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> proprietary software to be unethical My sense is only a very small percentage (way less than 1%) of software developers think that proprietary software by de

> proprietary software to be unethical My sense is only a very small percentage (way less than 1%) of software developers think that proprietary software by definition is unethical. Am I wrong to think this?

Nasrudith 7y ago
In a hard sense maybe from selection bias and counting only full time and far fewer who don't pay the rent. Maybe uo to like 5% or so if you can count academia among developers. There is a sizable chunk who would prefer to work with non-properietary software if only for the ability to take a peak. The likely winner by raw numbers would be the "apathetics" who go wity whatever works.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  It would be welcomed if those ethics would be used to pay for the tooling as well. Instead we keep getting posts on HN from companies that either go dual licenses, or completely proprietary to stay on business, or just switch business altogether.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    Well, it depends what kind of companies. I will happily concede that it's hard to sustain a Bay Area "unicorn" company purely on FLOSS development and support - unless that company happens to be named Red Hat.
    - freedomben 7y ago
      I would agree, although I don't feel like SV has really tried to make it work. It's far easier to lock things down to absurd levels. One of the reasons I love Red Hat (and went to work there) was because a big part of our early history was doing the SV thing but staying committed to our values. I think it can be done, most people are just afraid (and not without cause, companies like Amazon will certainly take your work undercut your funding mechanisms. Not trying to swipe at Amazon (I like AWS a lot as a product) and I don't think the issue is black & white).
  - dunkelheit 7y ago
    At least now there is growing recognition that there is a problem. Given that opensource simply makes sense for many categories of software, I am hopeful that a solution that is fair to both users and developers will be figured out eventually.
- gwright 7y ago
  > In a hard sense ... What other sense is there? Or more specifically, what makes proprietary software innately unethical? It just seems like you have to radically distort the meaning of "proprietary" or "ethical" to make any sense of the concept and at that point you are just playing with semantics and not communicating clearly.

Nasrudith 7y ago

In a hard sense maybe from selection bias and counting only full time and far fewer who don't pay the rent. Maybe uo to like 5% or so if you can count academia among developers. There is a sizable chunk who would prefer to work with non-properietary software if only for the ability to take a peak. The likely winner by raw numbers would be the "apathetics" who go wity whatever works.

pjmlp 7y ago
It would be welcomed if those ethics would be used to pay for the tooling as well. Instead we keep getting posts on HN from companies that either go dual licenses, or completely proprietary to stay on business, or just switch business altogether.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  Well, it depends what kind of companies. I will happily concede that it's hard to sustain a Bay Area "unicorn" company purely on FLOSS development and support - unless that company happens to be named Red Hat.
  - freedomben 7y ago
    I would agree, although I don't feel like SV has really tried to make it work. It's far easier to lock things down to absurd levels. One of the reasons I love Red Hat (and went to work there) was because a big part of our early history was doing the SV thing but staying committed to our values. I think it can be done, most people are just afraid (and not without cause, companies like Amazon will certainly take your work undercut your funding mechanisms. Not trying to swipe at Amazon (I like AWS a lot as a product) and I don't think the issue is black & white).
- dunkelheit 7y ago
  At least now there is growing recognition that there is a problem. Given that opensource simply makes sense for many categories of software, I am hopeful that a solution that is fair to both users and developers will be figured out eventually.
gwright 7y ago
> In a hard sense ... What other sense is there? Or more specifically, what makes proprietary software innately unethical? It just seems like you have to radically distort the meaning of "proprietary" or "ethical" to make any sense of the concept and at that point you are just playing with semantics and not communicating clearly.