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>There's a difference between a one-off command-line utility, and implementing elderly unfriendly software. Say I released my console utility publicly. Say I

>There's a difference between a one-off command-line utility, and implementing elderly unfriendly software. Say I released my console utility publicly. Say I make money off of it, one way or another. Am I obliged to make it work for your 90 year old grandma now? Sure, your grandma probably won't need this particular thing I made, but others might - you never know. But, on the other hand, I'm fairly sure that the significantly larger effort I have to put in would not result in significantly more income for me - this is not a profitable thing to do. In the end, like almost all other arguments about The Right Thing To Do, this is an argument about resource (re)distribution: am I obliged in some way to distribute my limited time and attention towards the hypothetical 90-year-old grandma? Even if it results in my making less money (or, indeed, turn my profitable side-project into a loss-making one)? Under what circumstances should I be obliged to do this, over and above my economic incentive to serve more profitable - less demanding - customers?

perl4ever 7y ago
"In the end, like almost all other arguments about The Right Thing To Do, this is an argument about resource (re)distribution" Like many things there are two separate issues: 1) If everyone did it, there would be a cost to society in that fewer products would be made, given the higher overhead, skills, etc. required. 2) If you (some particular person) did it, it would make you uncompetitive. People suggest regulation because it fixes (2) without requiring any individual to unilaterally decide to sacrifice for the common good. Issue (1) is a finite cost that may or may not be considered worthwhile. It's really weird for people to continually take the position that they can't do anything altruistic and be against society forcing everybody to. Shouldn't it be one or the other?
- sandoooo 7y ago
  I see a parallel between this and the pushback against Electron, and the counter-argument is the same: more choices in software in general is a good thing, and lowering the cost of entry by dropping requirements in accessibility or performance (Electron) gets society more choices in software. The hypothetical csv-cruncher behaves a lot like a compiler - imagine if we had to make every one of those compatible with screenreaders and 20-year-old hardware running obsolete OSes. Imagine how much shittier everything would be with this additional burden to carry, then multiply it by every component in a typical software stack. This is the cost. It is finite, because everything is finite, but that doesn't stop it from being very large. So to sum up: regulating this is detrimental to society.

perl4ever 7y ago

"In the end, like almost all other arguments about The Right Thing To Do, this is an argument about resource (re)distribution" Like many things there are two separate issues: 1) If everyone did it, there would be a cost to society in that fewer products would be made, given the higher overhead, skills, etc. required. 2) If you (some particular person) did it, it would make you uncompetitive. People suggest regulation because it fixes (2) without requiring any individual to unilaterally decide to sacrifice for the common good. Issue (1) is a finite cost that may or may not be considered worthwhile. It's really weird for people to continually take the position that they can't do anything altruistic and be against society forcing everybody to. Shouldn't it be one or the other?

sandoooo 7y ago
I see a parallel between this and the pushback against Electron, and the counter-argument is the same: more choices in software in general is a good thing, and lowering the cost of entry by dropping requirements in accessibility or performance (Electron) gets society more choices in software. The hypothetical csv-cruncher behaves a lot like a compiler - imagine if we had to make every one of those compatible with screenreaders and 20-year-old hardware running obsolete OSes. Imagine how much shittier everything would be with this additional burden to carry, then multiply it by every component in a typical software stack. This is the cost. It is finite, because everything is finite, but that doesn't stop it from being very large. So to sum up: regulating this is detrimental to society.