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   Daniel Lakeland (dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Oct-2023 16:05:01 JST Daniel Lakeland

   in reply to

   • Resuna

   @resuna
   Software is properly understood as an economic "public good". The whole system of copyright etc is just rent seeking through threat of gun. Making money off public goods is inherently difficult, you need in essence to get paid first because once the product exists it's non-rivalrous. Copyright destroys all that by threatening to shoot you if you do the obvious thing of using a public good without paying the feudal lord
   @hipsterelectron

   • clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Resuna (resuna@ohai.social)'s status on Tuesday, 31-Oct-2023 16:05:03 JST Resuna

     @hipsterelectron Open Source is at least 20 years older than the events where the term "open source" was coined, and it was about programmers being more interested in people using their software than in trying and failing to sell enough copies to make it worth the effort to productize it in a market that only ever rewarded a lucky few.

     The "making money from software is so god damned hard" part came first.

     clacke likes this.