Such dogmatic views like “proprietary software is immoral” do not help anyone. You have a choice not to use any of it but don’t cross off people who choose otherwise.
Software engineers in vast majority do not live from donations. You are lucky enough to make it from open source? Well, good for you! You are very privileged.
> They value their relationship with a supplier
There's nothing inherent about proprietary software that makes it convenient. Convenience is completely orthogonal to freedom. I get reminded of that every time I hear Windows-using friends' stories about their files getting deleted/drivers uninstalled/audio cards burned after Windows Update. Meanwhile, the free software world has been getting better and better as the time goes by. GNU/Linux just works for me nowdays.
> Such dogmatic views like “proprietary software is immoral” do not help anyone.
Such views are not dogmatic, they are based on very practical arguments - for me the most important argument is "I don't want to run programs whose behavior I cannot change in case I need to". I don't want to let another person, let alone a corporation, run a program on my machine unless I (have a way to) know what it does.
And such views they help everybody, because proprietary software gives developers unjust power over their users. Owners of the computing machines ought to have control over what computation their machines do, it's their natural right by being owners of their computing machines. The sooner we get rid of proprietary software, the better it is for everyone, except the poor megacorps that will have to find yet another way to extract money without bringing value.
> Software engineers in vast majority do not live from donations.
Software engineers can work regular day jobs, and still develop free software. Red Hat for example.
Not one of your arguments has convinced me that proprietary software is not completely immoral.
But they have choice, no? They are free to use any existing alternative. So why do you care?
> Such views are not dogmatic, they are based on very practical arguments - for me the most important argument is "I don't want to run programs whose behavior I cannot change in case I need to". I don't want to let another person, let alone a corporation, run a program on my machine unless I (have a way to) know what it does.
Great for you. So you made your choice, there's plenty of software you can modify to choose from. Why does it bother you that some people do not care about that, whatever their reason is?
> And such views they help everybody, because proprietary software gives developers unjust power over their users. Owners of the computing machines ought to have control over what computation their machines do, it's their natural right by being owners of their computing machines. The sooner we get rid of proprietary software, the better it is for everyone, except the poor megacorps that will have to find yet another way to extract money without bringing value.
You know, I do a lot of open source code but I can see the other side of the coin. Which brings me to your last point:
> Software engineers can work regular day jobs, and still develop free software. Red Hat for example.
Do you? People who can do that are the lucky ones. But there are a lot of jobs out there depending on some proprietary software built by some (mega)corp that is lucky enough to have some paying customers who are happy to pay for it. They maybe don't care about their freedom because it's irrelevant to them. They care that it works the way things are advertised and someone does support for them.
> Not one of your arguments has convinced me that proprietary software is not completely immoral.
I wasn't even trying.
Why wouldn't I care? What kind of person wouldn't like to make the world a better place for everybody? Free software makes this world better for everybody.
> Why does it bother you that some people do not care about that, whatever their reason is?
It doesn't bother me, I support personal freedom to use proprietary software. What I don't support is proprietary software itself.
> Do you? People who can do that are the lucky ones.
Right now, they are. But it doesn't have to be that way. This might sound idealistic, and it is, because free software is about freedom, which is in itself an ideal. I am quite aware that proprietary software is still widespread. That doesn't mean I can't believe in a future without it.
> I wasn't even trying.
Then, what's the point of us communicating in the first place?
As in, do you believe that all software should be source available, free to modify and distribute?
They are in contradiction with basic freedom to use the program for any purpose you wish, so yes. Imagine borrowing a hammer from a friend and having police knock on your door because you haven't paid the hammer making company a license fee.
You do understand that if your expectation for all proprietary products to disappear was to become true, you most likely rendered all software engineers to work for free. Because, let’s face it, who is going to pay for their time if there’s nothing to gain in return?
With the hammer. Well, your friend bought the hammer. Someone paid for it. Who pays in your model?
That is a fairly weak argument. Is there any reason why you consider the status quo to be the only way for software engineers to earn money? Is there really "nothing to gain" from software, unless we rent-seek per-user license fee?
Even if that were true, I'd gladly trade software engineering salaries for getting rid of proprietary software. It might just be the case that software engineers are overpaid, and the money comes from mistreatment of users.
> With the hammer. Well, your friend bought the hammer. Someone paid for it. Who pays in your model?
