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Ask HN: Can “open source” be used for evil?

2 pointsby thornjmover 2 years ago
Inspired by the “Google introducing competing open source Dolby Vision&#x2F;Atmos standards” post and some of the great discussion there:<p>“Amazing new free open source standard freeing us all from closed &#x2F; licensed tyranny”<p>vs.<p>“Giant corporation arriving late to standards competition hides behind “open source” as it uses it’s dominance to force fragmentation on everyone else”<p>My starter comment is this: whenever a new “open” project is proposed it should be independently evaluated as “good” as though it were closed source and the competitor open. Is “open-ness” being abused by companies when they find themselves in a market position they don’t like?

1 comment

eimrineover 2 years ago
I do not know any example of abusing the openness. Maybe there are some examples of abusing semi-openness, kind of Android, where the open kernel is using for obtaining lots of user data for gaining some profit. This example is interesting because deGoogle-ing Android has a cost of impossibility to install some bank apps - but this is the problem of certain bank&#x27;s useds who do not care on non-free bank software.<p>When I have read the header only, this [1] is what comes to my mind at first.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.debian.org&#x2F;qa.debian.org&#x2F;jsonevil" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.debian.org&#x2F;qa.debian.org&#x2F;jsonevil</a>