alt Hacker News> code (and all knowledge) wants to be free
What does this sentence actually mean? Every time I've heard of it it is just stated as an obvious fact with no explanation, or it seems to just mean "I want knowledge to be free".
> code (and all knowledge) wants to be free
What does this sentence actually mean? Every time I've heard of it it is just stated as an obvious fact with no explanation, or it seems to just mean "I want knowledge to be free".
I had prefixed that with "in my view" but in a purely literal sense you're right. Code and knowledge are inanimate objects, they don't 'want' anything. The statement is influenced by my belief, it is merely a common turn of phrase.
To expand a bit more, code is freely, instantly, trivially duplicated, shared and remixed[1]. Much like knowledge there is no scarcity for these artifacts without legally mandated, police enforced, artificial scarcity. If the full source code for anything (Windows 11, EPIC Systems, whatever) was leaked tomorrow that would be a non-destructive event for both the code and knowledge involved. People work around this with trade secrets and intellectual property law but the 'entropic' norm is for these things to become more available, not less.
[1]: Since we're being literal there is of course some energy and time cost to the listed actions.