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> somebody in the chain is selling that software to the end customer Not necessarily? Any infra software is invisible to the end consumer. It's bundled into th
by brainwad 26d ago
> somebody in the chain is selling that software to the end customer
Not necessarily? Any infra software is invisible to the end consumer. It's bundled into the price the customer pays for what they see, but they themselves don't know or care about the former.
> there's still plenty of software you can go out to the shop and buy
... is there? I haven't bought software in a shop in 20 years at least. Outside of games, I don't really buy software digitally, even. It's either FOSS or it's a subscription.
- ralferoo 23d agoFrom the top of my head, the easiest examples are games. Where I live at least, there are still physical stores in most malls with loads of disc-based games for sale. But also, for instance, I can go into my local computer store and pick up a boxed copy of Windows, so yes physical software sales is definitely still a thing. I personally haven't done it for a long time, but I know it exists. But anyway, the method of software delivery is tangential to the main point. Plenty of software exists that runs locally, regardless of how is paid for - whether subscription or one-off purchases, if it runs on your computer it relies on copyright law to protect the revenue stream for the developers. Without copyright laws, if one physical sale could be freely copied with impunity, sales would be vastly diminished to the point that many developers would just not bother and find a different industry to work in to earn a salary.