False advertising?

[SagaciousKJB]

Among all the many arguments that come up regarding which OS is better, you always hear that OpenSource is superior because you can "do whatever you want" and "customize it in whatever way you wish."

Well, over my very brief experience using Linux, I've got to say that those statements are a little bit misleading.

What they should say, is that you have the complete ability and freedom to customize and do whatever you want, granted that you have the knowledge, resources, and time to do so. It's kind of like giving someone a boat or a car or something, and then telling them that they can customize it and use it any way they want, but all the while assuming they even have the knowledge to do so.

I don't think it takes away from the validity of the statement, but it just doesn't seem very practical. For example, recentley the ability of the PS3 controller to be recognized by the kernel's usb hid support vanished. Theoretically I have the ability and freedom to make a patch and a module and be a happy camper, but it's the knowledge that I need that's holding me back. Trying to convert the masses by telling them they can do wondrous things is not really very nice if it's only true to the extent of their abilities.

Another nice example, though not very palpable, is the fact that Linux would make a very good gaming environment if games were developed for it, and that games can also be ported. In practice it's worked and there are a lot of ports, but there are also many games that don't have ports yet, and the user is basically sitting around waiting on the development community for either the ports or the native support. So what does that do to the argument that Linux development is on-going and users aren't left sitting waiting for things to happen?


Maybe I'm being unfair, but just because Linux is open and everyone has the ability to write whatever application they want, or modify it in any way they want, doesn't mean everyone can. This is probably a given to most, but should it really be a point in discussion anymore? Customization is kind of negated, because if not everyone has the knowledge to do it, then not everyone is going to have a genuinely customized experience. As far as gaming goes, to my knowledge Microsoft provides developers with pretty much all they need to know to develop games, so where is the benefit there?


Anyway, I just thought I'd play a bit of devil's advocate.

[darkrose0510]

You can do whatever you want.

If you don't want to learn how to do anything, well, you can do that too.

[bigtomrodney]

What they should say, is that you have the complete ability and freedom to customize and do whatever you want, granted that you have the knowledge, resources, and time to do so. It's kind of like giving someone a boat or a car or something, and then telling them that they can customize it and use it any way they want, but all the while assuming they even have the knowledge to do so.

Well, you're free to drop over to my house for a chat about this, but if you can't be bothered travelling I don't see how that's my fault

[Kieren]

It's a strange argument you are putting forward here. Open source gives people the option to customise in anyway they want, not the ability. This is the same with anything in life though; I can't think of a single thing that a human could do without making any effort on their side.

For example, changing the desktop picture on a Windows computer may be an extremely simple task. But if you were to sit someone who had never used a computer before down and asked them to change it they wouldn't have a clue where to start.

I think you have fallen into the trap that many users who come over from different operating systems have in expecting Linux to work in much the same way. If it did work in a similar fashion then it would take away the point in having an alternative – If it wasn’t broken in the first place then why fix it?

As for the games it is an unfortunate fact that mainstream games aren’t developed with open source systems in mind. We have seen games such as Unreal Tournament come through but nothing has started any trend. Hopefully with games moving into a subscription and advertising era game developers wont be so afraid to take advantage of the ever-growing open source community.

[PastAsNew]

Open source gives people the option to customise in anyway they want, not the ability. This is the same with anything in life though ...

Spot on I'd say. Though I myself am very sceptical of most advertising claims, I see the Open Source argument as a pretty honest assessment of it. I don't think anybody is really trying to claim you can do all the fancy bits without reasonable expertise.

[SagaciousKJB]

Well, basically, I think at a certain point telling people that, "You can customize it in any way you want" might mean something totally different to that person. I mean sure, you can say that you have the ability to program any input device driver for the PS3 controller into Linux, but how many people actually have the ability to program? Now, to say, " If you don't want to learn how to do anything..." without really stopping to think what a monumental task learning to program in C, and then learning how to write a device driver for the Linux kernel would really be. I've been studying C for years, and I still don't really have the ability to write a decent driver.

I mean, by all technicalities, and in many practices, you can say you can customize Linux in any way you want. It's true, but how much water does that statement really hold? I mean, anyone has the ability to customize their car, but how many can actually do it? If I told you that you can go and modify your engine to use three cylinders instead of four if you used a Buick instead of a Ford, I might be totally correct, but how much does that mean to you if you don't know how to make those modifications?

