This is NOT how Open Source works - Common Myths and misconceptions

A lot of people assume open source projects, as they are community driven, are completely malleable, and subject to the desires of their users. Other people think that open source means free, as in "no charge", and others even mistake open source for "privacy respecting".

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Open source means free
This is the one you hear the most often. A lot of people assume wrongly that software that has its source code open for everyone to see or download should not cost anything.
This is obviously false, and, most licences allow for the final product of an open source project to be sold. As a matter of fact, all three of the mist popular licenses, the Apache, MIT, and GNu Public Licenses, all allow for this.

An FOSS project can charge anything they want for users to download the binaries, or the source code, or both.

The user is always right
Another common misconception is that since FLOSS projects are based on community contributions, they should always listen to their users, and implement every feature that is asked or demanded.

This is obviously completely wrong as well. Just because a project is built by many different individuals that form a comunity, doesn't mean that the project has no direction or goals. Generally, FLOSS projects have very specific goals that they are trying to achieve, and strong visions, especially when they are forks of another project.

The developers are lazy
Another one that is frequently heard, generally when a project hasn't been moving fast enough in one's opinion, or when a specific bug "still hasn't been fixed".

FLOSS projects, while they can ask for money, are generally free of charge, use small teams that don't work full time. There are some exceptions for major projects, that are financed by companies, and have full time staff, but that's not the case for everything.

People expect that, when they have taken the time to submit a bug report, it should be fixed fast. The bug has been identified, so surely it shouldn't take too long to fix, right?

Wrong. There are plenty of reasons why developers might not fix a bug, or redesign their application or desktop environment in mere days or months. The developers might not have the time to dedicate to it. They might not have the hardware to reproduce the bug. They might have noticed that it only affects a small percentage of the users, and as such, isn't an immediate priority. They might also not be able to reproduce the results, or they might just be working on a feature that will render this bug report obsolete.

## Open source projects should never include telemetry
This one is also very frequent. People tend to assume that FLOSS projects should never, in any circumstance, invade a user's privacy.

While I agree with the sentiment, privacy IS, after all, a very important value to defend, a lot of people tend to go overboard there, and include telemetry in the process.

Telemetry, put simply, is a class of data collection, that is generally completely anonymous when used by FLOSS projects, and that will help a team decide on what feature, or bug fix to focus.
Conflating telemetry and privacy invasion is dubious at best, but let's assume that telemetry IS bad, however the implementation.

There is nothing preventing a FLOSS project from integrating telemetry in their project. Period. It's not against the values of "Linux", or "Open source". It's not. It's there for everyone to see, in the code. If users don't like it, they can move to something else.

Open source is less secure
This is also a myth that one often hears. After all, if the code is open for everyone to see, it's easier to find vulnerabilities, right? And to exploit them?

Well, yes, but that's assuming that everyone looking for vulnerabilities has malicious intentions. The very fact that anyone could take a look at the code and find security issues within it, means that they can also be fixed a lot faster than in proprietary software.

Anyone can fix it, or give feedback to the developers, so that the issue can be fixed quickly.

People propagating that myth also often ignore the fact that most hackers don't need to see the code to find vulnerabilities. The various "pawn" contests prove that proprietary software is just as easily hacked that open source software.

[prgnify]

"The user is always right"

I always like to counter people like that with 'just fork it, then'

[matthewsjardine]

Some people: "Why pay for software you can download for free?"
Me: I don't know... perhaps because some people are genuinely good human beings that know that a lot of time and effort is put into these projects. Developers have families and expenses too. Support those developers that you think did a great job.

[arturjose]

I like KDE's approach on telemetry because it's clear what they'll collect and their intentions on doing so.
Also, having the telemetry turned off by default is a good way to say "I respect your data and I'm friendly asking your help". The first time I saw these settings really amazed me.

[AnzanHoshinRoshi]

Thank you, Nick. You're correct. I've donated to numerous projects, and now to give support to Pop!_OS development. (And while users are not always right, devs have always been kind to me and I feel I have influenced certain directions.)

[onesandzeroes]

I wasn't aware of KDE's feedback option. I turned it on (all the parameters) to help with the development. People don't often realize that these statistics are supposed to help improve the software, not to "spy" on them.

