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bruce51110/12/20241 replyview on HN

>> Proprietary software and software patents need to end.

I'm with you on software patents. On copyright (from which proprietary software is derived) I'm less convinced.

My argument is two-fold;

Firstly, copyright law is the only thing that allows Open Source and Free Software to exist. Copyright is the mechanism that grants an author control of their work, and is the mechanism that forces people building on OSS/Free Software to release code.

You talk about "ending proprietary software", which in turn means effectively removing copyright, since it removes the authors control over their source code.

Secondly, and from a completely different direction, killing proprietary software basically kills all the software people use.

Sure OSS is great at infrastructure. But it has performed poorly in becoming the software people care about. Without proprietary software there's no Chrome, Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, MS office, Dropbox, AWS, et al.

In infrastructure there's no iOS, Windows, Macs, Google services (aka Android as we know it) etc.

To argue that OSS has clones or replacements of this stuff is o miss the point that proprietary software created these products and markets. And for all the clones that may be out there most have < 10% market share, actually most have < 1% market share, because most clones are either poor refections or simply get their feature list from the proprietary work.


Replies

HeralFacker10/13/2024

No, ending proprietary software does not end copyright. Even after reading your arguments, I'm not sure how you got to that conclusion.

You argued quite the opposite, in fact, by claiming copyright (and not license terms) ensures open source software.

It is entirely possible to ban proprietary software in cases of human rights and public interest (e.g., open source medical firmware, to use the OP case) while maintaining copyright law even as it exists now.