Open source alone is near worthless,
it is just one of the freedoms that together form the establishment of
which the implication of it is based, free software.
Free software was, by its pioneers, given away, in the sense that it is shared.
Like copying is not theft. This is done through retaining control, but sharing in freedoms with others.
The freedom to use, study, modify, and return those modifications to their original form.
It is no accident that egalitarian systems based on these functions have no problems being gratis.
My choice of words hints at it being predominantly gratis, you accept a idea of freedom that is free of cost.
That is inversely true. It would not be free software were it non-commercial.
Of open source, this is only implied, and of free software, it is an implication. Another quirky but essential difference.
Free software is only implicated to be free as in freedom, not cost.
Closed source software otoh. the power to be costly only, and will stop at nothing to do so.
It can mandate that you only use it in ways that answers to no governing terms of freedom.
What is a world that is corrupt enough to invent closed source software, is also functional without it.
So much so, that it would not work without it. So free software keeps things honest.
It is diametrically opposite in all but one way.
Where we are going with this is copyleft. Of the strong variety. Because mandating giving back is the understanding
you can base the spread of freedom on. And that is how it spreads.
Ideas that are intrinsic should not be controlled. Systems are in place to award original thought, not wipe it out and disallow it.
So if open source alone is near worthless, but infinitely valuable where closed source warrants none. What is then closed source?
Closed source is not valuable. It can only give you a value in return for time.
The reason it does that is to have control of itself. At the cost of controlling itself, it can also control you.
If your time is invaluable, offer it to the hands of others, at their peril, without any reward in return.
I imply here that using free software is rewarding, and that slavery is not out of question.
The idea that software defined software, or software, can be controlled, is an intrinsic idea.
Value can be created, yes, but is it distributed evenly, no. If you accept the idea that this value is power, then you see why it is a failed system.
It is a failed system because the systems it create, are only stagnant to the point of stability, and worsening, to the point of not retaining that stability.
Fundamentally both parties can create value, and a symbiotic relationship relationship, but it is one based on governing you, and governing the revenue of
the governing party as a safety. Primitively and fundamentally, not a functional form of government. It is not a fail but a forever backwards pointing way of going there, nowhere, and anywhere but onward.
So where does slavery start and voluntary exchange stop?
At the foundation. Closed source is relinquishing those freedoms.
If that is not important to you, then open source is your thing.
Join the ranks of entities which things taking those powers away from users totally, with closed source
or in part, with open source.
Because that is what actually happens.
Maybe your freedom, the power over you, but other peoples freedom, the ability to have freedom over you, is your thing.
Take your liberty, but do not take mine, that is my freedom.
And to the point of serving a superior motive, at the cost of convenience, i would still be inclined to take it.
So if I am attacked for that, who is tarnishing with the brush that paints, broadly, speaking, of course about FUD, calling the kettle no blacker, than that which can be none blacker than thou, thee who-mmm goes to fail.
With national laws that make sense, closed source meets its end, because it allows for corruption.
Corruption isnt something that someone decides to do, that is a foundation which to this end is all important and irrelevant, corruption in its ways is something that seeps in, and takes over.
The ability to shift power exists so much as its potential. To allow that to extend beyond a personal boundary, in the interest of individualism, is to not let people decide for themselves what evils they want from others.
When it takes over the foundation of our civilization, there are people who will want to have a say about it.
The line of thinking that free software, alone, is going to end these structures, is easily monetized, without any value added, one must add.
The ideas that these structures are intrinsically adverse to the spread of ideas, to the creation of value, is flawed.
Much like the spread of almost-free-software in the sense that it is non-commercial.
These make the same island type power structures. I can't for the life of me understand why businesses, the act of selling value in this case by proxy rather than working on the project itself, managing to invest value into the project it is providing, does not outweigh selling it for bad reasons.
If you think something is sold for a bad reason, sell it cheaper for a better reason. This isn't about the software itself, since these are distributable to at least one hop, bar none (?), but about including them with other works.
In an artistic sense i understand that, but who would hold that against someone, then you value their opinion.
When we allow fair use for parody. That is the copyright system, in which it is released, predominantly, and effectively in other cases.
I think the idea that you can take power away from someone to replicate, indefinitely instead of for a period of time, is a agreed upon evil of the patent system. But this does it without ever bringing the value of all the effort put into the descriptive workings into the hands of everyone at even this rate. It does it anyhow btw, because the provisions for copyright do also ends, at which point it does enter the commons.
So no, non-commercial is not as bad as closed source, because no power benefits from its spread, and it will eventually become fully free.
Closed means risk of loss at a point where you cannot safeguard it yourself. Taking that away is not how to gain my trust. Knowing that it does happen catastrophically, and is a course for fail over time, does not sound welcoming respectively for tools i use, and culture i cherish.
Wealth to the powers to be, powerless to control individuals, to whom all value belongs.
I do not put a value on nature more so than i put a value on freedom. I pay for people to preserve its interests, which i find colludes with mine.
I find systems that take into account personal interest alone, wanting. In a do not want fashion.
