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Ask HN: What would happen if all software was open-sourced?
If all software in the world today was open-sourced under the GPL3 License (or similar), what would the consequences be?
Would the software industry thrive? Or collapse?
My instincts are that; developed countries would lose their advantage over developing countries, right?
Personally, I'm not a big fan of the GPL3 license, but it's able to maintain the commercial interests of the software, as WordPress demonstrates.
- tannhaeuser 7y agoBasically, it has already happened (sans GPL, mostly) and the result is that very few "cloud" vendors extract all value, with further development not getting funded. Not much new F/OSS has been released in recent years, with developers looking at services instead.
- sebst 7y agoThis is an interesting point. The open source movement roots in a time where cloud computing was normal, back then called terminal server. Licences like the AGPL try to tackle this "problem" which feels like a design issue because in spite of having terminal servers nobody could imagine today's "cloud". Maybe the next years will fence us in walled gardens until a new idea of open collaboration will free us again. A bit like browser wars? Or, is software too ubiquitous today to withstand the forces of capitalism?
- codegladiator 7y agoNothing would happen. Everything is already available in open source implementations. People are just too lazy to go checkout and use and maintain it.
- krapp 7y agoPoint me to the open source implementation of Windows 10, then, would you?
- sebst 7y agoI guess the point was there are open source operating systems. However, the claim that there is an open source implementation of every "class" of software, is still too bold. Think about software with proprietary knowledge like teslas autopilot, fpga algorithms for industrial machines, or, to some extend something like SAP.
- mlthoughts2018 7y agoWar, famine