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Interview: What is Open Source?
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"A peer-to-peer society is possible" |
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| Claudio Prado |
In one sentence: What is Open Source?
Open source is the possibility of you to be autonomous in technology. That's the core of the issue: to be autonomous, to be free, to own your perspectives, to own the possibility of access to whatever your interest is.
If you take producers of open source software: What drives them to do this, to give away things for free?
Every idea, every song, every project, every product – whatever you think of – has a software behind it. And proprietary software would never be the software that you need, to exactly fit your needs and goals. Only open source could do that, because you can either make it yourself or adapt it from somebody else and have it specifically the software you need for whatever you want to do. So, I think that in some time from now – I don't know, but I don't think it's going to be a long time –, proprietary software will not exist anymore, because it is a very stupid thing as compared to open source software.
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Bio |
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Claudio Prado is coordinator for digital culture in the Brazilian Ministry of Culture. He has worked in environmental NGOs for several years, was executive producer of the Rio de Janeiro Carnival, music producer, and an active member of the 1960s countercultural movement in London. | |
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Interview in German
If I am not a very techno-savvy consumer, why should I choose open source products if I can get proprietary software basically for free?
If you are not technologically minded, maybe you should wait a little bit more to get free software; maybe it's not a good idea. We found that to convince people to use free software before it is really user-friendly and easy to use is the wrong strategy.
But what do you mean by getting free proprietary software? Piracy? In Brazil, everybody uses pirated software. The reason to move is not because it's free of a price, but because it allows freedom. And that's a step that should be taken – from pirated software to free software – once you understood what is behind the idea of freedom. It's a philosophical and an ethical choice that has to be made – a political one as well. You have to understand those issues, and then you move.
But the speed in which this understanding has been going is very fast. If you go into an internet shop today to buy a server, it will come with free software because it's better. NASA uses free software because it's better. To find Bin Laden, they are using free software – if they want to find Bin Laden. I'm not sure they want to. He's a better ally to Mr. Bush being somewhere.
05. Januar 2007 |
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1 / 3 |
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Schriftenreihe (Bd. 552) |
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