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Think about a cell-phone which has a built-in battery you can't replace. Isn't that bit like software you can't modify? Now should we require the cell-phone ma

Think about a cell-phone which has a built-in battery you can't replace. Isn't that bit like software you can't modify? Now should we require the cell-phone manufacturers to make their batteries replaceable on ideological basis? It probably makes it cheaper to produce the cell-phone if the battery is non-replaceable. Similarly making your software open-source probably has costs associated with it. Should we insist that every producer of software must make their product open-source? If it is unethical to produce closed-source software then clearly we should. No?

boomboomsubban 10y ago
>It probably makes it cheaper to produce the cell-phone if the battery is non-replaceable. From the manufacturers point of view, it's cheaper and more profitable. It doesn't help the consumer though, I upgraded phones sooner than I otherwise would have because my battery was dying. >Similarly making your software open-source probably has costs associated with it. In the current climate, yes. If all software was already free, you could save a lot of money not needing to repeat work that has been done. We ideally should insist all software is free, but not everyone agrees that proprietary software is unethical and laws aren't always driven by what is ethical.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
> Think about a cell-phone which has a built-in battery you can't replace. Isn't that bit like software you can't modify? No, it misses the essential point: Software freedom is primarily about power, not about being able to modify software. If by "you", you mean "noone", that's not really what free software is concerned with. What free software is concerned with is if there is only one party that can swap out the battery, and that party is not you, therefore making you dependent on a monopoly. Building software that literally noone can modify (aka "unmaintainable code") might be a bad idea, but for reasons largely orthogonal to software freedom.

boomboomsubban 10y ago

>It probably makes it cheaper to produce the cell-phone if the battery is non-replaceable. From the manufacturers point of view, it's cheaper and more profitable. It doesn't help the consumer though, I upgraded phones sooner than I otherwise would have because my battery was dying. >Similarly making your software open-source probably has costs associated with it. In the current climate, yes. If all software was already free, you could save a lot of money not needing to repeat work that has been done. We ideally should insist all software is free, but not everyone agrees that proprietary software is unethical and laws aren't always driven by what is ethical.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago

> Think about a cell-phone which has a built-in battery you can't replace. Isn't that bit like software you can't modify? No, it misses the essential point: Software freedom is primarily about power, not about being able to modify software. If by "you", you mean "noone", that's not really what free software is concerned with. What free software is concerned with is if there is only one party that can swap out the battery, and that party is not you, therefore making you dependent on a monopoly. Building software that literally noone can modify (aka "unmaintainable code") might be a bad idea, but for reasons largely orthogonal to software freedom.