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The sale value of commercial software licenses stems from its supply being artificially constrained, which is only enabled by the monopoly granted by government
by zokier 6y ago
The sale value of commercial software licenses stems from its supply being artificially constrained, which is only enabled by the monopoly granted by government. Exploiting that monopoly to limit access to the software to only those with pockets deep enough to pay for that privilege can indeed seen in a negative way.
- phkahler 6y agoI find it interesting. The reason it can be viewed negatively is that the production cost is zero for software. Nobody minds paying a reasonable price for an item that takes effort to make. But we know software can copied for free - barring deliberate schemes to prevent that. Even many businesses consider product design a "cost center" and production/manufacturing a "profit center". I prefer to think of engineering as an investment in the future. So "open source" as a business sounds to these people like the investment has already been done for free, and production is free, so we should be able to make massive profit! But they're not providing any value unless they add something significant.