Open source software is an important pillar of humanity’s control over computers. Or at least used to be. Worthy systems like Mac OS X are built using open source components, and are built for human beings (read: they work out of the box for most people). Arguably, OSX couldn’t exist without open source. But such systems go beyond the premise of free software (free as in freedom), and deliver something of a mixed blessing: by hiding the innards of their components, and by delivering such a smooth user experience, they further reduce the need for people to understand the entire computing stack: this is New World Computing.
A few years ago, I firmly believed that people understanding computers better was crucial to us making meaningful use of their possibilities. Now I believe that understanding services better is crucial: how does Facebook deal with your data, how does Google index public and private pages, what traces are left of content that made it to the internet and was then pulled. It’s a large shift, I guess.
And a vague link between free software and privacy protection shows how important open source has become as a moral compass and its practitioners as thought leaders. But this article (in France’s most serious daily) also shows how poorly understood the issues are.