[OSGeo-Discuss] Is it possible for properitery GIS vendor to market thier properitery product as Open ?

[Jonathan Moules]

Hi Mateusz,
I'd suggest it depends on the nature of the secret. There are certainly rare circumstances where they came in useful - Enigma being broken in WW2 being a prime example.

But more recently consider all of the revelations of the innumerable security bugs that the CIA/NSA (and no doubt their kin in other countries too) have been hoarding and keeping secret so they can use them for their own nefarious purposes. By keeping them secret rather than disclosing them responsibly as is the industry standard, they exposed everyone to increased risk. Anyone could have discovered those same vulnerabilities independently and packaged them into malware, and this likely did happen.

Even if you want to stay in the business world, how long were the tobacco companies suppressing knowledge of tobacco's harms and keeping secret any studies that disagreed with their "it's good for you" stance?
Or food labelling laws - company's would love to keep secret what they're putting in food, not just to hide it from competitors, but so they could put cheap (but harmful) things in that no-one would know about (see recent horse-meat scandals as an example, even with the regulations - that was a secret, though fortunately not necessarily harmful).

Unfortunately, company's abuse secrets, and governments do it even more (just read your country's equivalent of Private Eye (a UK magazine that highlights hypocrisy/corruption/etc in public figures) for regular examples).

Cheers,
Jonathan

---- On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 16:38:44 +0000 Mateusz Loskot<mateusz at loskot.net> wrote ---- 

On 25 March 2017 at 13:01, Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it> wrote:
> Il 25/03/2017 12:56, Mateusz Loskot ha scritto:
>
>> They do, but at the same time, we wouldn't be where we are now
>> in terms of civilisation development. yin/yang
>
> Not quite sure about that: Mateusz, do you have a reference to support this?

It is just my opinion and interpretation of what I have learned about/from
history, state of current affairs.

If there was no Soviet Union and USA, man would have arrived on the Moon
much later than he actually did. I'm certain, but I can't prove it, obviously.

Nobody is asking for reference regarding the misleading practices
implied in the thread.
OP's posed questions vaguely enough to make it impossible to pertain to
with any relevant references.

Best regards,
-- 
Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net
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