Would you like a car you can’t open the hood and look into the engine? And why do you buy such systems for which you even sign that this virtual car is not your property, only the company that manufactured it has the right to repair, operate, drive, update and intervene in it.
Any system modifications you pay are not your property. All know-how, codes (or system screws) belong to the manufacturer. And you just have to pay for gas and whatever on that car fails to report to the manufacturer and wait in line, where there are such users of your virtual car, or software, in front of you.
Are you tapping your forehead? Would you never buy such a thing? But why are you or many and many other companies signing absurd software license terms, when suppliers of such closed source systems pretend to be loving beings and lock you in with a contract that exactly meets the above terms?
This is because in a hundred years of car operation, we have somehow got used to the behavior of cars, to the possibility of repairs, to the overall ecosystem around cars.
In a few decades of consumer electronics, a perverted system, in which, for example, the same rules for car manufacturers as for electronics manufacturers do not apply in the United States, has begun to twist. To vomit when one vomits from him. The point is, for example, that hardware manufacturers do not have to meet the product repairability conditions that apply to car manufacturers.
And in software, it’s even worse. For example, did you know that great Windows on “almost your computer” aren’t yours at all? You only have the right to use. You may not change the splash screen and its background without infringing the license. You have no rights. You do not have the right to compensation if the update erases your entire disk. You have no right to interfere in any way with the code of the software you have purchased.
And this evil was introduced by a couple of gentlemen from the United States, led by Bill Gates, who convinced people of the world’s consciousness that this was the right thing to do, and that this was taken over by many closed source software companies. Come customer. Buy. Install. We will monitor you according to the conditions, send you all the data about you under the pretext of improving our services, we will not let you modify anything, you will be our property. You won’t look under the compiled hood of our software. You can’t. Or we’ll sue you and judge your pants on you. You signed a contract. The whole software is still ours.
The fact that you pay us to develop components, which we then like to resell with enormous profits, do you serve us as a guinea pig and the software still doesn’t belong to you? This is the standard of a dear customer. Didn’t you really understand our twenty-page license, which allows us everything and forbids you everything? So read it properly next time. But now pay. Forever. To us. For software that doesn’t belong to you.
And that’s why Open Source wins on greed and ignorance. Because this software belongs to you.
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David Strejc is corporate IT since 2004. He was the founder of the successful international company Easy Software s.r.o., he also worked as an architect at O2, a solution designer at T-Mobile.
He is now a co-owner of WYR, s.r.o., which has multiple brands and implements Open Source into companies.
WPDistro deals with professional web solutions on the WordPress system (websites, e-shops, systems, news news, social platforms, etc.) https://wpdistro.cz/.
AutoCRM is a CRM system under an Open Source license, which we implement in medium and large companies. https://autocrm.cz/.
