为什么我不喜欢开源

翻译：Why I’m Not a Fan of Open Source
Why? Let me explain.

Photo by Andrew on Unsplash
I have been speaking unflatteringly about open source software such as Linux and the vast number of programs for it for a long time now. Why? Let me explain.

Reason 1. Degradation.

The most important thing is that Open Source prevents the emergence of a domestic school of creating software products. Abroad, it has long been established, and there, within the framework of numerous software companies, even very large software projects are developing and managed quite rhythmically.

Despite the high quality of domestic programmers, a mass school for creating software products, alas, did not develop.

For obvious reasons, high-quality domestic programmers were initially sucked into long-existing foreign companies that had captured dominant positions both in the world. There was simply no need for our own school for creating software products to appear.

The global craze for Open Source in recent years may have a negative impact on software development. Instead of creating new, more advanced proprietary solutions and maintaining the quality of their programmers, software companies will increasingly use borrowed code, and programmers will turn into program compilers from ready-made modules.

In the minds of programmers (and these are mostly young naive “nerds” and people who grew up from them in one way or another) there is a very, in my opinion, naive and false statement that by working on a product openly, with the whole world, it is possible to make it better and better by joint efforts. It’s like a hippie movement. The naivety of such people is touching.

Everything would be so if man were perfect. But he is lazy, damn it! It is enough to remember the main rule of the programmer: “If it works, don’t touch it!”. Once written, a working module will migrate from project to project in most cases without any fundamental improvements and in every way slow down the appearance of similar modules that could become more progressive by its very existence.

Yes, as an objection, many modules can probably be found adequate alternatives, but this will most likely be the exception. Much more often, the development of a module is financed due to necessity, and not for the purpose of sporting interest in doing the same thing, only better.

But this is all in the world. School can degrade only where it exists. But in Russia it does not exist, and with the passion for open source software it will not even appear.

We do not know how to write large software products on a mass scale, which makes us very dependent on other people’s solutions. And this means that we will not write our own operating system, which in terms of functionality and ergonomics would be at least comparable to Windows, although for the successful development of the industry we need an operating system of a qualitatively different level and architecturally more advanced.

Instead, our companies are just producing Linux clones and forks of other programs for it. Is this the path to development? In my opinion, this is stagnation. But a large project to create, say, a domestic progressive operating system, aimed at the future, could help create the school we need.

Fresh algorithmic solutions would appear, allowing us to solve both new problems and perform old ones more effectively. There would be a qualitative leap in cybernetics, more advanced automation software would appear. In general, instead of, essentially, chewing snot, correct development would take place.

Reason 2. Insecurity

The number of malicious elements in open source is growing. Since February, the number of detected malicious elements of open source software has increased by an order of magnitude. Kaspersky Lab alone has found at least 100 such attachments in foreign open source software on various platforms.

Programmers who oppose have begun to leave scripts as bookmarks that display, for example, banners with political appeals or ransomware viruses that paralyze the operation of products.

In particular, threats were noticed in the software packages Ctx, phppass and Winbox, distributed from various repositories. Recently, the author of the popular library node-ipc added a virus-encryptor for IP in Belarus, which corrupts the entire file system of users. The number of such incidents, according to experts, will grow.

It is unrealistic to check all the code. Understanding someone else’s code is often much more difficult than writing your own. Now, at the state level, they are going to create their own repository of open source software.

But still, in this case, at the very least, the competitive incentive is lost for software companies. Why should I invest in writing a quality product that would give me a competitive advantage if I have to put its source code in the public domain?

In general, they are trying to save money. Maybe at this stage, in the absence of everything, this is right. A forced measure. But it immediately blocks further qualitative development of cybernetics, replacing it with quantitative development. And when all the holes are plugged with Linux and open source software for it, it will be completely impossible to develop your own school. Why, if everything already exists?

Perhaps the state should, while simultaneously focusing on open source software, somehow stimulate internal competition between companies so that they would compete in code quality and create a school for creating large software products with the prospect of writing a progressive operating system, as a kind of maturity test?