[Arvigeus]

5:56
"...not every bug request..."

Hi! I would like Rhythmbox to crash when I insert USB. Thanks!

[kuhluhOG]

4:28 Stallman himself actually said that too and that he is completely fine having the software behind a paywall (even if the paywall is not 0), as long as the license is kept

the only problem is just, that if you have a paywall of more than 0, someone is going to distribute it for free anyway

[qlum]

Personal take, I don't care about software being open source, I care about the system being open.
Chromeos devices for example, run mostly in tree drivers, run on a derivative of gentoo, even the bootloader is open source, and yet are made in such a way that you can't just replace chromeos entirely. Same goes for a lot of cloud based services.
On the flipside you may have a game like skyrim where you can pretty much modify anything you want yet costs money and is not open source.

To me open vs closed systems is way more important than if the underlying code is open. That said I do like my non-commercial open source projects.

[lawrencedoliveiro]

5:06 The main problem is the very concept of a “user”. People are too accustomed to proprietary software which is owned by a particular company, and the users have to passively accept whatever the company throws out. Free/Open-Source software is run by a *community*, which can accept contributions from anybody. That requires active participation, which seems to be a difficult idea to get across.

[matthewsjardine]

As someone going into cyber security, I have seen the 'open source is less secure' argument from both sides. In general, if you are using software/distributions that are actively developed and maintained, and you have a habit of regularly patching your system, then this is definitely not the case. Vulnerabilities are often patched quickly and the community is fast on the hills of hackers looking for exploits. However, in the case of Linux systems integrated into IoT devices, for example, the statement is very true. You have hackers with access to source code to develop their exploits, and companies with little to no intention of patching their hardware. There are so many IoT devices running old versions of Linux, vulnerable to exploit by hackers and script kiddies alike.

[andrew]

Nothing hurts more when you submit a bug on Github and the devs apply the "Won't Fix" tag on it... :(

[theonetribble]

If a project is distributed under GPL, MIT or Apache and you have a bug fix/change that has not been accepted you can always fork the project. Thats the whole point about free software, you are alowed to change add to and redistribute the source code. Therefore a maintainer of such a project has to be concerned with the opinion of the users/contributers otherwhise the comunity would split and the project would be forked. This introduces a type of democracy to software development (examples i think is cinnamon which has been derived from gnome).

[furiousfellow]

infuriating indeed, I've seen comments like "Its not free, it has some bullshit slogan like free as freedom", its really disappointing how people do not care about freedom just about comfort

[lingux_yt]

English language REALLY needs to adopt the words GRATIS and LIBRE. having to explain what "free" means, all the time, is a pain in the butt 😂

[Seba]

7:40 well, I have encounter with the opposite, being that proprietary software is slower at implementing fixes, I've dealt with multiple critical bugs on ArcMap that weren't fixed on several iterations (often involving data loss and hours or days of work wasted), on the opposite QGIS have a well defined road map and critical bugs were fixed right on the next minor version and LTR often are a bug-free product, cheers to the QGIS Team, that kind of reliability made me switch from a hobbyist to a full time one Linux user, work included. QGIS alongside Debian are indeed my favourite FOSS projects. Disclaimer: I made the switch before ArcGIS Pro was released so I dunno if it got better.

[sisyphushappy]

Another great video. I admire your reasonable and rational way of discussing issues. I definitely believe in supporting developers (and YouTubers!). I do think elementary OS has a good model for this.

[bestledisthe]

why does it looks like you are going to cry? Are you okay Nick?😥

[techrazor]

Proprietary software also lag in fixing bugs. Ex. Windows 😀

[meowcula]

Another great video, I'll save this one to send to friends with similar questions/misconceptions. As an aside - I note your fill light has been brighter lately, it seems to be a bit much perhaps? There's a white shine off your black cabinet behind you and it seems to over-illuminate your face. I think it looked a bit better before with less/warmer light. I'm no lighting expert so please take with a grain of salt. Love your work! Thank you so much again.

[christosminiotis]

Great info! Thanks for sharing. The various licenses also make this a complicated topic, even for some of the more tech-savvy users, as there's often confusion about the rights of the developers and/or companies.