@freemo Consider this.

You release you wonderful piece of software for anyone to do anything they want with it. Mr. Monopolist comes along, sees some merit in it, throws their huge team of developers/marketers at it and produces a proprietary product based on it, that from users perspective, your original, oh so free, project can never hope to compete with. No matter how hard you(or the community) strive to keep up, you are always behind Mr. Monopolist, cause you give away all you work, while they just laugh at you and continue to dominate the market.

After some time even the knowledgeable little guy can't freely use your software anymore, unless they are willing to use ancient software/hardware, cause the whole ecosystem surrounding it is proprietary.

OSS is a way for monopolistic mega corporations to keep FOSS under control and make sure they are always ahead.

@namark Except that not really how it ever plays out.

Big old company steals it, makes it proprietary, most of the users I actually care about (linux users and open source contributors)dont care they continue to work on the project anyway. In fact The likely result is an **increase** in developers who contribute not a decrease.

I still get to use the software as does the rest of the world, AND there is an increase in contribution and my project grows faster.

Looks like the company coming and snatching it up only helped my position and did nothing to hurt it. Again, why do I care if they want to add to my project and sell them, great, hope they have some wonderful results.

@freemo Not playing out that way, would be the OSS project beating the proprietary alternative that is based on it: BSD beating mac on desktop, linux beating android on mobile, llvm beating nvidia's cuda compiler, etc.

What you are saying, is that it plays out exactly as I described, but you just don't care, because you are not a user you are a developer, and you are interested in development and not usage.

I would assume you also don't care about the fact that majority computing devices used by general public don't work at all without proprietary firmware, and don't work well without proprietary software.

@namark Yea I mostly dont care about that. I use linux, my phones and my software are all compatible with my needs, they continue to draw plenty of developers. Yea I'm perfectly fine with aall that, in fact its what I WANT, to see the economy thrive by the use of these techs as much as the open-source community itself. I am quite excited when i see it adopted into proprietary tech, it means we are succeeding at our goals.

@freemo If your needs include to be surveilled and prevented from using your devices it doesn't suit the owner of proprietary software/firmware on it, then I can't argue.

Can't wait for all the new and exciting developments in proprietary software, like police robots patrolling the streets running "microsoft windows utopian edition"!

@namark If they want to offer me their service for my data thats their right. Depending on the data its a trade im usualy more than ok to make. If not I can either not use the serivce or in some cases get a paid alternative. But regardless of if I use it or not I'm still happy to see it help the economy.

I have plenty of open source I can still use if i dont want surveillance and am willing to run my own hardware. So yes, absolutely my uses are still satisfied.

Plenty of issues in temrs of laws and freedoms worth addressing, none of that has proprietary software to blame. Proper rules regarding our freedom is an issue governments need to get on, not a need to abolish closed source however.

@freemo With firmware they are free to not offer you anything and still surveil you and control you device through network. You can't do anything about that on most modern hardware. You don't have an alternative unless you are capable of manufacturing your own hardware.
There are some limited options like old dekstop hardware(librebooted thinkpads) or expensive server hardware(Raptor engineering Talos II). But these can't satiate the market.

With software, they are free to not offer you anything and surveil or control your device to the extend that the software allows(display driver can OCR and censor text for example). Alternatives exist but are usually not competitive(forever behind, and sometimes even happy about it as you demonstrated).

You argument about rules is equivalent of saying "we don't need to list the ingredients on food products as long as there is a rule that there is no poison in them. Also the producer of the food is free to demand you to not open the packaging before consumption, and is also free to poison you if you do. Governments and law bending megacorps decide what's poison".

@namark No one is forcing me to buy any paritcular hardware/firmware option. If they feel they can offer me a prorietary firmware at a cheaper cost they will. I can then decide to either buy that product or pay extra for the open one.

If you feel the options are too limited then make your own option.

Regardless it is more an argument for the need for better privacy laws than an argument that I need to abolish everything proprietary.

@freemo Your really think proprietary software/firmware is cost reduction? That's the weirdest argument. To me it's clearly a way to establish monopoly. Desire to be a sole owner of the products and make competition impossible, that's the only explanation that makes sense to me. Prices for such products are not set objectively, they are set on a "how much are people ready to pay" basis. Same software and hardware often costs less in poorer countries(with artificial region locking).

And how exactly is "having no alternative" is not forcing? "Sure you don't have to buy this technology... if you don't want to be a functional part of society". Even today, when these practices are still in their infancy, people are denied certain services if they don't have a smartphone, or forced to use certain technology(proprietary time/activity tracking software) to do their job.

@namark Thats not what I said. Also I have plenty of alternatives im happy to use. Though as I said I'd be happy to support any strong privacy laws

@namark Also i heard the whole food ingredient argument before, it isnt exactly fitting. It is more like:

"People should be free to decide if they want to eat food that doesnt list its ingredients or not"

@freemo Starving people are not free to decide what they eat. All you arguments work in perfect society where free software is the accepted norm, while you live in society where proprietary is the norm.

@namark Starving people cant afford open-hardware either, moot point

@freemo umm... bending analogy?
In the case of food people are starving for food.

In case of open hardware people are "starving" for open hardware not food.

Are you going to argue, that only essentials are food and shelter, and if you have that you need nothing else in life?

@namark Never made any claim about what was essential. You are really stretching to put words in my mouth to argue a point

@freemo I didn't say you claimed that, I asked if you're going to claim that, because that's the only way forward I see for your argument(this branch of it).

@namark There are other essentials than food and water, yes

@freemo Ah, I see, so solely open hardware isn't essential then. Today maybe it isn't. When the "microsoft windows utopia edition" robots start patrolling the streets it will suddenly become essential. The hope is by that time free software will become the norm. The anti-copyleft OSS movement is doing nothing but hindering that, by saying what essentially amounts to "proprietary software rules the (software) world, and that's ok, it should be free to do it".

@namark In reality those microsoft robots will likely crash every few minutes and be so slow and buggy that my linux robot that I built myself will easily outpower them.

@freemo :D sorry, can't help but to argue even with a joke:
put aside, that in real reality your linux robot will be superior to microsoft's in every way, except the most essential - being able to utilize it's own hardware to the full potential (assuming no proprietary drivers); it will also be running on intel firmware that would be hardcoded to override the kernel and submit to any microsoft robot, which will of course be protected from being overwritten with state of the art cryptography.

@namark Except that linux does run on proprietary hardware all the time and I specifically buy either open or at least reverse angineered hardware. Linux fully leverages every piece of hardware I buy, because I buy hardware to ensure it can. Still not a problem. Dont like proprietary hardware, then dont buy it.

@freemo Thank you for this. I've watched with dismay as the community paints a picture of David V. Golliath around this licensing issue, when in fact the companies that they claim have been so horribly and unfairly victimized CHOSE to publish their software under a free and open for all license, and only when they realized money was being made by people other than them played the victim card. UNDERSTAND the license you choose and embrace the consequences.