4 ms·

There can never be a sane intellectual property law, if by "sane" you mean reasonable and/or free from negative consequences. Imagine you live in the star trek

by rhelz 1y ago

There can never be a sane intellectual property law, if by "sane" you mean reasonable and/or free from negative consequences. Imagine you live in the star trek universe, and we have those replicator machines which will happily deliver as much of anything to you as you wish to get. Now imagine trying to come up with some "sane property laws" to exclude people from using them. What would even be the point of trying? How would any such attempt be anything more than arbitrarily giving one class of people unjustifiable power over another class of people? We are actually in that very position with the fruits of intellectual labor. Just because one person is using a program, or an algorithm, or a theorem, that doesn't prevent anybody else from also using it. So any mechanism for prohibiting somebody from using a program--which is to say, any mechanism to turn a program into property--is going to be globally suboptimal. It is going to arbitrarily harm one class of people so that another class of people can benefit. The genius of the GPL is that it it gets this. The miracle of the GPL is that has found a way to give us something like a replicator machine even in this ultra-capitalistic society.

throwawayqqq11 1y ago
Your star trek example is cute but misses one important point: cost. In ST there is apparently an infinite energy source running these replicators, so almost no cost. For any software project, developmemt and maintanenace costs time/money, so anyone replicating your invention or contributing to your project requires time/money(/expertise as a derivative). That's what the GPL doesnt get and what scares me alittle about the future of the linux foundation. Imagine Torvals gone and only highly payed corporate devs maintaning the linux kernel and worse, controlling the foundation. If a user hostile descision is made and the nerd outcry is shacking the force, what are they supposed to do? Forking and maintaning their own kernel in competition with high velocity veterans that just boil the frogs slow enough? I cant imagine this succeeding. Just look at the slowly shrinking market share of BSD. https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-bsd https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-bsd Or the very uneven fight between MS Office and LibreOffice.
- rhelz 1y ago
  // In ST there is apparently an infinite energy source running // Think about a server farm, which rents out cpu time for linux servers. Sure, you have to play for energy, land, and labor. But are you saying that somehow implies that linux would have to be BSD licensed instead of GPL licensed? I agree, energy, land, and labor are things which we don't have infinite supplies of, and therefore we need some way to ration them and distribute them efficiently. But I don't see what bearing this has on software licensing. // If a user hostile descision is made // Yeah, I don't see what this has to do with BSD vs. GPL or any other software license. I mean, Microsoft has been "boiling the water" forever. // cant imagine this succeeding. Just look at the slowly shrinking market share of BSD. // So the answer is not releasing things under the GPL? I don't quite follow the argument here, would you care to clarify?
  - throwawayqqq11 1y ago
    > If a user hostile descision is made > I don't see what this has to do with BSD vs. GPL That is my point, license does not matter that much (and i meant the BSDs OSes). A license is not the only barrier of participation, you need to have the resources (time/money/expertise) too, and when you enter as a directly competing fork with marginal market share, you better have more resources than the parent project or otherwise your fork will not be able to keep up to with an adversarial company, trying to keep that jucy monopoly, they might have build ages ago with community contributions. Forking and maintaining a gigantic project is not really a practical option for angered hobbyists. The costs are too high or competition to harsh. IMO this is not only a problem of the GPL but of FOSS in general. Lets call it capitalistic capture.

by rhelz 1y ago

throwawayqqq11 1y ago

Your star trek example is cute but misses one important point: cost. In ST there is apparently an infinite energy source running these replicators, so almost no cost. For any software project, developmemt and maintanenace costs time/money, so anyone replicating your invention or contributing to your project requires time/money(/expertise as a derivative). That's what the GPL doesnt get and what scares me alittle about the future of the linux foundation. Imagine Torvals gone and only highly payed corporate devs maintaning the linux kernel and worse, controlling the foundation. If a user hostile descision is made and the nerd outcry is shacking the force, what are they supposed to do? Forking and maintaning their own kernel in competition with high velocity veterans that just boil the frogs slow enough? I cant imagine this succeeding. Just look at the slowly shrinking market share of BSD. https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-bsd https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-bsd Or the very uneven fight between MS Office and LibreOffice.

rhelz 1y ago
// In ST there is apparently an infinite energy source running // Think about a server farm, which rents out cpu time for linux servers. Sure, you have to play for energy, land, and labor. But are you saying that somehow implies that linux would have to be BSD licensed instead of GPL licensed? I agree, energy, land, and labor are things which we don't have infinite supplies of, and therefore we need some way to ration them and distribute them efficiently. But I don't see what bearing this has on software licensing. // If a user hostile descision is made // Yeah, I don't see what this has to do with BSD vs. GPL or any other software license. I mean, Microsoft has been "boiling the water" forever. // cant imagine this succeeding. Just look at the slowly shrinking market share of BSD. // So the answer is not releasing things under the GPL? I don't quite follow the argument here, would you care to clarify?
- throwawayqqq11 1y ago
  > If a user hostile descision is made > I don't see what this has to do with BSD vs. GPL That is my point, license does not matter that much (and i meant the BSDs OSes). A license is not the only barrier of participation, you need to have the resources (time/money/expertise) too, and when you enter as a directly competing fork with marginal market share, you better have more resources than the parent project or otherwise your fork will not be able to keep up to with an adversarial company, trying to keep that jucy monopoly, they might have build ages ago with community contributions. Forking and maintaining a gigantic project is not really a practical option for angered hobbyists. The costs are too high or competition to harsh. IMO this is not only a problem of the GPL but of FOSS in general. Lets call it capitalistic capture.