4 ms·

Commercial software polish is lipstick on a pig. A pig that will never be anything else and will eventually die as a pig. Ugly os software at least has potenti

by scotty79 11mo ago

Commercial software polish is lipstick on a pig. A pig that will never be anything else and will eventually die as a pig. Ugly os software at least has potential to grow internally. Long lived commercial software is a totting carcass with fresh coat of paint every now and then.

pjmlp 11mo ago
Yet, the Year of XYZ software seldom comes, the usual cheering of tools like Blender, often forgets its origin as commercial product and existing userbase. Someone has to pay the bills for development effort, and when it based on volunteer work, it is mostly followers and not innovators.
- scotty79 11mo ago
  There's nothing wrong with commercial software being the origin. What's a crime is that it can stay commercial. Source code should enter public domain in a decade at most.
  - aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
    > What's a crime is that it can stay commercial. Source code should enter public domain in a decade at most. In many cases, people are free to write their own implementation. Your claim "Source code should enter public domain in a decade at most." means that every software vendor shall be obliged after some time to hand out their source code, which is something very strong to ask for. What is the true crime are the laws that in some cases make such an own implementation illegal (software patents, probitions of reverse-engineering, ...).
    - scotty79 11mo ago
      > every software vendor shall be obliged after some time to hand out their source code, Obviously. Since software is as much vital to the modern world as water, making people who deal with it disclose implementation details is a very small ask. Access to the market is not a right but a privilege. If you want to sell things we can demand things of you.
      - esafak 11mo ago
        You must design your own hardware too, since you can't get the blueprints of commercial products.
        scotty79 11mo ago
        Fortunaley hardware designs are routinely reverse engineered and cloned. Imagine the world where industrial designs were as hard to reverse engineer as clone in practice as software. Global GDP would be 10% of what it is. Largest economies of the world owe lion share of their development to cloned designs.
      - simonh 11mo ago
        I think commerce between individuals is a right. Infringing on that should be justified in terms of protecting the rights of those involved, such as ensuring the quality of goods, enforcement of reasonable contract terms and such. We are involved in the process as participants in the market, and that’s the basis of any legitimacy we have to impose any rules in the market. That includes an obligation to fair treatment of other participants. If someone writes notes, procedures, a diary, software etc for their own use they are under no obligation to publish it, ever. That’s basic privacy protection. Whether an executable was written from scratch in an assembler or is compiled from high level source code isn’t anyone else’s business. It should meet quality standards for commercial transactions and that’s it. There’s no more obligation to publish source than there is to publish design documents, early versions, or unpublished material. That would be an overreaching invasion of privacy.
        masfuerte 11mo ago
        So restrict the obligation to companies.
        simonh 11mo ago
        On what justification? You just want to take their stuff, because? People shouldn’t lose their rights to what they own, just because they do so through a company. I do think reasonable taxation and regulation is justifiable but on the understanding that it is an imposition. There is a give and take when it comes to rights and obligations, but this seems like overreach.
  - pjmlp 11mo ago
    Not everyone buys into FOSS religion, especially when there are bills to pay, and too many people feeling entitled to leech on work of others and being paid themselves, or companies for that matter.
DonHopkins 11mo ago
Worse than lipstick on a pig is lipstick all the way down, with no pork, like the user interfaces coming out of Apple.

pjmlp 11mo ago

Yet, the Year of XYZ software seldom comes, the usual cheering of tools like Blender, often forgets its origin as commercial product and existing userbase. Someone has to pay the bills for development effort, and when it based on volunteer work, it is mostly followers and not innovators.

scotty79 11mo ago
There's nothing wrong with commercial software being the origin. What's a crime is that it can stay commercial. Source code should enter public domain in a decade at most.
- aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
  > What's a crime is that it can stay commercial. Source code should enter public domain in a decade at most. In many cases, people are free to write their own implementation. Your claim "Source code should enter public domain in a decade at most." means that every software vendor shall be obliged after some time to hand out their source code, which is something very strong to ask for. What is the true crime are the laws that in some cases make such an own implementation illegal (software patents, probitions of reverse-engineering, ...).
  - scotty79 11mo ago
    > every software vendor shall be obliged after some time to hand out their source code, Obviously. Since software is as much vital to the modern world as water, making people who deal with it disclose implementation details is a very small ask. Access to the market is not a right but a privilege. If you want to sell things we can demand things of you.
    - esafak 11mo ago
      You must design your own hardware too, since you can't get the blueprints of commercial products.
      - scotty79 11mo ago
        Fortunaley hardware designs are routinely reverse engineered and cloned. Imagine the world where industrial designs were as hard to reverse engineer as clone in practice as software. Global GDP would be 10% of what it is. Largest economies of the world owe lion share of their development to cloned designs.
    - simonh 11mo ago
      I think commerce between individuals is a right. Infringing on that should be justified in terms of protecting the rights of those involved, such as ensuring the quality of goods, enforcement of reasonable contract terms and such. We are involved in the process as participants in the market, and that’s the basis of any legitimacy we have to impose any rules in the market. That includes an obligation to fair treatment of other participants. If someone writes notes, procedures, a diary, software etc for their own use they are under no obligation to publish it, ever. That’s basic privacy protection. Whether an executable was written from scratch in an assembler or is compiled from high level source code isn’t anyone else’s business. It should meet quality standards for commercial transactions and that’s it. There’s no more obligation to publish source than there is to publish design documents, early versions, or unpublished material. That would be an overreaching invasion of privacy.
      - masfuerte 11mo ago
        So restrict the obligation to companies.
        simonh 11mo ago
        On what justification? You just want to take their stuff, because? People shouldn’t lose their rights to what they own, just because they do so through a company. I do think reasonable taxation and regulation is justifiable but on the understanding that it is an imposition. There is a give and take when it comes to rights and obligations, but this seems like overreach.
- pjmlp 11mo ago
  Not everyone buys into FOSS religion, especially when there are bills to pay, and too many people feeling entitled to leech on work of others and being paid themselves, or companies for that matter.

DonHopkins 11mo ago

Worse than lipstick on a pig is lipstick all the way down, with no pork, like the user interfaces coming out of Apple.