Author: Dirk Riehle
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The New Closed Complement to Commercial Open-Source Software
Commercial open source firms make money by selling something that they don’t give away for free. If you’ve been following my writing or even attended my open source business workshop you know that I’ve been calling what companies sell the closed complement. Closed, because customers don’t get it for free, and complement, because it somehow…
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Don’t blame the AI; it’s on you
On the heels of yesterday’s post on how AIs are not responsible for their advice, the inverse also holds true: You are responsible for your actions and can’t put the blame on an AI whose advice you followed. Grok correctly puts the blame on you and, possibly, on their owner for giving bad advice. None…
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AIs are not responsible for their actions
ChatGPT charms, Grok apologizes, and (some) people fall for it. There is no deliberate action, and there definitely is no responsibility that lies with the AI. It is tempting to anthropomorphize AIs, but if you ever wonder, here for your reference is what Grok has to say about who is responsible. Grok on who owns…
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Do code AIs afford programmers a higher level of abstraction?
One of my claims to fame is to have been the main architect and implementor of the first UML virtual machine. The idea was that developers should express their programs using UML (the Unified Modeling Language) rather than Java at the time, and that work would be faster, better, cheaper than if they hand-coded everything.…
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Why an open source requirement (“public money, public code”) is not enough for digital sovereignty
Open-source software can help digital sovereignty, but it is not enough. Many of the calls of open source enthusiasts, in my book, are even hurting, because they simplify and promise what can’t be promised. Myth: Open-source software will remove vendor lock-in and will make switching to alternative suppliers easy. Truth: All software locks you in,…
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License-Compliant Distribution of Open Source Code [Computer Magazine]
I’m happy to report that the 38th article in the open source column of IEEE Computer has been published. As always, please consider writing an article proposal! Abstract This column previously discussed how to prepare your project or product by complying with key obligations like attribution and copyleft. This article now explains how to package…