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I'm okay with companies charging money for tools that are genuinely clever and innovative, but when the world eventually builds enough critical work on top of t
by ohazi 5y ago
I'm okay with companies charging money for tools that are genuinely clever and innovative, but when the world eventually builds enough critical work on top of those tools, we inevitably end up in a hostage situation like this one.
The negative externality of the public losing access to the tools needed to build and modify essentially all of technology eventually exceeds even the tyrannical rents that a monopolist or hedge fund can extract when the public suddenly has no other option.
Maybe proprietary software should be required to go open source after 20 or 30 years.
- jayd16 5y ago>Maybe proprietary software should be required to go open source after 20 or 30 years. That might be a bit extreme but something like enforced export tooling and/or open standard interop might be feasible.
- amirhirsch 5y agoCopyright protection lasts 70 years so in 70 years we'll have VMs running today's software for free. It's going to be exciting times for my great-grandchildren. Imagine how much better the 22nd century will be from that network effect.
- vkou 5y agoIt won't, because the limiting factor of what makes a century good is unlikely to be based on the quality of its professional tooling. Tooling is pretty universally in a 'good enough' state. Also, you could pirate and run 90s software today if you wanted to. Almost nobody does (And it's not because nobody pirates software...)
- Pet_Ant 5y agoI think there is a tipping point where something becomes so ubiquitous that it needs to become something like a common carrier or an open standard. The government could mandate something like any file format that has 20% or more has to be an open standard.