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.
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.