Maybe my friend. Maybe my friend's friend. Maybe nobody. Maybe we all donated to the HammerSoft inc., it doesn't matter. What matters is we have the software and we have freedom to use it in any way we wish.
If you're saying that software wouldn't exist without extracting money from per-user license fees, that's completely false, as proven by the large body of Free Software that already exists.
You act like I'm trying to convince you. I'm just asking.
Services come to mind. But as I said, even a company you put here as an example of that model provides paid, licensed software. Support is another one. But software isn't equal software. Do you think software running on medical devices should be free and open source? Should the operator of a medical device have a freedom to download a fork from github, compile and run on a device? An airline running a fork of an ECU software?
> Even if that were true, I'd gladly trade software engineering salaries for getting rid of proprietary software. It might just be the case that software engineers are overpaid, and the money comes from mistreatment of users.
Okay, we are all rushing to provide you with the free software you demand because of your "freedom". What about the "freedom" of all the software people to make a living? At the end of the day if they have paid customers who see the value in their software-they voted with their wallet-why does it bother you?
> Maybe my friend. Maybe my friend's friend. Maybe nobody. Maybe we all donated to the HammerSoft inc., it doesn't matter. What matters is we have the software and we have freedom to use it in any way we wish.
But with a hammer, if you and your friend want to use a hammer at the same time, you have to have two hammers.
If both of you have only one hammer, only one of you can use it at a time.
I get that you can borrow the hammer to your fiend without paying a license fee. But when you borrow your hammer, you can't use it.
I thought you were presenting an argument, sorry. In that case:
> You do understand that if your expectation for all proprietary products to disappear was to become true, you most likely rendered all software engineers to work for free.
Definitely not for free, but their wages might just get a little lower. This is all speculation, of course.
> Because, let’s face it, who is going to pay for their time if there’s nothing to gain in return?
There are many ways software engineers can be paid. Rent-seeking is one way, and it's the worst possible, because rent-seeking generally does not bring any value, only extracts it.
I'll skip the rest of the argument to get to the core:
> But with a hammer, if you and your friend want to use a hammer at the same time, you have to have two hammers.
> If both of you have only one hammer, only one of you can use it at a time.
> I get that you can borrow the hammer to your fiend without paying a license fee. But when you borrow your hammer, you can't use it.
Look at it this way: software is inherently different from physical objects - it's just information, and the effort to duplicate software is almost zero. So if my friend has a piece of software which makes his life a little better, he can share the software with me with almost-zero effort and make my life a little better, too. The more people we share the software with, the more lives we make a little better, at almost zero cost.
Now businessmen, who are used to selling products and earning money through pure scale, are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole - they are trying to turn software into a physical object, i.e. they are artificially increasing the effort needed to "copy" the software through licenses and law.
It obviously will never work (completely), seeing how widespread piracy is, even in this modern digital witch-hunt age. But it is making the world a much worse place, restricting natural capabilities of software (its ability to be shared with zero effort) with artificial restrictions.
Hopefully the above explanation will make my perspective clearer to you.
That is debatable. If someone pays for the software and uses it to create more value with that software than what they paid, how is that "extracting only"? I mean, I give you an example: I pay $180 for OmniGraffle. I create few drawings used for a training. I charge, I don't know, throwing a number in the air, €5k. I am a very happy customer. Or, I buy a mac with macOS, there's some inherent cost for the OS included in the purchase. I use this laptop for daily work and my salary is, say, €100k net. I don't feel that's a bad deal.
I'll skip the rest of the argument to get to the core:
> Look at it this way: software is inherently different from physical objects - it's just information, and the effort to duplicate software is almost zero.
Once it's there, sure. But what about the time it took to create it in the first place? Maybe there's a team of 50 people working on something for a couple of years? They like to get paid for their work. Look at this from the other side: if nobody would be paying those people, there's would probably be no software!
> So if my friend has a piece of software which makes his life a little better, he can share the software with me with almost-zero effort and make my life a little better, too. The more people we share the software with, the more lives we make a little better, at almost zero cost.
Except of those 50 people who never got paid for their work. Maybe they are now looking for tomato picking jobs. Whatever it is they do, maybe even consulting, they're not writing that software you want to have for free.
