8 ms·
I think it might be instructive to think of what the world was like before the idea of letting people who create intellectual products maintain some ownership o
by bunderbunder 15y ago
I think it might be instructive to think of what the world was like before the idea of letting people who create intellectual products maintain some ownership of (and therefore be more able to make a living from) their work:
- Serfdom was still legal in most of Western Europe.
- Professional artists occupied the same social rung as prostitutes.
- An intellectual professional's primary option for making a living off his (that pronoun being sufficient for the era) work was patronage.
- The vast bulk of intellectual output served the primary purpose of glorifying the political and religious Powers that Be.
Of course that doesn't imply that the current copyright and patent law isn't enormously out of hand, or that it doesn't largely function to the detriment of creative professionals thanks to the grotesque ways in which it has been amended over the past three or so centuries. But the basic idea is admirable, and it can and should be salvaged.
- davidw 15y agoI think so many things have changed that looking at 'before copyright' is not likely to yield much, because it's "before" so much else as well. I very much agree with your conclusion though.
- npsimons 15y agoI can play this game too: you know what the software industry was like before Microsoft and Apple? EVERYTHING was open source. When you bought a program (if they didn't throw it in for free with the bloody expensive hardware) you ALWAYS got source code. People still sell open source software; I've never understood why people think that commercial software is incompatible with open source. It isn't.
- bunderbunder 15y agoI can play this game too: you know what the software industry was like before Microsoft and Apple? EVERYTHING was open source. And yet, computing professionals were much less free than they are now. Because programmers almost universally worked at the King's pleasure. The exception to that rule was small garage shops. Like Microsoft and Apple.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- JoeAltmaier 15y ago??? What utopian world did you live in? Before Microsoft and Apple was before the Internet. Open Source was a dream, everything was proprietary, software engineers were just Coders. What does it even mean to say "When you bought a program..." in the context of Open Source? Of course if you paid for it, it isn't open source.
- chronomex 15y agoThe very GNU GPL itself explicitly allows code licensed under it to be sold for money. What makes you think that code transferred for money cannot possibly be Free?
- JoeAltmaier 15y agoDon't be silly. If you can't look at it without paying, it isn't open source.
- paulhauggis 15y agoEveryone always says this, but the majority of the community is very much against you making money on it and will destroy any chances if you making any sort of profit by releasing the source for free (which is allowed under the license).
- DanBC 15y agoMost people can't compile software. Forking and releasing a compiled free version would be more likely to kill a project. But then see also Pysol; a free open source program that was being sold by sneaky companies. The devs decided to stop releasing it. (http://bytes.com/topic/python/answers/41344-pysol-using-qt-case-study http://bytes.com/topic/python/answers/41344-pysol-using-qt-c...)
- wmf 15y agoEverything was open source, but "everything" wasn't much. There was no VisiCalc, no WordStar, no Sierra adventures. Bill Gates's packaged software business model allowed a lot of new software to be created.
- herval 15y agoyour own statement explains why it was like that: because software was just a small commodity passed along the real stuff (the hardware). Not much of an industry there...
- smsm42 15y agoWhat times you are talking about? Professional creators - like composers, poets, etc. - existed long before Berne Convention. Of course, then conditions were different than they are now - J.S. Bach had to write a new cantata every week as the condition of his employment, and also teach Latin and singing to the young. Of course, what was good enough for J.S. Bach is definitely can not be good enough for a person named something like "Jay-Z" or "50 Cent", as the latters' art is much more valuable for the society than Bach's. As for serving Powers That Be - most of the creative people do it right now, only Powers changed. Some time ago, most disposable income was in the hands of aristocracy and later rich merchants. So they were served. Now due to huge technological advances pretty much everybody has disposable income - so artists cater to everybody. Some of them still cater only to the richest, of course - everybody has his niche. But except for the distribution of the disposable income, not much changed.