Too right. It's just evolution really, survival of the fittest.

Software that can afford to have 100 developers work on it will, on average, out-compete software that is sustained by 50 developers.

Software (note: not necessarily _good_ software, this could also be the shittiest software with a nice lock-in) that is good at making money, can afford more developers, lawyers and lobbyists.

It's nothing new under the sun, but it does suck in a major way.

Right to source sounds strong, but I am curious about how a right to source for software that's no longer produced would work. This could be very beneficial to society, and perceivably speed up progress quite a bit.

IMHO, that should be seen as a tangential right to repair.

Either the entity that sold you the software (or their successors) gives you standard access, tools, and specs to effect standard repairs.

Or if that entity cannot fulfill that responsibility (say, because they went bankrupt), their code is open-sourced.

The situation to avoid is "nobody cares about this thing, and nobody is available to service it."

On the facade, I like this. Hopefully someone advances these ideas.

If there is one thing I have learnt about the populace at large is they don't pay much attention to private et el issues but when it affects enough of them they change the law in their favour. Companies get plenty of years even decades to exploit but eventually the mainstream is impacted enough that regulation gets brought down in massive heavy handed ways and often not in a good way. Privacy via GDPR and the "cookie law" before it are examples of the mainstream waking up to problems that impacted them. Get too popular and exploit too much and the mainstream will do something about.

There are movements for taking data entirely away from these companies, movements for repair and a host of other things. Eventually they will more than likely become mainstream and big tech is going to find itself on the end of a lot of regulation especially in the EU. There is no way they show self control before the point where DRM, gambling and engagement mechanics are involved they are simply too profitable.

Frankly, any discussion about this invariably becomes a critique of capitalism. If you further generalize “software” to “organization”, your examples would include the various decisions companies make to increase profit: polluting, exploiting their workers, etc. At some point, we just have to acknowledge that a free market simply does not work.

A free market is extremely efficient at some things. It's also extremely terrible at other things.

Of all the options, a free market with regulation to internalize social externalities seems the optimal solution.