Open, open, open, open, open, closed, closed, open, open, open.

Click “see full table” for more. 32 of the top 40 are open, and 2 others based on open software.

Want to avoid “An electric car that shuts down or freezes up because of half-baked software”? Better avoid half-baked closed-source software.

The hardware, while beautiful, suffers from the desire of the manufacturer to keep as much of its life-cycle in-house as the consumer will bear. My experience was that motherboard failures were *very* expensive to fix. I love some of the designs that Apple has introduced over the years and hope to add a number of them to my collection when I have the room, but Apple has a very clear commitment to planned obsolescence and to keeping control out of the consumer’s hands. We already have an manifest example of their philosphy in the automotive world – the Smart Car – the whole point of an open-source car is to the design to share the design burden and to render the final product customisable to individual needs. This is not Apple.

As a result, the article builds a claim on totally misunderstood assumptions. Misleading at best.

You compare Apple’s system to Google’s, and suggest that Apple’s product is superior because it is closed source. Can you name one feature of Android that is the responsibility of a third party, or describe any way that Android (not a derivative thereof, but Android itself) would be better if the source code were not available to us? If not, then you must recognize that your argument is without basis.

Your “first” argument contradicts itself. You start with the argument that there is no room for “beta” software, and support that argument with the poor quality of a closed software product. Does that not sufficiently illustrate that we do not want our electric cars to be closed systems?

Surely the same argument could be made of the Internet. If the Internet as a whole were prone to failures, then it would be useless and users would not be interested. Yet, ISC Bind is an open source product that powers by far most of the internet. Apache httpd and other open web servers run most web servers. These products are known for their stability and quality.

Quality is not a function of whether the working of a product is made secret or published. Quality is a result of good design, of testing, and of commitment to fixing flaws. Your article supports flawed arguments about open source products, supported neither by logic nor by evidence. It is a disservice to your own reputation to stand behind such arguments.

How did you draw the (wrong) conclusion that the open software was somehow more likely to fail than the closed software? How do you conclude that *limiting* the number of eyes on the source code somehow makes bugs more likely to be found. This flies in the face of reality…

“Electric car startup Fisker Automotive (which is not open source at all) has struggled in recent months partly because of software glitches, leading to some of its early adopter customers venting online, and a variety of negative press.”

So maybe the closed model isn’t better after all?

This article is filled with so many logical fallacies I don’t even have time to go through them all. Simply rubbish.

Someone sent it this morning when we got to work and we just finished our working lunch and it was the source for much amusement. Its always nice to have a laugh at work and the 15 engineers and 19 developers present were howling of laughter.

What made if funnier is that one of our engineers is going to work at CERN for the next year. You might have heard of CERN.
He is a contributor to Scientific Linux CERN 6 (you can find their distro here http://linux.web.cern.ch/linux/ ) and after reading this claptrap, he said he was worried now about going because CERN uses free software on a MASSIVE scale for their mission-critical applications. The multibillion Large Hadron Collider runs on Linux as well as on their 25,000 server farm and if FLOSS isnt safe for a Hyundai maybe he’s risking his life and that of the whole planet in case ‘something freezes up’.

Sub-atomic particle research is reknowned he said for being run with “half-baked software” so we should all be very afraid..

But you know how it goes: many big companies are cheap and dont want to pay for ‘better’ closed source software.

You would never see big institutions involved in big money like the NY Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange, Amazon, Cisco, IBM, use open source software because they…ohh, wait… THEY DO run on FLOSS!!!

Those hippies at teh US Dept of War also use, heck, youll find it in most of the submarine fleet and at the FAA. Wait till the planes start falling and the subs start sending missiles by accident.

And just imagine how good Avatar could have been as all of Peter Jacskons movie at his WETA Digital compound if he didnt use Linux servers and desktops (all the propietary and non-propietary software like Nuke, Shake, Houdini, and Cinepaint, Maya, Houdini, Nuke, RenderMan, Massive, BaseLight, DaVinci Resolve, Smoke ALL run on Linux on top of their own inhouse tools.)?

Well just skip the part where someone explains that Apple is built on TOP of open source base (heck, their browser is taken-coopted from FLOSS) and CUPS is open too.

I could go on and on but the sheer idiocy of this article is making me nauseous.
Now, isnt there some pretty phone, USB coffee warmer or other gadget you can write about? Stick to toys before you go wandering off into the deep end.