3 ms·

The fact of the matter though is that it is not financially viable in any way (or ever will be) for all software to be "free" in the sense of RMS "free". How c

The fact of the matter though is that it is not financially viable in any way (or ever will be) for all software to be "free" in the sense of RMS "free". How could a company like Google, built fundamentally on trade secrets, ever be developed. No one would invest the kind of money that was required to build Google into what it is today if Microsoft could go to Github and download "google-search". It is pie in the sky stuff, unfortunately.

mquander 16y ago
Wait a second. Why do you think the world is better, having Google, than it would be if "google-search" was on Github and hosted by a bunch of people? That sounds worse to me. I assume you think that the existence of Google has led to other good things, but I don't see any reason to believe that the people at Google are doing better or more valuable work there than they would be if Google didn't exist.
- benofsky 16y ago
  I am not stating my point clearly, sorry. My point is no business could be built around search if all the implementation was "free" (in the FSF sense) because how would any business have an edge which allowed them to be competitive. Perhaps I'm being naive but this is just the way I see it.
  - quadhome 16y ago
    I don't think the software is Google's sole advantage. The best people, an already massive and growing infrastructure, and a proven-successful platform are all things that can't be readily duplicated.
ohyes 16y ago
It is not currently financially viable for all software to be free. However, A society in which it is viable for all software to be free is not terribly difficult to imagine. (There are numerous possible scenarios, state funded works, high literacy and citizen programmers, maybe some sort of programming by the job system.) In this situation, monopolies like Google and Microsoft probably wouldn't exist at all. I think search is an excellent example, actually, of something that is required for the proper functioning of the web. It is practically a public good. If we found out Google were biasing its search results, it would be a very big deal (but how do you know it isn't?). If it were open source, we would know. I guess the question then is 'who pays for the hardware to run open source Google,' and that is a good question, to which I do not know the answer, but seeing as anyone can download the software, it seems anyone could.

mquander 16y ago

Wait a second. Why do you think the world is better, having Google, than it would be if "google-search" was on Github and hosted by a bunch of people? That sounds worse to me. I assume you think that the existence of Google has led to other good things, but I don't see any reason to believe that the people at Google are doing better or more valuable work there than they would be if Google didn't exist.

benofsky 16y ago
I am not stating my point clearly, sorry. My point is no business could be built around search if all the implementation was "free" (in the FSF sense) because how would any business have an edge which allowed them to be competitive. Perhaps I'm being naive but this is just the way I see it.
- quadhome 16y ago
  I don't think the software is Google's sole advantage. The best people, an already massive and growing infrastructure, and a proven-successful platform are all things that can't be readily duplicated.

ohyes 16y ago

It is not currently financially viable for all software to be free. However, A society in which it is viable for all software to be free is not terribly difficult to imagine. (There are numerous possible scenarios, state funded works, high literacy and citizen programmers, maybe some sort of programming by the job system.) In this situation, monopolies like Google and Microsoft probably wouldn't exist at all. I think search is an excellent example, actually, of something that is required for the proper functioning of the web. It is practically a public good. If we found out Google were biasing its search results, it would be a very big deal (but how do you know it isn't?). If it were open source, we would know. I guess the question then is 'who pays for the hardware to run open source Google,' and that is a good question, to which I do not know the answer, but seeing as anyone can download the software, it seems anyone could.