am referring to the natural philosophers
that were the ones that discovered all these things about the natural world.
And went out there and studied biology and philosophy and architecture
and all these things that were developed during that enlightenment period.
And so that's what I see myself as doing now is looking at the technological world that we live in as a technological philosopher
going out there and studying the technological world.
And occasionally, it fills over into philosophical questions that we more normally think of as philosophy.
Never taking a philosophy class in my college days, but I have done a little bit of reading on my own.
So the real question that occurred to me that I thought was interesting here was open source.
And of course, with open source and assuming, depending on how strict and stringent you are with your usage of open source,
I tend to be like my friend Knightwise, Knightwise.com, highly recommended, that it is making technology work for you.
Whether it's proprietary technology, open source technology, it is getting technology that can make your life easier, smoother, happier, more organized.
It's making that technology work for you.
And so I am not an open source zealot, obviously, or else I'd have an Android phone in my pocket and you know, the iPhone in my pocket.
Now, I've got plenty of Android devices and I can tell you for a fact that the Android device experience up until this point with various tablets that I have had to try out or in my possession is nowhere near the iPad experience.
And it's not just the number of apps. It's how much they fought through the entire process.
It's the user experience around it.
And it is a superior user experience on the Apple device.
And even Honeycomb is not up to that same user experience. It's getting closer, but it's not the same.
So in that respect, you're making a stand here. You're making a philosophical stand.
You're making a stand about your ethics that you want to live by.
As far as supporting open source to whatever degree you do that.
And some my, you know, my thing, day eight God bless and doesn't do an MP3 version because he believes in, you know, the free and open source aspect of things.
He doesn't like MP3 because it is encumbered by kittens. And so he only does an odd version of the cat.
And he is happy, you know, I mean, it doesn't bother him that that cuts out a great portion of people who listen to podcast because he made a stand on that.
And I respect him for it. Okay. It makes it harder for me to listen to his podcast, but I respect him for making the stand. Okay.
Are you going to go all the way that far? Are you going to be a, I am making a firm commitment to only doing, you know, things that are free and unencumbered?
Or are you going to not care and not even know about it, which is 99% of the population?
Or are you going to be like me and you're, you're going to use it as much as you can, but it's not like that's the only thing you're going to do.
Whatever it is, you are, if you're listening to this, you're probably supporting free and open source as a concept to a certain extent.
Now, whatever you think about free and open source though, whether it's free as in beer or free as in speech.
And really what we're talking about here is more the free as in speech aspect of things, right?
The aspect of, you know, the freedom aspects that Richard Falman has put forth about software. Okay.
Now, I'm going to make a statement here and I would welcome anybody recording a podcast and and and giving me a rebuttal to them.
Okay. Over and over again, I hear people say both within the open source community, mostly there, that even outside of the open source community, I keep on hearing over and over, right?
That data wants to be free. Okay. Data wants to be free, not information.
Information does not want to be free because information is data that is not just the deluge of data, it is data that has been processed and is in a more useful form.
Okay. Information you should be more than willing to pay for. Just the raw data wants to be free.
Now, there's a whole little discussion we can have on that in regards to things. Okay.
But if you disagree with that, please record a podcast and and refute me, you know, tell me why I'm wrong in that particular respect. Okay.
Now, we're talking about freedom. And this is something that I invested in it. I am as bad about as I'm going to quote, quote, accuse you of.
All right. I just want you to think because it's something I'm thinking about and it's something I plan on taking action on.
When it comes to the free is in freedom aspect of things, either one of those freedom, the free is in beer or the freedom of speech, the free as in speech aspect of open source software does not come free.
It comes in fact by payment of the most precious commodity, the most precious currency, if you will, which is the subject of another podcast we're going to have in the future,
that you have to spend, which is your time. It is the time of people that is put into the open source projects that makes them possible.
Now, my question is you are to a greater or lesser extent, a supporter of open source software and open source principles.
And yet, do you have the skill set to actually put those principles into effects? One of those principles is the source code should be available to you so that you can modify it.
Now, I used to program back in programming with more about algorithms, okay, before dewey's came along, but I don't have the skill set at this point to be able to look at that open source code and make that just for it and go in and contribute in that particular way.
But there are other ways that I could. I don't think of myself as a writer, but I have done plenty of technical documentation in my life.
And I talked in the last podcast about the heat kit documentation, and boy, that's what we can strive for, right? You can sit down, and at the end of that set of instructions, you can solder together a functioning radio.
Now, I don't know that we're ever going to get there for a computerized set of instructions, but you know, the documentation that is out there for plenty of commercial things, let alone open source could use a lot of work.
And that's somewhere where I think I can contribute, and I can contribute in testing because I've proven to plenty of people through the years, I can find a way to break stuff, you know.
And so, you know, I can test, and I can contribute in that way. I can submit bugs and bug reports on things when I'm using that software and a bug exists.
And even that can be helpful in just getting for people using them, using them in ways they haven't thought of before, and submitting those bugs.
But I'm going to be personally trying to take more of an action step of not only going out there and submitting those kinds of things, but also volunteering to test it when it's patched to see that it is working in the new design, right?
And if you want to improve documentation, can you do work to improve documentation or provide documentation for a project?
And if every single one of us that lives in the CHBR can do two things.
Number one, call in, record yourself an HBR episode, and put it on the feed, and talk about something that you're interested in.
And talk about some particular project that you're interested in, and the ideas you have to contribute a project, either in coding or in the aspects that I'm talking about, of how you have found a way to submit bugs and tests, how you have found a way to contribute documentation, organizing something to help with documentation for a project, there's all kinds of things.
So the feed that was just full of interesting projects, and everybody could have their pick of a project that they can jump in and help with.
And number two, find yourself a project, and find a way to distribute stuff.
And if everybody listens to HBR would just do that, we would have a much better open source world.
So because you can't code, doesn't mean you can't contribute, and if through those contributions that we can keep the fire alive, we should be able to see the code, and we should be able to improve the code.
And there's all kinds of ways to improve the code without having to actually code.
That being said, I also need to really teach myself Python, which I've been saying for the last three or four years I am going to do.
So if anybody wants to help me in regard, I would be anxious to participate in that.
Okay, so that's it. Go out there. Call the way to contribute. Two ways to contribute.
HBR app, and call in, and where I did. If nothing else. And number two, find a project, and find a way to contribute to it, even if you're not a coder.
Other than that, this is Mr. Gadgett out here on the technological and philosophical friend, teacher, blaze of the trails from the real trailhead to the list in the middle of the United States, America, wishing you a pleasant day.
And go out there and make something, do something, to make something, do something, thought wherewise by now.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio. For more information on the show and how to contribute your own shows, visit hackerpublicradio.org
www.hackerpublicradio.org
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