“Good, fast, cheap. Pick any two.” - one of my IT managers, speaking about software development, back in the 90s
3 Likes
Linux and open source are an important aspect of my personality but I see myself first and foremost as a photographer and an artist. Yet I feel more and more that I am pushed into the linux corner and that other photographers are marginalizing me. They seem to think that I’m their worst enemy. It’s almost racist.
1 Like
Well, any software, be it open-source or closed-commercial, gets is value from the utility it provides. That a program is crap-coded has little to do with its ability to get a job done. Now, that crap-coding may expose some reliability or security problem that then impacts the utility, but that’s not a certainty.
I used to think a key point to the value of FOSS was its transparency, the ability to see and consider what’s going on inside. I have directly participated in an endeavor where that was the case, specifically, a failure investigation involving MySQL where the ability to inspect the code was key to determining root cause (which was not in the code, BTW). But in the world in general folk just want their programs to work, and don’t care how pretty they are inside…
3 Likes
Microsoft (and many others, to be fair) have built their empires on this. Make it work just well enough, with just enough capabilities* and – if not more importantly – create just enough integration and interop dependencies to make moving to anything else just a little too theoretically painful to consider. Throw in a smattering of marketing / FUD aimed primarily at carefully-schmoozed upstream tech-non-savvy decision makers and Bob’s yer uncle…
* But no more – Don’t wanna torpedo future upgrade “justifications”
1 Like
And what about when that is then used on a critical infrastructure with penalties attached and counted in millions per every minute of service disruption and you don’t really have a way of proving the root cause of the issue if you don’t have the access to source code/service.
(On the other hand if you use foss you have no one to sue if the stack ends up being the root cause.)
The thing is, the world has to run and someone is responsible for the world running and the world runs on bureaucracy. You wash yourself of a large part of your personal responsibility trough a contract and who will sign a contract and guarantee for the FOSS code to always run perfectly and all of that with well defined enormous penalties in case of a failure to do so?
Hence if the real world runs on bureaucracy and liability it can’t run on FOSS. We’ve came to this:
To further bend this topic, it can’t run on FOSS but it can on RedHat. And we’ve seen how FOSS RedHat actually is with the events in the past month or so.
I’m not sure what to think about this, in that most of my favourite photographers don’t really emphasise their software of choice - they just use it to get the job done. And so do I, only I use darktable. I don’t think I’ve ever been called out for being a ‘foss person’. I like to think that my images would look the same regardless of the software used… Which might not be the case but the principal is still there.
If I was chatting about photography I think it’s most unlikely that there’d be any conflict about software, because it’s not important in itself, only as a means to an end.
Having said all that, I’m not a very social person, and don’t discuss this sort of thing often so🤷♂️
4 Likes
Same here. About the only time it comes up is if I bring it up or if some software-specific technique is mentioned, e.g., Lightroom’s (?) ability to auto-align handheld bracketed shots.
1 Like
I’ve lived both of these situations. For closed source, you get really good at divining inner deficiencies from observing the ‘black-box’ behavior. Or, you call the vendor in; with our stuff we usually got tier-1 engineers.
Using FOSS in mission-critical applications is usually as you describe, in the vestiges of a service contract. Or, in some unusual cases it can become a part of the developmental baseline. And yep, also becomes a leaf in your part of the inevitable fault tree…
1 Like
Thinking about this a bit more, I’ve realised that while that is my approach, I am, and should be, grateful for all those people to whom the software is equally important as the end result - because without them the might be no dt, RT, ART and all the rest!
Do you really need their validation?? Over the course of history artists and innovators all marched to their own beat and often endured much criticism… it they had not or could not then were would be now where?? I would argue that those that can press on with a vision and ignore others and any need for their validation are going to be the most happy and most successful… maybe its wishful thinking, maybe its because I am a man and maybe its because I have just edged north of 60 and I really don’t give a flying F*&^ what others think… I don’t have the time to waste on it I am running out… 
4 Likes
Oh great. Now I have Stevie Nicks in my head, repeatedly singing, “You can go your own way…” 
6 Likes
Well but I am a foss person and I need to be one, I make an important part of my living with writing about open source software.
And there is another aspect: open source is not only software, a tool, but it’s also a life philosophy. And that’s why our opinions are different about more and more things, my friends love Apple, Google, Meta etc, they don’t care about data protection, they just don’t understand any of this. We are slipping into a big tech dictatorship and they are happy about it. It’s pointless to even try to explain them any of this.
5 Likes
I respect that a lot - and I didn’t mean it in a derogatory way. And I see that my thoughts are a little bit irrelevant in that context.
