* Levi Pearson [Mon, 21 Jan 2008 at 04:58 -0700] > Justin Findlay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Since OSS is developed in the open I am better able to learn > > about/with it than its proprietary counterparts. The freedom to > > copy, study, and modify it is an excellent benefit that proprietary > > SW by definition cannot offer. > > Yeah, I hear this a lot. How much do you actually study and modify > the Linux kernel? How often do you look at the source code to > Firefox? Not very often, I'll bet.
I just have to interject here (gasp! is that vontrapp!! Yeah, up late helping my wife with homework). Sure it may not be often that one might look at/modify source of things they use. But it sure is nice to know it's there! And furthermore it's a crying shame and cause for much cursing when you _do_ need it and it's _not_ there. Just the other day I needed to get into an Apple (*cough*) closed source wireless network that uses a nonstandard to get the key from the passphrase. (grumble about stupid proprietary junk) So I promptly found some open source software to crack the key, which in turn required me to use an open source patch to my open source wireless driver to insert into my open source kernel, and in the end of the day, I'm able to crack that key in a couple hours. Now let's just see anyone do that with Windows or Mac. :p Von Fugal
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