You are confusing socially important with societally important. Microsoft, for example, seeks to have its source code transparent to inspection, because Microsoft, as a corporate culture, produces software socially—that is, utilizing an evil conspiracy involving many communicating agents.
I deny confusing anything. I understand that transparency can be a matter of degree and perspective. What I am pointing out is lip-service to transparency. Full transparency would be different.
Microsoft’s software is not very transparent—and partly as a result it is some of the most badly-designed, insecure and virus-ridden software the planet has ever seen. We can see the mistake, can see its consequences—and know how to avoid it—but we have to, like actually do that—and that involves some alerting of others to the problems often associated with closed-source proposals.
You are confusing socially important with societally important. Microsoft, for example, seeks to have its source code transparent to inspection, because Microsoft, as a corporate culture, produces software socially—that is, utilizing an evil conspiracy involving many communicating agents.
I deny confusing anything. I understand that transparency can be a matter of degree and perspective. What I am pointing out is lip-service to transparency. Full transparency would be different.
Microsoft’s software is not very transparent—and partly as a result it is some of the most badly-designed, insecure and virus-ridden software the planet has ever seen. We can see the mistake, can see its consequences—and know how to avoid it—but we have to, like actually do that—and that involves some alerting of others to the problems often associated with closed-source proposals.