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I mean ... the market has spoken on this. It just isn't something that enough people value enough for it to have a positive return on investment. Like pretty mu

I mean ... the market has spoken on this. It just isn't something that enough people value enough for it to have a positive return on investment. Like pretty much everyone else here, I think that sucks, but I also struggle to begrudge the preferences of people who just don't care about this. So the question is just, is this a market failure in the sense that the market outcome is undesirable to society such that there's a strong case for regulation? Or is it a market success in that most people are getting what they prefer (cheaper products)? If we were to get regulation passed on this, and prices for digital products and services were to rise, would people broadly cheer or jeer us? I think it's pretty clear that most people would be unhappy with this, at least above some level of price increase (which may be zero). So to me the question is (like with all regulation) whether this can be regulated without increasing costs to people beyond the value of the regulation to society. Maybe so, but unfortunately I'm pretty skeptical that's the case.

amelius 3y ago
If companies released just the hardware without the services, then we could have open source jumping in to provide those services, and things would be cheaper. Unless of course you want to argue that without financial incentive nobody would ever do such a thing, and open source is a fairy tale that can't really exist ...
- sanderjd 3y ago
  There is a reason that open source thrives in the niche of tooling for other software developers, and ... thrives less outside that niche. The target audience for software development tooling ascribes huge value to being able to read and modify the source of the tools we use. And for good reason, it's not just a principled stand; open source directly helps us do our jobs better. But outside that niche, nobody really values this capability, and it's not a mystery why not. What good does open source do an accountant? Any given work-a-day accountant is never going to read or modify the source of their software. They just have no interest in that. They may have a computer enthusiast friend who has made a compelling case to them for why this stuff matters, so they may agree in theory, but they aren't going to do extra work or pay extra for this. It just isn't a direct enough impact for them.

amelius 3y ago

If companies released just the hardware without the services, then we could have open source jumping in to provide those services, and things would be cheaper. Unless of course you want to argue that without financial incentive nobody would ever do such a thing, and open source is a fairy tale that can't really exist ...

sanderjd 3y ago
There is a reason that open source thrives in the niche of tooling for other software developers, and ... thrives less outside that niche. The target audience for software development tooling ascribes huge value to being able to read and modify the source of the tools we use. And for good reason, it's not just a principled stand; open source directly helps us do our jobs better. But outside that niche, nobody really values this capability, and it's not a mystery why not. What good does open source do an accountant? Any given work-a-day accountant is never going to read or modify the source of their software. They just have no interest in that. They may have a computer enthusiast friend who has made a compelling case to them for why this stuff matters, so they may agree in theory, but they aren't going to do extra work or pay extra for this. It just isn't a direct enough impact for them.