Xeni Jardin on BoingBoing quotes Eben Moglen, a long-time Open Source supporter:
Proprietary software is an unsafe building material. You can’t inspect it
That’s true, and I’d like every company to open source their software, but this is an utopia. In the end more than the difference between proprietary software and Open Source / Free Software goes beyond the development and sharing philosophy. Why?
Because you can use both to do more harm than good.
Software is a tool. Even licenses are. True, proprietary licenses prevent software from being ‘inspectable’ like Moglen says, but software has to be good (and harmless) in the first place.
Source: In Volkswagen emissions fraud scandal, proprietary software is the real villain / Boing Boing
