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> What about all the other markets that were created by having a baseline of capability they could rely on? Remember what the software industry was like in the
by smoldesu 3y ago
> What about all the other markets that were created by having a baseline of capability they could rely on?
Remember what the software industry was like in the 80s and 90s? Get a good image in your head, and then compare it to the landscape of modern Linux offerings. Entire software empires died with the ascendance of Linux, and it was arguably the right move. The existence of commercial UNIX was a glorified support contract at best, and an exploitative relationship based on an imbalance of documentation at worst. It was bound to die, it just took one good blow. If it wasn't Linux, it would have been BSD - the market was fragile enough to get disrupted by any high-quality Free software.
> It might not be profitable for companies, maybe, but it creates a more flourishing open world where new things happen
I'm not against Cory's core point. I'm an Open Source idealist at heart, but I'm also not plainly ignorant of mechanisms that prevent change from happening. Realizing those problems and working with those limitations is what has driven the most powerful software movements to-date. Using Copyright to protect Free Software is unequivocally one of the most important software developments of the Internet age. Similarly, releasing a common and accessible platform like Linux entirely undermined the business of a-la-carte accessibility contracts.
Doctorow can certainly make powerful points and counterarguments to our plainly wrong way of living. Anyone who's paid for HBO probably has strong opinions vis-a-vis shitty subscription services. Nothing he has said or done really feels like a refutation on the level of Stallman or Torvalds, though. Maybe that's a high bar to hold him to, but a lot of his arguments feel plainly "said and done". I struggle to imagine an audience that doesn't know how services degrade in quality when rights-holders are given nigh-unlimited control over their property.