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These companies are all natural monopolies, if someone were to release all of their source code, it wouldn't put a dent in their existing ad-sales marketplaces.

These companies are all natural monopolies, if someone were to release all of their source code, it wouldn't put a dent in their existing ad-sales marketplaces. The advertisers go to where the eyeballs are, not to where the best source code is. Most of these companies run on open-source software anyways. Google isn't the only company that can crawl the web and slap a CRUD application for selling advertisements on top. If you haven't noticed, the modus operandi for our industry is to rush out whatever software you can slap together and try to monopolize a marketplace. [1] [2] If anything, open-source software is the sign that copyright law isn't needed by our industry to function, which is a giant problem for many other industries. And I agree that they absolutely do care about patents and trademarks. Facebook would be really upset if someone was using their logo on some random iOS photo sharing application. Facebook and Google would absolutely love to be able to organize and distribute every song, book, and movie on the planet for free and without having to pay anyone for the right to do so. [1] http://blog.samaltman.com/startup-advice-briefly http://blog.samaltman.com/startup-advice-briefly [2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-losers-1410535536 http://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-l...

simoncion 11y ago
Copyright protection is huge part of what enables the rights-holder[0] of a work covered by the GPL to force entities who both modify and distribute that work to also distribute their changes to that work. Similar things can be said for any software license. Google et. al. have done an enormous amount of work to make -allegedly- really good advertising marketplaces. Software drives those marketplaces. If you get the software, you're likely more than half-way to creating a marketplace just as good as Google's, but substantially cheaper, because you didn't pay a dime in R&D. > ...the modus operandi for our industry is to rush out whatever software you can slap together... That hasn't been the MO in any company I've worked for. From what I hear out of the SV BigCos, it's not the MO at those places either. Perhaps you're confusing the antics of the swarm of short-lived Valley startups with practices in the rest of the industry. > Facebook and Google would absolutely love to be able to organize and distribute every song, book, and movie on the planet for free and without having to pay anyone for the right to do so. That makes sense. That doesn't imply that they wish to abolish copyright. I would very much like to be able to have anything in the world that I wished, gratis. This doesn't mean that I want to legalize theft. Your views on both copyright and the software industry appear to be overly simplistic. You would probably do well to study the differing protections afforded by copyright, patent, and trade secret laws. Similarly, you should talk -at length- to programmers who work at successful, unsexy companies outside of The Valley. Hell, maybe even spend a few years working for one. [0] It is -actually- the thing that creates the rights-holder in the first place.

simoncion 11y ago

Copyright protection is huge part of what enables the rights-holder[0] of a work covered by the GPL to force entities who both modify and distribute that work to also distribute their changes to that work. Similar things can be said for any software license. Google et. al. have done an enormous amount of work to make -allegedly- really good advertising marketplaces. Software drives those marketplaces. If you get the software, you're likely more than half-way to creating a marketplace just as good as Google's, but substantially cheaper, because you didn't pay a dime in R&D. > ...the modus operandi for our industry is to rush out whatever software you can slap together... That hasn't been the MO in any company I've worked for. From what I hear out of the SV BigCos, it's not the MO at those places either. Perhaps you're confusing the antics of the swarm of short-lived Valley startups with practices in the rest of the industry. > Facebook and Google would absolutely love to be able to organize and distribute every song, book, and movie on the planet for free and without having to pay anyone for the right to do so. That makes sense. That doesn't imply that they wish to abolish copyright. I would very much like to be able to have anything in the world that I wished, gratis. This doesn't mean that I want to legalize theft. Your views on both copyright and the software industry appear to be overly simplistic. You would probably do well to study the differing protections afforded by copyright, patent, and trade secret laws. Similarly, you should talk -at length- to programmers who work at successful, unsexy companies outside of The Valley. Hell, maybe even spend a few years working for one. [0] It is -actually- the thing that creates the rights-holder in the first place.