> It obviously will never work (completely), seeing how widespread piracy is, even in this modern digital witch-hunt age. But it is making the world a much worse place, restricting natural capabilities of software (its ability to be shared with zero effort) with artificial restrictions.
Yes, people want to get paid for their work. If you don't want to pay, it's a status quo for you - there are alternatives. And here's a question for you: if there aren't alternatives, ask yourself "why are there no alternatives?" Is it that nobody is interested in building those alternatives for free?
> Hopefully the above explanation will make my perspective clearer to you.
Yes, thank you.
Most programmers work for a wage. They don't own the software they write - their employer does. Whether or not their employer is rent-seeking does not affect a programmer's income.
> Except of those 50 people who never got paid for their work.
Why wouldn't they be paid for their work? What if my friend paid a person or two (not 50) to write the software for him? "Free software" doesn't mean "made for zero price" - it means "without artificial restrictions".
> Yes, people want to get paid for their work. If you don't want to pay, it's a status quo for you - there are alternatives. And here's a question for you: if there aren't alternatives, ask yourself "why are there no alternatives?" Is it that nobody is interested in building those alternatives for free?
I don't understand this question. There are many alternatives to common proprietary software, and the number of alternatives gets higher with each day.
You seem to be stuck on the argument that "without proprietary software, programmers will not get paid". That is completely untrue - most programmers work for wages, and they don't own the software they write. From their perspective, whether or not the software is free or proprietary, they get paid the same.
Their wage is paid from the income made by the employer. If the employer doesn't have a business, these people have no work to do. Hence, no salary. We can go and discuss that, sure, they can have another job. But as it stands today, if the employer has no business, they would have no job.
> What if my friend paid a person or two (not 50) to write the software for him?
He's free to do so and there are people who will happily take this up and write the software for your friend. There are people on GitHub who will do this for sponsorship.
> There are many alternatives to common proprietary software, and the number of alternatives gets higher with each day.
Indeed. Which is great. So why are there so many people out there who still prefer paying for proprietary software and are happy to do so?
> You seem to be stuck on the argument that "without proprietary software, programmers will not get paid".
No, it's exactly the opposite. I'm saying: there's free software and proprietary software. Some people select free. Other, for whatever reason, select proprietary. It's cool, both sides make sense. What's wrong with that? Let the people choose what they want as long as they're happy with their choice. That's exactly why I pointed out the dogmatic approach to "Proprietary software is immoral in general", especially the "in general". What I'd find okay to be immoral, is forcing people onto proprietary software. But as long as people have the choice? Let them be.
Nothing is wrong with the fact that humans can choose to use proprietary software. I think we have repeated this argument several times already. What is wrong is proprietary software itself.
> That's exactly why I pointed out the dogmatic approach to "Proprietary software is immoral in general", especially the "in general". What I'd find okay to be immoral, is forcing people onto proprietary software. But as long as people have the choice? Let them be.
Proprietary software is immoral, because it takes away user's freedom.
Whether or not it is forced upon is not relevant for its immorality, because once a person starts using proprietary software, they lose control over their computing. That's what makes it immoral. What happens before and after that is completely irrelevant to the argument.
Just as selling addictive drugs like heroin is immoral, because it enslaves people, through psychological/physical dependency. Of course, people should have the choice to put whatever they want into their own bodies. But that does not make heroin dealers any less immoral - their profit is derived directly from their users' enslavement.
Whether people should have freedom to enslave themselves in general is a completely different discussion that has nothing to do with software.
Presenting a point of view alternative to yours. I’m not changing the world here.
Saying that proprietary software is moral is just as dogmatic, no?
Downvoted to -1 for not liking some faux-open-source stuff.
So much for the hacker spirit of "hacker" news!
Immoral is an extreme form of perverse and malevolent morality, or the lack of it.
Moral simply means "all the spectrum of things that are not immoral", or not immoral, which is a much larger category with a lot more nuances.
Immoral is also a subjective judgment, morality changes according to time, place, culture etc
Let's talk about ethics next time
So labeling something you don't like immoral is as dogmatic as labeling the abortion immoral just because 3 thousand years ago some guy wrote it in a book of fiction, while thinking that is not immoral means, in the majority of the cases, having no such strong opinion on other people's decisions, which we would consider the "obvious" choice not the dogmatic one.
This is arguing semantics, and we're somewhat straying away from the subject, but I'm not sure if that's actually the case.
