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That's the ostensible point, and I think does the job extremely poorly, and is often if not usually counterproductive. Without payment, there'd be nothing to ta

That's the ostensible point, and I think does the job extremely poorly, and is often if not usually counterproductive. Without payment, there'd be nothing to take, since as you say, the world doesn't work for free. Software either has some functional purpose, so people will pay to see its creation (e.g. device drivers; no one will buy your hardware if there's no software for it to do anything), or it exists as e.g. art, in which case patronage avoids the damage of copyright. Either way, if you want to incentivize creation, then you should want a system where payment is for creation, and where further creation (e.g. paying a different developer to modify it) is freely allowed. Copyright is a system where people pay to rent, so once it's created you can rest on your laurels forever unless someone undertakes the inefficiency of recreating the same thing for no reason before they can add to it.

otterley 10d ago
> if you want to incentivize creation, then you should want a system where payment is for creation, and where further creation (e.g. paying a different developer to modify it) is freely allowed. Why is that? I would think that the possibility of exclusivity over derivative works is an even greater incentive to creation.
- ndriscoll 10d ago
  And yet we have proof right in front of us that e.g. Apple will not port their GPU drivers to Linux, and people had to reverse engineer it, so clearly the evidence says it does not create that incentive. In fact, copyright law for software is quite frequently used to manipulate and control appliance owners or end-users, even when the software itself is not really "the point" of the thing (e.g. putting ads and spyware in cars or locking out the ability of the owner to use their heated seats).
  - otterley 10d ago
    > And yet we have proof right in front of us that e.g. Apple will not port their GPU drivers to Linux, and people had to reverse engineer it, so clearly the evidence says it does not create that incentive On the contrary, Apple engineers--paid professionals--wrote the driver to make MacOS work with the integrated GPU. I don't know why you think not writing a driver for Linux is proof of anything, other than that Apple does not care one whit about Linux. They have no interest in that. They build integrated computer systems (hardware + software); to build them for Linux is, to them, an utter waste of resources. > copyright law for software is quite frequently used to manipulate and control appliance owners or end-users, even when the software itself is not really "the point" of the thing That's right. Builders of things get control over what they build. That control is designed to maximize profit, which is a strong motivator for building novel and useful things. If you don't like what they're building, buy something else, or build something better! That's how capitalism is supposed to work.
    - ndriscoll 10d ago
      Okay, but nobody can pay a random software engineer to go take the Apple driver's code and use it to make a working Linux driver that they can use on the hardware they purchased. So Apple's monopoly on their source code is not incentivizing any creation (they had to write it anyway to make the hardware useful), and is in fact disincentivizing it (now if someone wants e.g. a Linux or Windows driver, they need to undertake the previously monumental task of also reverse engineering the hardware, which is much more difficult than the original software creation). And product tying (requiring that if you want to buy Apple's hardware you must also use their software) is an anti-competitive practice that harms society, which is why I oppose it. The world is a better place when you can plug your Dell monitor into your Apple computer and it just works. It's also a better place when you can buy your operating system from Canonical if you'd like to run on your Apple computer. It means we all have more choice. Even if Apple doesn't want to have any part in making that work, we should say they have to release the necessary information to let you pay someone else to do it if you'd like, or at least let people re-use whatever they do get from Apple to make it work (e.g. look at what Apple's binary code does). As I said, it's a basic consumer protection requirement for the 21st century where everything has software now. Society gains literally nothing from letting them have a monopoly on software necessary for their hardware to run, so why give it to them?
      - otterley 10d ago
        > The world is a better place when you can plug your Dell monitor into your Apple computer and it just works. It's also a better place when you can buy your operating system from Canonical if you'd like to run on your Apple computer. It means we all have more choice. The thing is, you're suggesting imposing that choice on the unwilling. What if I, as a creator, don't want to see the software I put my blood, sweat, and tears into running on inferior (or less capable) hardware, or vice versa? Whether that is "better" for the world isn't obvious to me. > Society gains literally nothing from letting them have a monopoly on software necessary for their hardware to run, so why give it to them? I think it comes down to whether you believe hardware and software are always severable things, or whether you believe they comprise an integrated product. If you think like a hacker, they are the former. If you think like a product person, they are the latter. Woz was a hacker. Jobs was a product guy.

otterley 10d ago

> if you want to incentivize creation, then you should want a system where payment is for creation, and where further creation (e.g. paying a different developer to modify it) is freely allowed. Why is that? I would think that the possibility of exclusivity over derivative works is an even greater incentive to creation.

ndriscoll 10d ago
And yet we have proof right in front of us that e.g. Apple will not port their GPU drivers to Linux, and people had to reverse engineer it, so clearly the evidence says it does not create that incentive. In fact, copyright law for software is quite frequently used to manipulate and control appliance owners or end-users, even when the software itself is not really "the point" of the thing (e.g. putting ads and spyware in cars or locking out the ability of the owner to use their heated seats).
- otterley 10d ago
  > And yet we have proof right in front of us that e.g. Apple will not port their GPU drivers to Linux, and people had to reverse engineer it, so clearly the evidence says it does not create that incentive On the contrary, Apple engineers--paid professionals--wrote the driver to make MacOS work with the integrated GPU. I don't know why you think not writing a driver for Linux is proof of anything, other than that Apple does not care one whit about Linux. They have no interest in that. They build integrated computer systems (hardware + software); to build them for Linux is, to them, an utter waste of resources. > copyright law for software is quite frequently used to manipulate and control appliance owners or end-users, even when the software itself is not really "the point" of the thing That's right. Builders of things get control over what they build. That control is designed to maximize profit, which is a strong motivator for building novel and useful things. If you don't like what they're building, buy something else, or build something better! That's how capitalism is supposed to work.
  - ndriscoll 10d ago
    Okay, but nobody can pay a random software engineer to go take the Apple driver's code and use it to make a working Linux driver that they can use on the hardware they purchased. So Apple's monopoly on their source code is not incentivizing any creation (they had to write it anyway to make the hardware useful), and is in fact disincentivizing it (now if someone wants e.g. a Linux or Windows driver, they need to undertake the previously monumental task of also reverse engineering the hardware, which is much more difficult than the original software creation). And product tying (requiring that if you want to buy Apple's hardware you must also use their software) is an anti-competitive practice that harms society, which is why I oppose it. The world is a better place when you can plug your Dell monitor into your Apple computer and it just works. It's also a better place when you can buy your operating system from Canonical if you'd like to run on your Apple computer. It means we all have more choice. Even if Apple doesn't want to have any part in making that work, we should say they have to release the necessary information to let you pay someone else to do it if you'd like, or at least let people re-use whatever they do get from Apple to make it work (e.g. look at what Apple's binary code does). As I said, it's a basic consumer protection requirement for the 21st century where everything has software now. Society gains literally nothing from letting them have a monopoly on software necessary for their hardware to run, so why give it to them?
    - otterley 10d ago
      > The world is a better place when you can plug your Dell monitor into your Apple computer and it just works. It's also a better place when you can buy your operating system from Canonical if you'd like to run on your Apple computer. It means we all have more choice. The thing is, you're suggesting imposing that choice on the unwilling. What if I, as a creator, don't want to see the software I put my blood, sweat, and tears into running on inferior (or less capable) hardware, or vice versa? Whether that is "better" for the world isn't obvious to me. > Society gains literally nothing from letting them have a monopoly on software necessary for their hardware to run, so why give it to them? I think it comes down to whether you believe hardware and software are always severable things, or whether you believe they comprise an integrated product. If you think like a hacker, they are the former. If you think like a product person, they are the latter. Woz was a hacker. Jobs was a product guy.