Independence Day and Open Source Software

a film strip

In Independence Day, 1996, Will Smith and Geoff Goldblum defeat the aliens by infecting the aliens' computers with a computer virus. They carry the virus to the alien mother ship on an Apple computer, and on arriving find that the aliens fortunately have a socket into which this popular earth computer plugs, and moreover the aliens computer operating system, the program that runs the computers, is compatible with their virus. If only it was like this on earth, there are always problems with moving software between different operating systems, that's part of the reason that the Open Source approach to computer programming makes the code available so that anyone can see how it works and build their software to work with it. But perhaps the aliens were secretly part of the Open Source movement, which might explain it.