yuhaa98
If the latter, let's say me and my buddy both use the software individually, legally. We sit in the same room. Ok? We are together working on some non-profit project not involving the software. Ok? Now we use the software for it. Ok? Niw we make a profit. Ok?
Where do you draw the line?
RMS would be pretty opposed to these ideas.
1. "Progress" does not need to imply "exponential growth in consumption of energy".
2. Even if it does, we may be many thousand generations away from hitting a ceiling.
So you like to force your spouse to stay in an otherwise unhappy marriage by putting a ring on their finger and have them sign a paper? So romantic!
Kidding aside, among the many reasons people like to marry, this is one of the worse ones.
I'd say you have seen nothing yet. And history is on my side here.
Besides, creating smarter things doesn't necessarily need more energy. We are pretty wasteful with energy at the moment. What you are talking about, entropy in the sense of progressing anywhere, is a ridiculously small fraction of what we are currently using energy for. Most of it goes to waste. There are generations of better energy efficiency to come before energy availability that can't be compensated with higher efficiency even becomes an issue. By then, nuclear fusion will be paramount and/or our use of the energy that comes from the sun will be magnitudes improved from what we do today. Just look back 100 years.
If we haven't bombed ourselves back into the stone age before that. Quite a possible outcome too.