Free Software is Commercial

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2015-08-04 09:04:43 UTC
Modified: 2015-08-04 09:04:43 UTC

"There’s no company called Linux, there’s barely a Linux road map. Yet Linux sort of springs organically from the earth. And it had, you know, the characteristics of communism that people love so very, very much about it. That is, it’s free."

--Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO at the time

Summary: Corporate media helps stigmatise Free/Open Source software as unsuitable for commercial use and once again it uses the 'security' card

SEVERAL days ago in our daily links we includes two articles that used the term "commercial software" (to mean proprietary software). Both cited Synopsys. It is amazing that even in 2015 there are some capable of making this error, maybe intentionally. Commercial software just means software that is used commercially. A lot of it is Free/Open Source software (the corporate media prefers the term "Open Source" to avoid discussion about the F word, "freedom").

"Commercial software just means software that is used commercially."Yesterday we found yet another headline which repeats the same formula (as if they all received the same memo), calling proprietary software "commercial software", thereby reinforcing the false dichotomy and the stigma of Free software. "Looking at our Java defect density data through the lens of OWASP Top 10," says Synopsys, "we observe that commercial software is significantly more secure than open source software."

Another article from yesterday reminded us that Free software takes security very seriously and top/leading Free software projects are widely regarded (even by Coverity) as more secure than proprietary counterparts. Oddly enough, Synopsys links to a "Coverity Scan Open Source Report 2014", not 2015, and the report is behind walled gardens, so it is hard to check if these headlines tell the whole story or just part of it. The analysis itself is done by proprietary software, whose methods are basically a secret. Go figure...

We recently saw some very gross distortions where security issues in proprietary software got framed as a Free software issues. As we have repeatedly demonstrated and stressed over the past years and a half, there seems to be a campaign of FUD, 'branding', and logos (the latest being targeted at Android/MMS) whose goal is to create or cement a damaging stereotype while always ignoring back doors and even front doors in proprietary software (now out in the open because of the British Prime Minister and the ringleader of the FBI). ⬆

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