Came across this article the other day and I’ve been thinking about it. Setting aside his somewhat confusing terminology (”Free Software” really should be called open source, because the very program he is railing against, Picasa, is free software. The source code is proprietary, but the software is still free…), he nevertheless touches on a number of issues I’ve been fascinated by for the last several years or so.

In any case, like any good geek, I’ve used freeware for years. Who wouldn’t? And of course I’ve always been generally aware of open source software, as anyone on Unix would be, through the efforts of gnu, linux and the like. However, since I was using Windows increasingly in my current job and lazily on my home computer, it wasn’t until about two years ago when I decided I was going to migrate to Linux and then last year when I completely removed the Windows installation that I was looking much more closely at Open Source.

We already know that the Open Source model is sound. There’s more than two decades worth of solid work, starting with the early GNU projects to today’s Linux distros and more to show that. What’s more, especially for the more popular and widely used programs, the churn rate on bug fixes and feature additions is much higher. You only have to look at Firefox’s quick turn around on bug fixes, and the number of releases its made as compared to Microsoft’s completely anemic Internet Explorer 6 which gets only a minor facelift some seven years later with the release of IE7.

But if you’re not compiling things, if you’re not poking through the code, if you’re happy using just executables, then the philosophical differences between freeware and open source aren’t going to be obvious. And certainly there’s quite a bit of other freeware that enjoy the same pace of responsiveness and bugfix/feature adding. Linux users, even while preaching the open source mantra, tend to rave as much about google software as anyone else, and last I checked, googleware, while free, is most certainly not open source.

There’s a slew of other considerations as well. Open source software is more likely than most to be present on multiple platforms. A good piece of software whose code is accessible can be ported by someone interested in it elsewhere. This simply doesn’t happen with proprietary code; only the owner of the code will make any necessary investment to do so, and many don’t. And the beauty of using the same program whether you’re on Windows, Mac, or Unix is that you don’t have to memorize new interfaces. You’re more likely to be able to interact without issues with someone on another computer. Send them a file and it will be correctly interpreted and opened. The frustration factor goes down and the usability factor goes up.

However, I think Picasa is a slightly different issue. The only reason Picasa is available on Linux is because it’s bundled with Wine, an open source program that allows Linux users to run Windows applications. Google made extensive fixes and extensions to Wine so that it would be able to run Picasa in Linux. We therefore have a piece of open source software which has been extensively upgraded in order for Picasa to make its Linux debut.

This actually takes the entire Picasa debate out of the usual free vs open domain, and indirectly brings me to another issue especially relevant with today’s issues on domestic surveillance by the governments: the final reason that pushed me over the edge into getting out of Windows was the whole DRM and privacy concerns. This involves not just the DVD protection stuff but also the trusted chip technology (blog of helios has a pretty good run down on this whole issue worth reading — check also for which hardware is involved). You’ll notice that now these trusted chip sets are going to be on Macintosh computers as well, with their well publicized move to Intel chips.

Linux is literally the only way out of this for the foreseable future, and it’s Open Source that will guarantee that. Even if DRM were somehow put into it, anyone could recompile without it. Folks outside the country could keep versions available.

And how did I come to this digression with Picasa? Back to Wine: it could well be a way for die-hard Windows users to get away from the DRM technology while still running the programs that they know and love. I just love the multiple levels of irony here.