That topic would probably deserve a post by itself. for mere mortals on the subject, I'd love to take a look at them. However, if you have books, resources, examples etc. > I've been RE'ing for decades and wish more people knew about this valuable skill, because that's what gives you the true power to take control.Īgree 100% on this, but definitely not easy especially now that pretty much every damn product contains more horsepower and complexity than the Apollo missions computers. It rather makes hard for others to take away this control, a concept which is wonderfully explained by the GPL license document. True, it should be more something like: "it won't be easy to use this source by yourself, but if the company decides to discontinue the product, you can still hire some developers to support and continue it, rather than throw in the trash everything you've based on it, which sometimes could mean your entire business". > Open-source doesn't necessarily mean easy to take control It is also true for web browsers all it needs is one developer among the many thousands being able to build and distribute it. > Unfortunately this isn't really true for large and complex FLOSS, e.g. The principle works even once the network messaging API in some environment is standardized and starts to allow some, from that point on, “standard feature”. “Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.” One can often do some reverse engineering intervention to achieve the desired modification even based on the closed source, but it’s still against the conceptual advantages of working on the codebase which is by policy free. That is, something available to different customers, but completely specific to the setup of every customer.Īdditionally, it was the principle that mattered to RMS. The feature he added could have been based on, from perspective of the producer of the printer, completely non existing API. That is an anachronistic claim which sounds logical to the reader in 2020 but doesn’t match the environment of decades ago. > It was missing what would quickly be considered a standard feature Software for artists is unfortunately off the golden path. I have the same problem at the moment with my Wacom tablet - the hardware is great but the software is truly awful, and apparently it phones home regularly. I expect the world will become paperless before HP cleans up their act. Who amongst us cares enough to fix them? RMS was probably one of the last competent programmers who will bother writing clean, minimal printer drivers. ![]() Github equivalent for non programmers (eg people with folders full of Word docs)? 404 not found.Īnyway, the fact that modern printer drivers are garbage should come as no surprise. Sound cancellation in macbooks for video calls? Fantastic. The tooling to allow non-programmers to edit data in postgres? Halfbaked. And everything else stays vaguely mediocre. I have a working theory that any software used by programmers will eventually get excellent (or be replaced with something excellent). We almost never try to print things ourselves so we didn't think of it or care. Google (and most tech companies I imagine) work in paperless offices. But print support didn't occur to us at google because was. ![]() Printing support is a super simple feature (especially compared to "make it run faster on IE9"). When I worked on google wave, one of the most requested features was adding print support (to allow users to print waves).
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