from Hacker News

Free software is an abject failure

by OberstKrueger on 11/8/21, 7:48 PM with 8 comments

• by h2odragon on 11/8/21, 8:08 PM

  I'd suggest "It's time to move past the FSF" as a title, because the clickbait title you have isn't really the thrust of your essay, is it? "Free Software" as an idea has succeeded so well that there is hardly any paid software market extant anymore. It has succeeded so well that "source availability" is something we take for granted rather than something you'd have to negotiate hard to get and sign NDAs and shit.

  "Free Software can do more," certainly. To say its failed is to ignore all the triumphs that have led us to today where you can take those for granted and ask "what have you done for me lately?

  "Besides the roads, aqueducts, legal system, security from raiders, and the wine... What has Rome ever done for us?"

• by phendrenad2 on 11/9/21, 6:52 AM

  Copyleft has succeeded, it's just far behind non-copyleft software. I can run an entire system using only GPL-licensed components. It might not be pleasant, because most apps are MIT/BSD, but it'll work.

• by selfhoster11 on 11/8/21, 8:35 PM

  Coming up with a solution equitable enough for all takes hundreds of man-years, simply because the Western copyright systems aren't geared for supporting the commons in any meaningful way any more. Copyright terms are spinning out of control, and things are assumed proprietary even when there should be no doubt they belong in the commons.

  Let's face it, trying to retrofit a reasonable legal framework that protects the end user into this legal system, is like trying to retrofit a database written in Haskell into a mainframe that can only run COBOL. Of course it's horrible. What do you expect?

  Another way to look at it, is that the IP ecosystem is hyper-competitive. If it wasn't such an arms race, then nukes like the GPL wouldn't even be necessary.

• by wizardofmysore on 11/9/21, 3:32 AM

  Scrum is an abject failure.

  Java is an abject failure.

  Cardano is the best crypto currency.

  I think I've nailed the art of clickbait titles.

• by airbreather on 11/8/21, 10:33 PM

  Yet paid software has delivered so little in many cases, seems problems are not related to whether you pay or not.

• by raspyberr on 11/9/21, 11:40 AM

  This whole article feels like it just boils down to the Paradox of Tolerance.