this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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Free and Open Source Software
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Why is "non commercial" such an issue? It has the same "we shouldn't tax billionaires because some day I might be a billionaire" vibe.
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Because many people are also fans of free software. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
That just feels like communism: a nice, idealistic concept to achieve in its entirety but a good inspiration towards a better system. In the real world, both are ripe for exploitation. Communism is perfect for exploitation by power hungry humans, GNU software is perfect for exploitation by companies.
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Free software is very much like communism, the difference is that cloning something costs nothing, imagine if we could use a ray gun to clone any object, then communism would no longer be even remotely idealistic.
Both fail in certain areas once exposed to the real world. Communism fails because of human psychology and scale. Free software fails when competing against megacorps, those who don't follow the spirit nor the letter of free software licenses, and when infringements are not enforced.
Megacorps don't get to be megacorps by being nice. They will exploit anything to get ahead, and free software providing work for free is a benediction that they will happily exploit. People who get offended when free software providers defend themselves against such corps by changing their license to non-commercial or non-cloud compete are just victim blaming.
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