Wryl Explains the Software Crisis or Why "Counterculture Movements are Health Signals, and a Fever is Brewing"
"This one hits the nail on the head," an associate has said. "It's what I've been thinking about for weeks and still at a loss as to how to properly describe the attack that is going on at the political levels."
"Defense and computer 'security' are predicated on clearly written, clearly understood code from which systems are compiled. The current attack is pushing black boxes surrounded by layers of regulations amounting basically only to toothless admonitions not to exploit the gaping holes present in the proprietary software. The layers of regulations simultaneously block FOSS."
"Instead of demanding auditability, they are maneuvering towards a ban on it."
The proposals in the new article include: "The solution to the software crisis will not be a reversion to more constrained platforms, but a constraint on the number of layers of abstraction we are allowed to apply, as well as the requirement of information preservation between these layers. We must narrow the (semantic gap) so that everyone may scale it.
"Programming models, user interfaces, and foundational hardware can, and must, be shallow and composable. We must, as a profession, give agency to the users of the tools we produce. Relying on towering, monolithic structures sprayed with endless coats of paint cannot last. We cannot move or reconfigure them without tearing them down.
"There have been movements to bring awareness to the software crisis, such as (Handmade), (Permacomputing), and various retro-computing circles. We're starting to realize just how deep in this crisis we are. Counterculture movements are health signals, and a fever is brewing."
As a side note and speaking of brewing, the work can be supported with coffee. She seems to be relatively new in this domain. Good stuff! █