Some how I feel like I understand your dilemma a bit better after reading this. I don’t know what to suggest except what’s been said already - either give up the friendship (which could be very sad!) or, accept that they are not interested and leave it at that by mutual agreement. Agree to differ in other words. But I feel that I’m not qualified to comment really…
I do sympathize though!
2 Likes
Oh gee, thanks… Arghhh 
1 Like
There are two kinds of photographer:
-
those who know, or upon reading this will want to know, what ISO 15076-1 is and why they should care
-
everyone else making selectively over saturated and strongly vignetted pictures of their travel / partner / kids / colleagues / pets
You see, the first group still enjoys making those same photos, too, where-as the second group could care less about the former. The great thing here is that I get to be a member of both groups!
In math - we would denote this as: 1 ⊇ 2. The engineers and technicians aren’t the subset in photography, they are the superset from which the casual practice, the craft, and the commercial trade are all derived.
What often happens to technicians is that they have a tendency to linger too long in the guts of the science and technology of photography without connecting to the emotional needs, desires, and intent of the latter group. Our job as the more technically oriented is simply to help educate those who are curious and want to learn. For everyone else, this technical mindset of our intellectual existence just isn’t an aspect of their being. We scratch at an itch they don’t have, but they in fact do have different kinds of itches that we probably don’t. Thank the deities, because the world would be a really boring place, otherwise.
I look at it this way: if someone doesn’t want to learn the technical aspects of photography, myself being a marginally advanced hobbyist and a rank, life-long journeyman software engineer, then I consider it an opportunity to simply learn myself more about why they take photographs and what they care about when they snap the shutter. I define enlightenment as learning without judgement, and it’s taken me decades to arrive to this conclusion. fwiw
cheers
5 Likes
I do suppose that anyone’s friends might easily fall into this category
One Australian professor, in his post on this forum, explained that in over 20 years of teaching he only met one student running Linux on his personal computer [1]
As long as the vast majority of computers are sold with pre-installed Microsoft and Apple I don’t see any forthcoming major change about this situation. Just my view, of course and I would be extremely happy to be proven Wrong…
Probably, there should be some laws forbidding this (but again it is quite unlikely to occur, IMHO).
For instance the law enforced by the CEE against Microsoft to forbid this company to ship by defaults its browser Edge [2]. At present, in Italy (but I suppose in Europe as well), when you buy a new pc you are asked which Browser you want to use in the future.
Personally speaking, I mostly run open source software (LibreOffice, Rawtherapee, GIMP etc) on my PCs (aside from Windows…) but I DO understand the will to remain with proprietary softwares as regards graphical applications. The products of Adobe, just to name one company, are extremely powerful (sorry to state the obvious…) and their documentations is magnificent and quite often free (e.g. with YouTube).
[1] New HDR algorithm in Darktable anytime soon? - #51 by Terry
[2] EU ends competition case as Microsoft offers choice of web browsers | Technology sector | The Guardian
1 Like
I have quite a few friends who understand this but can’t be bothered with it, why would they? Some people have their lives packed to the brim and can’t afford putting in the time to leave those services, find alternatives, set them up etc. Life goes on.
Between work, tending for their kids, dealing with house chores, other family etc, who has the time to care if Google sells their data behind their backs?
Specially since this isn’t anything obvious or in plain sight, it all happens behind the scenes. The people I’m talking about are computer engineers, programmers, etc, who even directly work in data collection, not tech illiterate people. In a way having the time to deal with these things is almost a privilege to some.
Unless privacy respecting options are as cheap, easy to install and setup, or even the default in operating systems, this will keep being the norm.
If we can’t(At least here in Portugal) get people to care long term for much more serious things which directly affect their lives, like pollution, corrupt government, lack of public transportation, freedom(in which software is only a part of it), etc, how can they care long term for using free, privacy respecting software?
I say this as someone who uses linux and mostly foss software. I have numerous self hosted services for media streaming, network storage, adblock etc. I use grapheneOS on my mobile phone etc.
2 Likes
Well the current situation with my friends is: I don’t tell them anything to do, any software to use, never, I used to a few years back but soon realized that there is no point. In fact, it’s them who are constantly telling me that adobe and google are much better and that I am supposed to use them.
Of course, sometimes I do talk about my work and my projects but not in the sense that I am telling them to use open source software.
6 Likes
That’s what happens in my home. I’m off to myself running FOSS. My wife is always complaining, “You run all that crazy stuff.” My son always says, “Why don’t you just use Adobe (or whatever), it is so much easier.” I leave them alone, but they won’t leave me alone.
4 Likes
So your actually okay…you never have to share your PC
4 Likes