Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: "Open" vs. "Closed"
Author: Paul Snively Posted: 5/13/2000; 2:46:42 PM Topic: "Open" vs. "Closed" Msg #: 17285 (In response to 17278) Prev/Next: 17284 / 17286
Dave Winer: With very little time to comment, even purists like Stallman and to a lesser extent Behlendorf, must make compromises. If they run their software on Intel CPUs they're totally using a maroon system, as far as I know Intel does not release the source to their microcode.Exactly; there's always a question of what level of abstraction you're talking about. Why is silicon special and somehow exempt from the discussion? For no better reason than that most of us can't afford to hire any of the silicon foundries to produce a chip for us even if we had the design at our disposal. Even though the distinction between a processor and code that runs on that processor is totally arbitrary (a fact that's underscored by Transmeta's efforts), the fact remains that the market of processors is limited by scarcity economics, while the market of code that runs on those processors is not. So we see how the debate really is one of economic models.
At some point you deal with a system that is effectively closed to you, even if that system is at the level of semiconductor physics because you're making your open source processor out of silicon. Again drawing an analogy to the world of systems security, at some point you are relying on a Trusted Computing Base (TCB), whether you want to or not. The only question is what level of abstraction your "closed" or "trusted" system exists at.
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