3 ms·

> If all of the people who say they won't create without monopoly profits Trade secrets and monopoly profits are different things. The source code for your bus

> If all of the people who say they won't create without monopoly profits Trade secrets and monopoly profits are different things. The source code for your business' software is a trade secret, even if you don't have a monopoly. It would be untenable to produce software for profit if any of your employees could walk off with your source code after your investment and set up a competing business selling the same thing at a cut rate. From the sound of it, you might not find this prospect so sad. I can certainly imagine a world where all software is produced by consortiums of users funding development voluntarily. That doesn't seem to be a common general pattern, however, with the exception of a few programs like Blender or Dwarf Fortress. If it were more efficient for producing good software than the status quo I would personally expect to see it happen naturally more often. There's nothing that prevents such arrangements from being created today.

breck 6y ago
> It would be untenable to produce software for profit if any of your employees could walk off with your source code after your investment and set up a competing business selling the same thing at a cut rate. You can still ask your employees to keep things secret, of course. Just without government as your enforcer. What would generally happen is you'd have to sweeten the terms of employment to make sure your people are happy. Profits for existing shareholders would drop, probably significantly, but the market would still churn out goods as before, and wages would rise. > with the exception of a few programs I would say at this point the majority of important software are not protected by trade secrets (TCP/IP, Linux Kernel, XNU Kernel, Git, DNS, SQLite, MySQL to name a few of many thousands). Tens of thousands of people are paid to work on these open source software products, and yet generally remain with their employers, even though they could "walk out the door" at any moment. Secrets are fine. Government enforcement of secrets I find highly questionable, and only in the interests of the 1%.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  All the software you cited is basically server infrastructure software. I suppose that depending on your definition of important, you could say that this is the majority of important software. Perhaps if important includes only what is needed to develop web properties. But there are a lot of people who use software besides web developers. I don't really buy that your list names even close to the majority of important software by most folks' reckoning of what's important. Some important (to me and many other people) software you didn't mention: * Everything besides generic infrastructure that makes any web property work (Google, Bing, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, DropBox, Personal Capital, etc.). * Microsoft Windows * Microsoft Office * Mac OS X * Nearly all games * Nearly everything that makes any given bank work * The Adobe Creative Suite * Any popular Android or iOS app I'd guess that the number of people working on the pieces of software I mention here exceeds those working on your list by at least one if not two or three orders of magnitude. I doubt much of it would be economically viable except for government protection of intellectual property. Anyway, fortunately, the government will likely to continue to protect IP in the foreseeable future. It's working pretty well so far.
  - breck 6y ago
    Just for reference. XNU powers every Mac, every iPhone, every i*...it’s the most important software on over 1B client machines. Linux powers all Android devices. Most important software on over 3B machines. SQLite is also on all those machines, and integrated in most software you mention. Almost all the software you mention uses git for VC, including windows. Thanks for the discussion though, the parent topic is one I’m curious about so good to hear different points of view.

breck 6y ago

> It would be untenable to produce software for profit if any of your employees could walk off with your source code after your investment and set up a competing business selling the same thing at a cut rate. You can still ask your employees to keep things secret, of course. Just without government as your enforcer. What would generally happen is you'd have to sweeten the terms of employment to make sure your people are happy. Profits for existing shareholders would drop, probably significantly, but the market would still churn out goods as before, and wages would rise. > with the exception of a few programs I would say at this point the majority of important software are not protected by trade secrets (TCP/IP, Linux Kernel, XNU Kernel, Git, DNS, SQLite, MySQL to name a few of many thousands). Tens of thousands of people are paid to work on these open source software products, and yet generally remain with their employers, even though they could "walk out the door" at any moment. Secrets are fine. Government enforcement of secrets I find highly questionable, and only in the interests of the 1%.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
All the software you cited is basically server infrastructure software. I suppose that depending on your definition of important, you could say that this is the majority of important software. Perhaps if important includes only what is needed to develop web properties. But there are a lot of people who use software besides web developers. I don't really buy that your list names even close to the majority of important software by most folks' reckoning of what's important. Some important (to me and many other people) software you didn't mention: * Everything besides generic infrastructure that makes any web property work (Google, Bing, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, DropBox, Personal Capital, etc.). * Microsoft Windows * Microsoft Office * Mac OS X * Nearly all games * Nearly everything that makes any given bank work * The Adobe Creative Suite * Any popular Android or iOS app I'd guess that the number of people working on the pieces of software I mention here exceeds those working on your list by at least one if not two or three orders of magnitude. I doubt much of it would be economically viable except for government protection of intellectual property. Anyway, fortunately, the government will likely to continue to protect IP in the foreseeable future. It's working pretty well so far.
- breck 6y ago
  Just for reference. XNU powers every Mac, every iPhone, every i*...it’s the most important software on over 1B client machines. Linux powers all Android devices. Most important software on over 3B machines. SQLite is also on all those machines, and integrated in most software you mention. Almost all the software you mention uses git for VC, including windows. Thanks for the discussion though, the parent topic is one I’m curious about so good to hear different points of view.