At least most dictionaries would disagree with your definition, clearly associating moral with "right behavior".
"Moral" - in the discussed context - doesn't simply mean non-immoral. Neutral attitudes aren't moral, right attitudes count as moral.
what definition?
moral comes from Latin moralis, which translates to "manners" or "behavior"
in this context software cannot be immoral, only people can, things have no moralis.
In this context, again, considering it immoral can be a dogmatic position, NOT considering it immoral it's not
Nobody said that proprietary software is virtuous, but simply that it is not immoral.
On the other hand, it is perfectly possible (and happened) that people developing free software have little or no morality (see Hans Reiser and Reiserfs)
> Moral" - in the discussed context - doesn't simply mean non-immoral
The context is: is not considering VS Code immoral dogmatic?
The answer is no.
Being neutral about it is part of not considering it immoral.
Morality includes both good and bad.
Open source software is wonderful and I love when companies create and support FOSS. That said, to say it's immoral not to give away the work you produced/paid to produce is ridiculous. You're not taking anyone freedom away by providing proprietary software. As I believe another commenter replied, they're free to not use it or develop the software on their own.
If it's too difficult for them to replicate or for a competing FOSS product to exist, then it probably is complex enough to warrant payment.
No, absolutely not. Private property is a precursor to free software. I own a computing machine, therefore I have a natural right to control what my computing machine will compute.
> That said, to say it's immoral not to give away the work you produced/paid to produce is ridiculous.
You don't have to give anything away. Free Software means you can share your program with whoever you want, including nobody.
> You're not taking anyone freedom away by providing proprietary software.
That would be true, if proprietary software meant "no source code available" (that's usually called Freeware). But in reality, there are laws like DCMA that actually do restrict your freedom, in a literal sense.
You do own your computing machine, which means you have the right not to use proprietary software. That doesn't mean that proprietary software itself isn't moral if the user chooses to run it. You seem to believe that any software which isn't free is also abusive, when that's clearly not the case. Many software companies that develop proprietary software are profitable and are so without abusing their users.
DCMA only "restricts your freedom" so far as someone else intellectual property is concerned. If that software had never been created there wouldn't be the "freedoms" surrounding it to restrict. It's also usually illegal to buy a painting and then sell prints of that painting so your freedom is likewise "restricted". While I agree that some parts of DCMA aren't ideal, the broad argument of proprietary software "restricting your freedom" because of it is fallacious.
Nothing, and that's the whole point! If I buy a house, I can repaint it, tear down a wall or do whatever I please (as long as I stay within the boundaries of the law).
If I buy a painting I can move it, hang it upside down, improve the mysterious smile by adding a moustache with a magic marker or make whatever changes to it that I see fit.
If I buy a record, I can sample it, mix it however I please, listen to it backwards so I can listen to the subliminal ALL HAIL SATAN message it hides.
However, if I buy a piece of proprietary software I can do... nothing, except tick or untick some boxes in the settings menu that the developer bothered to put there.
Legally, I agree that we should be able to modify whatever software we purchase so long as we don't redistribute it. I don't believe, however, that the engineers should be required to hand over the source code for us to do it.
Car mods are usually legal, but no one is demanding schematics from the manufacturer to help them go about it.
No, the fact that proprietary software gives developers unjust power over its users makes it immoral.
Yes, he can choose not to be a user (of the proprietary software). That does not make proprietary software any less immoral. Being able to refuse to be a part of a pyramid scheme doesn't make pyramid schemes any less immoral.
Spyware is immoral, I agree. That doesn't make all proprietary software immoral and collecting relevant usage data doesn't make it Spyware.
No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that proprietary software is immoral because it takes away an important human freedom - the freedom to control our own computation. You're said "ok but what if someone agrees to use proprietary software?" then I said "that does not make proprietary software any less bad".
If a user chooses not to use proprietary software, then they're not a user (of proprietary software).
The fact that each person can opt out of something harmful doesn't make the harmful thing any less harmful.
A couple things:
1. You don't need ownership to have rights related to privacy or control. You don't have to be a homeowner to have a right against people invading your home. The hackers who started the free software movement were not primarily computing on devices they personally owned.
2. Personal ownership of computing devices is not necessarily what the term 'private property' refers to. Personal ownership of computing devices is very much possible without private _property_: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_v...
