Hacker News Reader

Comment by MathCodeLove | Hacker News Reader

What an absurd statement. Next you'll say private property it "immoral".

Open source software is wonderful and I love when companies create and support FOSS. That said, to say it's immoral not to give away the work you produced/paid to produce is ridiculous. You're not taking anyone freedom away by providing proprietary software. As I believe another commenter replied, they're free to not use it or develop the software on their own.

If it's too difficult for them to replicate or for a competing FOSS product to exist, then it probably is complex enough to warrant payment.

View on HN

> What an absurd statement. Next you'll say private property it "immoral".

No, absolutely not. Private property is a precursor to free software. I own a computing machine, therefore I have a natural right to control what my computing machine will compute.

> That said, to say it's immoral not to give away the work you produced/paid to produce is ridiculous.

You don't have to give anything away. Free Software means you can share your program with whoever you want, including nobody.

> You're not taking anyone freedom away by providing proprietary software.

That would be true, if proprietary software meant "no source code available" (that's usually called Freeware). But in reality, there are laws like DCMA that actually do restrict your freedom, in a literal sense.

What makes software different from any other labor, intellectual property, or physical property? Should a musician not be able to charge for their music? An artist for their art? An architect for their designs? A mason for laying the bricks?

You do own your computing machine, which means you have the right not to use proprietary software. That doesn't mean that proprietary software itself isn't moral if the user chooses to run it. You seem to believe that any software which isn't free is also abusive, when that's clearly not the case. Many software companies that develop proprietary software are profitable and are so without abusing their users.

DCMA only "restricts your freedom" so far as someone else intellectual property is concerned. If that software had never been created there wouldn't be the "freedoms" surrounding it to restrict. It's also usually illegal to buy a painting and then sell prints of that painting so your freedom is likewise "restricted". While I agree that some parts of DCMA aren't ideal, the broad argument of proprietary software "restricting your freedom" because of it is fallacious.

> That doesn't mean that proprietary software itself isn't moral if the user chooses to run it.

No, the fact that proprietary software gives developers unjust power over its users makes it immoral.

But it doesn't. The user isn't forced to cede that power to the developer(s). I don't know how you can possibly quantify it as "unjust".

The user (of the proprietary software) is forced to execute on his machine whatever computation that software tells him to. He has no way of knowing what that computation does or modify it. In this case, developer holds unjust power over the user because the developer can make the software do whatever he wants, and even change the behavior of the program by auto-updating it over the network - and the user is completely powerless against the developer.

Yes, he can choose not to be a user (of the proprietary software). That does not make proprietary software any less immoral. Being able to refuse to be a part of a pyramid scheme doesn't make pyramid schemes any less immoral.

Your saying that this being a possibility means all proprietary software is immoral is like saying that since some businesses are pyramid schemes, all businesses are immoral.

Spyware is immoral, I agree. That doesn't make all proprietary software immoral and collecting relevant usage data doesn't make it Spyware.

> Your saying that this being a possibility means all proprietary software is immoral is like saying that since some businesses are pyramid schemes, all businesses are immoral.

No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that proprietary software is immoral because it takes away an important human freedom - the freedom to control our own computation. You're said "ok but what if someone agrees to use proprietary software?" then I said "that does not make proprietary software any less bad".

If a user can choose not to use propriatary software, do the developers of propriatary software still have unjust power over its users?

Proprietary software gives unjust power to developers over their users.

If a user chooses not to use proprietary software, then they're not a user (of proprietary software).

The fact that each person can opt out of something harmful doesn't make the harmful thing any less harmful.

> What makes software different from any other labor, intellectual property, or physical property?

Nothing, and that's the whole point! If I buy a house, I can repaint it, tear down a wall or do whatever I please (as long as I stay within the boundaries of the law).

If I buy a painting I can move it, hang it upside down, improve the mysterious smile by adding a moustache with a magic marker or make whatever changes to it that I see fit.

If I buy a record, I can sample it, mix it however I please, listen to it backwards so I can listen to the subliminal ALL HAIL SATAN message it hides.

However, if I buy a piece of proprietary software I can do... nothing, except tick or untick some boxes in the settings menu that the developer bothered to put there.

That's fair for software that's a one time purchase. But most modern software is subscription based, and is more akin to renting an apartment where you're more restricted in what you can modify.

Legally, I agree that we should be able to modify whatever software we purchase so long as we don't redistribute it. I don't believe, however, that the engineers should be required to hand over the source code for us to do it.

Car mods are usually legal, but no one is demanding schematics from the manufacturer to help them go about it.

> Private property is a precursor to free software. I own a computing machine, therefore I have a natural right to control what my computing machine will compute.

A couple things:

1. You don't need ownership to have rights related to privacy or control. You don't have to be a homeowner to have a right against people invading your home. The hackers who started the free software movement were not primarily computing on devices they personally owned.

2. Personal ownership of computing devices is not necessarily what the term 'private property' refers to. Personal ownership of computing devices is very much possible without private _property_: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_v...

> You don't have to be a homeowner to have a right against people invading your home.

"Your home", as in: a home you have ownership rights to. You may only be renting those rights for a limited time, but your right not to have your home invaded is still grounded in the rights of ownership you hold in the home.

There are no "rights related to privacy or control" without ownership.

> Personal ownership of computing devices is not necessarily what the term 'private property' refers to.

"In some economic systems, such as capitalism, private and personal property are considered to be exactly equivalent." — Your Wikipedia link

So in the systems which matter there is no difference. Only broken economic systems such as socialism, Marxism, and left-anarchism attempt to draw a distinction between personal and private property. Personal property is just that part of private property that those in power (whether a lone dictator or an egalitarian collective) doesn't consider useful or significant enough to be worth taking for itself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com