I'm really trying to keep this about the engineering features of a system rather than moral judgments. Open source systems are simply more flexible and adaptable than proprietary systems, which have their own benefits. In today's world, the engineering value of open source systems is becoming so important that people are looking for other ways to provide for the developers creating these systems. It can be surprising when a project creator builds something in an area that is usually all open source, but they choose a proprietary path. Just look at the problems created by NVIDIA for their use of proprietary software in CUDA and their GPUs. This software is an attempt to fix issues created by proprietary software with another piece of proprietary software, which is if nothing else an interesting decision.
UNIX wasn't free. Windows wasn't free. It wasn't until some knucklehead came along and did something abnormal and gave away their thing. Bakers don't give away their goods. Mechanics don't typically repair things for free. Builders don't build things for free. Gas stations don't give away gas.
Why do we think all software should be free, and then think that those that don't give it away are the abnormal ones?
Because software is information. It is closer to a scientific paper than a loaf of bread, and I do expect those to be free. I do not expect scientists to work for free, but the marginal cost of copying their output is 0 and the social benefit is huge.
Free software, like open science, clearly has something going for it pragmatically. The developer hours put into it have paid for themselves magnitudes of times over. Megacorps hire people to work on free software. If you can't see the value, that's a you problem.
Free software is so important to society that I believe the most reasonable solution is to provide for all people without their need to work for survival. Automate as much as possible such that work is not compulsory, and enough people simply want something to do (and possibly additional pay depending on how the system is arranged) that everything that needs to get done by people does get done.
For now that is fiction, but so is "if all software was free". I do think though that both would lead to a faster rate of innovation in society versus one where critical information is withheld from society to pay someone's rent and food bills.
Most software is free and makes no money - and that has always been the case. There are some very popular and widely-used non-free systems, but most software isn't that, and its developers still pay the bills.
This is somewhat analogous to music or books/literature. Most composers and performers and authors make no money from people copying and sharing their works. Some pay the bills working professionally for entities who want their product enough to pay for it; some do other things in life. Some indeed give up their work on music because they can't afford to not do more gainful work. And still, neither music nor books go away as copying them gets closer to being free.
If my current employer can't make any money from the code we write, then it would collapse faster than a soufflé taken out of the oven too early, and I would be out of a job
It will be interesting to see if this is the case in the long run, assuming "huge" has a positive connotation in your post, of course.
If AGI comes to pass and it winds up being a net negative for humanity, then the ethics of any practice which involves freely distributing information that can be endlessly copied for very little cost must be reevaluated.
Increasingly, I am not putting much weight in any predictions about whether this will happen in the way we think it will, or what it could possibly mean. We might as well be talking about the rapture.
Why do people return Windows laptops when they have to pay for a Windows License Activation? Because every single OEM pays for it; you don't expect to buy Windows because it is a failed B2C business model. Nobody wants it. Same goes for proprietary UNIX, and people wish it was the case for Nvidia drivers. I own CUDA hardware and lament the fact that cross-industry GPGPU died so FAANG could sell licensed AI SDKs. The only thing stopping AI from being "free" is the limitations OEMs impose on their hardware.
> that those that don't give it away are the abnormal ones?
They are. Admit it; the internet is the new normal, if your software isn't as "free" as opening a website, you're weird. If I have to pay to access your little forum, I won't use it. If I have to buy your app to see what it's like, I'll never know what you're offering. Part of what makes Nvidia's business model so successful is that they do "give away" CUDA to anyone that owns their hardware. There is no developer fee or mandatory licensing cost, it is plug-and-play with the hardware. Same goes for OpenAI, they'd have never succeeded if you had to buy "the ChatGPT App" from your App Store.
> Why do people return Windows laptops when they have to pay for a Windows License Activation?
The internet echo chamber strikes again. Exactly how many people are actually doing this? Not many, and those that are all hangout together. The rest of the world just blindly goes about their day using Windows while surfing the web using Chrome. Sometimes, it's a good thing to get outside your bubble. It's a big world out there, and not everybody sees the world as you do
> The rest of the world just blindly goes about their day using Windows while surfing the web using Chrome.
Paying for Windows? I think you missed my point. If your computer doesn't ship with an OS, paid or otherwise, people think it's a glitch. The average consumer will sooner return their laptop before they buy a license of Windows, create an Install Media from their old device and flash the new hardware with a purchased license. They'll get a Chromebook instead, people don't buy Windows today.
The internet has conditioned the majority of modern technology users to reject and habitually avoid non-free experiences. Ad-enabled free platforms and their pervasive success is all the evidence you need. Commercial software as it existed 20 or 30 years ago is a dead business. Free reigns supreme.
That is kind of his point. You don't, Windows is bundled with laptop. It is not that I agree with his points. Windows for example isn't open source in remotest sense
Dell offers laptops with a version of Linux preinstalled and supports them. System76, Lenovo, Purism as well to name a few. Apple also sells laptops without Windows on them. There are actually quite a few options that do this. If you don't want Windows, we have options now. Yes, historically, it was Windows or Apple's OS, but that's no longer true and not recognizing that just makes you look like you're pushing a false narrative on the situation for what purpose only you know.
> Commercial software as it existed 20 or 30 years ago is a dead business. Free reigns supreme.
What nonsense. Go into any business and you will find every single piece of software they use is bought and paid for with bells on. The 'Free World' you speak of is only there to get you, an individual, used to using the software so that businesses are made to purchase it. In the old days we called this 'demo' or 'shareware'. Now its 'free' or 'personal' tier subscription.
Go and ask any designer if their copy of Adobe Creative Cloud, 3d studio Max, or AutoCAD is free. Any office worker if Micsrosoft Office(including Teams and Sharedpoint etc) or even google docs for business. Majority of developers are running paid versions of Jetbrains. Running an online shop? Chances are you are paying for shopify software, or something like Zoho to manage your customers and orders.
'Free' as you put it is very much only in the online individual consumer world, a very small part of the software world.
The commercial software market is more alive and expensive than it has ever been.
> Bakers don't give away their goods. Mechanics don't typically repair things for free. Builders don't build things for free. Gas stations don't give away gas.
These all have the property which is that they are scarce physical goods or services. Software is not scarce (though of course the labor to create it is), so this is a really bad comparison.
And again I did not say it should or should not be free, I said there are engineering benefits to open source software and more and more people recognize those benefits and choose to make things free because they see the value and are willing to recognize the tradeoffs. I never said what "should" be done. "Should" is kind of a nonsense term when used in this way as it hides a lot of assumptions, so I generally do not use it, and notably did not use it in my comment. I want to point out the peculiarity in your rather strong response to a word and concept I never used. I think you are having an argument with imagined people, not a discussion with me.
And for what it is worth, I am a robotics engineer and I am designing a completely open source solar powered farming robot designed to be made in a small shop in any city in the world (see my profile), funded by a wealthy robotics entrepreneur who recognizes the value in making this technology available to people all over the world.
So I am one of those engineers making this choice, and not someone just asking for things without doing the same of my work. Everything I produce is open source, including person projects and even my personal writing.
Otoh recepies and drawings are commonly available for free. So if you can support yourself the cake and engine repair is free. But if you need support then you can get someone to bake or build for you.