"Your home", as in: a home you have ownership rights to. You may only be renting those rights for a limited time, but your right not to have your home invaded is still grounded in the rights of ownership you hold in the home.
There are no "rights related to privacy or control" without ownership.
> Personal ownership of computing devices is not necessarily what the term 'private property' refers to.
"In some economic systems, such as capitalism, private and personal property are considered to be exactly equivalent." — Your Wikipedia link
So in the systems which matter there is no difference. Only broken economic systems such as socialism, Marxism, and left-anarchism attempt to draw a distinction between personal and private property. Personal property is just that part of private property that those in power (whether a lone dictator or an egalitarian collective) doesn't consider useful or significant enough to be worth taking for itself.
Proprietary software happens in the context of a transaction between two willing parties. There's nothing immoral about it.
Forcing proprietary software on large scale (companies, governments) could be classified as immoral, but then it's not about proprietary software - the same could be said about forcing pink socks on everybody.
You could use the same argument for voluntary slavery, yet modern laws forbid selling yourself away to a slaver.
In both cases, a person is entering a harmful contract. In both cases, the person's consent doesn't make the contract any less harmful.
You can consent to whatever, it doesn't make the thing you're consenting to moral.
You can be enslaved by your choice. Then ask your freedom back, your master may reject.
The point is, the end result, people using proprietary software, is bad. People may choose to be use proprietary software, and that's their right, just as they can choose to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol. But that doesn't make proprietary software any less bad.
2. I won't get cancer or liver problems because I haven't seen the source code of my washing machine's programmer/timer. I wouldn't read it even if it was available (despite being a programmer myself), because my time is limited, and I don't see the benefit as worth the effort.
3. There is a difference between actual abuse and potential for abuse. Is unprotected sex immoral in and of itself? You don't know if your partner doesn't have an STD (just like you don't know whether some non-transparent piece of software doesn't spy on you). It's a matter of trust, and yes this trust is often violated. But does it make the unprotectedness immoral in and of itself?
4. "Just because users are not restrained by force does not mean they are not in some way coerced to use the software. [...] If closed-format document sharing is common in your community, you may have to choose between using proprietary software and not participating in your community."
But the same is true for an open format, if it's common in your community, isn't it? :) You don't freely choose to use it (by the standards you just set), if you are socially coerced into it.
2. You are being shortsighted. What if your washing machine misbehaves, and the company that manufactured it went out of business years ago and cannot provide support? What if you have a programmer buddy that could fix your washing machine for a bottle of beer, yet you're forced to spend hundreds on a new one? What if a dictator implements a surveillance device inside a washing machine, using it to spy on whistleblowers and lock them up? There are countless scenarios where free software matters. Just because you don't personally care, doesn't mean you won't care some day, if the situation arises. Just because you have nothing to say right now, doesn't mean you don't need free speech.
3. Sex has nothing in common with software distribution.
4. I am now convinced that you are trolling. When format is open, there are usually quite a few free implementations, and you can easily (pay someone to) implement your own, if none of the free implementations are satisfactory. You are not forced to run a proprietary program that may or may not be bundled with malware, depending on the developer's mood.
LOL. I always wonder what kind of people say that kind of thing? Who are these people on hacker news? Do they live in a real world? Do they ever use Windows/Mac, Office/Google Docs, or maybe just Google? Do they use an iPhone or Android phone? Seriously?
No.
> Office/Google Docs
Only when work stuff requires it
Nope.
> iPhone or Android phone
Android is open source and you can run it without Google Play Services just fine. Would I prefer a Linux phone (or maybe no phone), sure? But I live in a society that demands apps sometimes.
Libertarians who think taxation is theft still pay taxes. The local restaurant owner will pay the local goons their protection money - shockingly without thinking the protection scheme is a moral one. Many people buy goods manufactured in China, even if they don't support Government oppression (at least not to the extent that's going on there).
Humans are complex creatures. You can disapprove of something while still being (more or less) forced into participating in the activity, without imploding in a puff of logic.
They are free - to not run proprietary software!
Proprietary software is immoral in general, because it takes away the user's freedom to do their computing as they wish. If I cannot turn off a feature of a program I use, then the developers can do whatever the hell they want with my machine, especially if we count in auto-updates. I am not comfortable with that.