[LAU] Some disturbing news

[Louigi Verona]

Hermann,

I actually disagree with that. And what I disagree with is this:

"At least, any knowledge or development"

There is a profound difference between knowledge and development. It would
indeed be immoral in the longer term to not share knowledge. But this is
not what's happening. Anyone who wants to write their own Skype is free to
do that based on industry-level expert knowledge out there, which is not
secret at all. Although there are, of course, proprietary algorithms,
frequently a lot of them are published or are in many ways irrelevant.
Proprietary algorithm doesn't mean good or efficient, it just means you
cannot see how its implemented.

Generally, very few proprietary companies have real "secrets" that are
translatable into direct benefit to the public once they get known. It's
not like Ableton is an app that others cannot reproduce because they are
using some secret ingredients. No. Ableton is difficult to reproduce
because it requires enormous, unimaginable amount of labor.

Conversely, actual programs are not knowledge. They are implementation of
knowledge. And I don't see why someone's r&d work should be available for
free. On what basis?

In fact, I find this feeling of entitlement to other people's work on the
part of many ideologically charged FLOSS community members quite indecent.
If I am writing a program, I don't see how anyone is entitled to my work.

And when we compare commercial programs with FLOSS programs, it is not
infrequent to see a dramatic difference in quality. And so if I spent
resources - time and effort - hiring people and creating a high quality
product - why should I give this away? You have the knowledge, go and write
it yourself. Nobody is keeping anything secret.

This initial fallacy of talking about software but meaning technology or
knowledge in general has been started, as far as I know, by Richard
Stallman. I have specifically addressed his point on this here:
https://louigiverona.com/?page=projects&s=writings&t=philosophy&a=philosophy_freedoms#i

Relevant paragraphs:

More importantly, *he confuses technology with source code*. Stallman
commits this error frequently, for example saying "the easy choice was to
join the proprietary software world, signing nondisclosure agreements and
promising not to help my fellow hacker."[149] In other words, to Stallman
the lack of source code is equivalent to the lack of help.

There is, however, an inherent difference between principles, techniques,
algorithms - and source code. Source code is no longer the only or even the
most common source of technological knowledge sharing. In many cases what's
relevant is a description of an algorithm, a code snippet or a function. It
is very rare that someone requires to inspect the code of a whole program.
Even then, what's really helpful is an overview of the program's
architecture, not the code itself.
...

The public is not kept in ignorance of how technology works, either. Such
information is generally open and accessible. For instance, one might not
have access to the source code of Skype, but it is fairly trivial to get
access to information about technologies and techniques that make Skype
possible, and anyone can write a program with identical functionality based
on publicly available knowledge - provided they gain the expertise and
spend a significant amount of time and effort.



L.V.
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