Juxtapose this statement with the one further downthread:
"What do the most ambitious do in the US? Go into software or Wall Street."
How can there be money to be made in something that costs zero dollars. That is a rhetorical question, i.e., no answer is being requested.
Harvesting user data. Sell ad space. Sell user data to interested parties. This as a "strategy". Biggest "tech" companies.
Thank you.
Is this practice really best-described as "software". Is the (free) software merely a Trojan Horse for something else.
The commenter could have written "What do the most ambitious do in the US? Go into harvesting personal data from people's use of computers and online ad sales, or Wall Street."
This would have been more accurate in terms of describing the money-making aspect.
All free.
I also develop and give away open source software. The money I make from it is doing things like training and support.
I bet you use Google, Youtube, Wikipedia, Stackoverflow, Hackernews, all kinds of software web services for free.
All this free stuff, much of it best in breed, was inconceivable when I started in software.
You can download a lot of software I wrote for free:
https://github.com/digitalmars
> but seems inclined to say ridiculous stuff to get under people's skins
My views aren't mainstream, but they are honest views.