Seriously, after a while this whole notion of customization to me seems like a really lame and moot point. Sure it's possible, but the real question is how many people are going to want to learn how to do it. I mean, I'm really speaking in the context of when people try to hold Linux over Windows, not just speaking about Open Source in general. So when I hear things like, "Well, you can customize it, but you have to learn how," I know that for the majority of situations, the very same thing is true with Windows. If you want to learn how to edit hex, you can do almost anything you want in Windows. That doesn't mean it would be practical to spend that much of your time learning something so obscure to make one slight modification, so why do people expect users to learn how to program and edit source code, which is honestly just a little less of a challenge than hacking hex.


With Open Source you have the freedom to modify and customize the software in any way you want, with the original source code. To me it seems like too many people try to argue that this freedom is an immediate ability, but in a practical sense, just because a user has the freedom to do whatever they want doesn't mean they have the ability, and so I can't see how this is used as a point to persuade people to believe that Open Source is really any better than proprietary when in the end, the user is still basically waiting for others to make the developments they need.

I mean honestly, if someone told me tomorrow to write my own device driver to support the PS3 controller in the kernel, I'd tell them to build me a rocket that would fly to the moon. I'm sure the people with the knowledge to do so already would find such a thing trivial, but what about the person that perhaps doesn't have time to learn how to do that, but still needs to customize it?

In the end I'm not trying to remove from the fact that it's fully customizable, I'm just trying to draw light on the fact that it's not really that practical for actual users. I'm sure that if I looked around I could probably actually find the driver I might need from some project, but what if I was a company that needed some mission critical modification to the Linux kernel? I could hire programmers, and have them do the development. So I'm not removing from the ability of it, I'm just trying to shed light on the fact that this amazing customization is really not a special ability of the kernel, but more along the lines of a legal permission to do whatever we want. I mean, there are windows hackers that have figured out how to do a lot of things in Windows that they aren't supposed to do legally; anything that a Linux developer has put into the kernel is legal. It just seems like there's this misconception that the freedom to do whatever they want means they actually have the ability. You have just as much ability to hack the Windows OS any way you want, you just don't have the freedom. To tell a user that they can accomplish it any easier in Linux, or that they cant in Windows, is just wrong in my opinion.

[PastAsNew]

I'm just trying to shed light on the fact that this amazing customization is really not a special ability of the kernel, but more along the lines of a legal permission to do whatever we want.

It's one of those yes and no things. The whole culture of the open source community is possible because of the licensing, and the incredible flexibility of Linux is possible because of the open source culture. I'm still brand new to Linux, but I'm pretty confident it is very suited to customisation simply because it has evolved to be that way - the right conditions having existed for such evolution.

I think that if for some pervese reason Windows were suddenly to be made open source (), it would soon become horribly apparent the effort needed to do equivalent customisation. Customising a Windows "kernel" might be a very gory experience!

[Kieren]

Well yes, I agree it would be a moot point for a novice user who doesn't want to or have time to learn all of the knowledge required to customise their systems. However due to the freedom for people to make modifications there is a much wider variety of customisations readily available that would never be possible with a Windows system.

If we use the car analogy that you keep referring to then if someone wanted to put new tyres on their car then they would buy the wheels rather than designing and creating their own. Even then if they didn’t know how to change a wheel on a car they could take it to a garage and have them do it instead.

I think the point you are making though is more to do with people selling the idea of Linux by making people believe that any Linux user could customise their system anyway they want rather than using tools and environments that do it for them.

To this point I would agree but I don’t believe, from the arguments that I have heard anyway, that this is the argument bought forward. To me the argument is generally that users have the option to customise their system.

I would disagree though on your point that Linux isn’t easier to customise if the user was going to modify code rather than use tools. If a user did have the ability to both edit the hex in windows and modify the open source code I’m sure the latter would always be much, much easier.

In the end I guess it comes down to the wording used when explaining the arguments as well as how they are understood. To say it is false advertising is a bit extreme though as advertising generally makes promises that not all customers will require or have the ability to utilise. The option is always available to users of open source software, if not the ability.

[bigtomrodney]

Well, here's one for you SagaciousKJB:

Welcome – SUSE Studio

Here's your freedom to customise and to tinker. Not only is it available to you, you don't even have to write a single line of code, open a terminal or even have the source to hand.

The point of freedom isn't just restricted to modifying code. It also means people modify on your behalf. We have plenty of distros for all sorts of purposes. It's not just some big corporate Red Hat vying to be the next Microsoft. It's not free as long as the guys supplying it are in business. It is just free in every sense of the word and the code will still be in archives and libraries a thousand years from now, even if just as a novelty. I doubt you can say that about its proprietary cousins.

[darkrose0510]

By the same reasoning I could claim that light bulbs are falsely advertised as emitting light, because I don't want to flick the switch, or don't know how to screw it into the socket.