alt Hacker NewsDo you consider open-sourcing the software a necessary precondition for making the world better?
In other words, can a company make the world better by making proprietary software? In my opinion, that's obviously true. (Although I too dislike Apple specifically)
Your approach forces every company to redo the work, even the "good" ones. In fact, that probably makes the situation worse, because it raises the barrier to entry and forces companies to choose agressive and hostile business models in order to get that investment back. If a new "More Ethical Apple" could be started instantly with no software investment, we would have one, the users would be able to switch, and would directly benefit from this
> can a company make the world better by making proprietary software?
If you assume a company that does not have any profit driven incentive to be anti-competitive and less accessible to some people, yes. But that's like assuming dictatorship can work if the dictator is just wise and benevolent enough. It's nice to think about but not viable in reality.
> it raises the barrier to entry and forces companies to choose agressive and hostile business models in order to get that investment back
You assume that corporations would not choose aggressive and hostile business models if they weren't forced to, which is obviously wrong.
> If a new "More Ethical Apple" could be started instantly with no software investment
This would not be possible with licenses that allow Apple to keep everything proprietary, which is what any profit driven company is incentivized to do. In other words, you need GPL for this scenario to be even theoretically possible.