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> There are several ways of building a business around free software. For multiple orders of magnitude less opportunity than paid software. You think some inte
by feoren 4y ago
> There are several ways of building a business around free software.
For multiple orders of magnitude less opportunity than paid software. You think some internal business to business data processing software backed by hundreds of database tables and containing trade secrets works as an open source model? Because you said "software should be free." Period. And that's software. Those big Excel workbooks with thousands of formulas: that's software too. Internal ETL scripts, R scripts for data analysis: all software. None of that makes any sense as open source software. So what you're really saying is: internal company software should not exist. Trade secrets should not exist. A huge range of what millions of people do every day is unethical because you're not allowed to have a copy you can do whatever you want with. It's selfish and narrow-minded and harmful to our profession.
> Anyway, people releasing their software as free software do it willingly. That's strange to say that their software does not respect them.
I'm sure you can find many examples of people abandoning open source projects because they're not making enough to live on and their users are being toxic to them. You know exactly what I mean.
> I chose to work for a company making money from free software.
"I won the lottery, therfore everyone should quit their jobs and just buy lottery tickets." There is not enough opportunity in OSS for everyone to do this, unless you want 95%+ of developers to lose their jobs.
> end-user software should be free software. Not necessarily free beer.
This is an arbitrary destinction; anyone can be an "end user". And for end-user software to be free, all libraries it uses must also be free, so you've really only excluded ETL scripts here. And you can't have the "free speech" kind without the "free beer" kind.
Every single argument in favor of "all software everywhere should be OSS" has the same fallacy: here's six examples of OSS projects that make money, therefore all 23 million developers in the world can do it, and we will forever ignore all evidence to the contrary. It's unbelievably idealistic and narrow-minded.
- jraph 4y ago> I won the lottery, therfore everyone should quit their jobs and just buy lottery tickets Come on, it's very far from what I said. What's more, I'm not particularly lucky. Software companies are struggling to hire, including OSS ones. They are looking for people. It's not like lottery at all. > So what you're really saying is: internal company software should not exist I was saying something implying this. That was wrong. My rephrased claim includes internal company software. What's important for me is that the user of a program has control over it. A company has control over its internal software. I still think it would also be better if companies released their software when it can be generalized, so the wheel is not reinvented at every company. But people and companies should be free to write their own code for their own use and not release it. What I'm against is programs for which the users don't have control on the code. >> Anyway, people releasing their software as free software do it willingly. That's strange to say that their software does not respect them. > I'm sure you can find many examples of people abandoning open source projects because they're not making enough to live on and their users are being toxic to them. You know exactly what I mean. I know what you mean, and nobody deserves this, but this is not most open source projects. You were claiming OSS was incompatible with developer-respecting. That's a stretch. But that could hint that OSS is not enough, not that OSS is incompatible with developer-respecting. I'd argue entitled users are the issue here and as a society, we ought to do a better job of educating people not to be such assholes.