[LAU] DAWs and licensing Was: Symphony of love illusive

[Louigi Verona]

There are many reasons to prefer FLOSS or to support it. In fact, I would
say that framing the situation as "either - or" is misleading. I support
FLOSS and strongly believe it is necessary and good, for many-many reasons,
and yet I use proprietary software as well.

Regarding some of the advantages of FLOSS, mentioned in this thread, I
would say that some of them are questionable. A couple were mentioned, but
mainly long-term support. That proprietary software becomes obsolete. I
have to say that I find this argument to be unconvincing.

First of all, I honestly question the frequency with which people need to
access their old projects. Sure, I will probably have some difficulty
opening some of my FL Studio 3 projects in FL Studio 20 (although, I am
sure it will at least attempt to load it). So what? How often does one need
opening old project files? Is this even a serious use case?

Technology moves on quickly. In the last couple of decades computing has
changed dramatically. *There is no real demand for long-term products.* I
don't care about being compatible with DOS or Windows XP. I just don't,
because these things are no longer very relevant. Sure, running some old
game is great, it's not always easy, but it's definitely not something that
should be a problem that resources are allocated towards.

Second, this "enforced obsolescence" is pretty rare, in my experience. I
guess it also depends on the developer's business model, but most
proprietary software I own just doesn't have this problem. At the same
time, Ubuntu distros definitely force you out. This "moving on" mentality
is more a feature of organized development, not just proprietary. Nobody
wants to maintain some old version. In fact, it simply becomes physically
impossible. I am still on Ubuntu 14.04 on my old laptop. Most software I
try to install won't work because of dependency hell. There are no updates
anymore. By your logic, I now have to say that FLOSS forces me to upgrade
and that this is "enforced obsolescence". And maybe in a trivial sense it
is. And that's fine. Technology moves on quickly. *You want it to move on.*

Which leads me to the point that actually proprietary software can be
pretty good at backwards compatibility. While I'm not aware of things on
the Mac, Windows is known to be generally backwards compatible to an
amazing degree. They have several teams making sure that this is the case.
At the same time,  smaller companies are at the mercy of platforms. If
Windows or Mac (or Linux) changes in a dramatic way, what am I to do? If I
am a plugin, I have no choice, but to break compatibility. Again, this
doesn't happen often. And I guess my only choice is - do I force people to
pay for it again or not? And there is no general right answer to that.

And backwards compatibility might not be true for FLOSS at all. I mean, if
I want to install a very old version of some program, I might need to
install a whole operating system, to take care of the dependencies, and
there is absolutely no guarantee it will even run on a modern laptop.

I think there is a difference between "but in theory this could be done"
and "it is actually being done". A lot of FLOSS advantages are very
theoretical, while in practice a lot of those things are not happening, for
various complicated reasons. And a lot of proprietary vices are also
theoretical and in practice are not happening, for various complicated
reasons.

In general, I would reiterate that in many cases there is no need to pit
one against the other. Stallman's take on it doesn't have to be the only
one. FLOSS is inevitable, it is also necessary and a public good that helps
reduce wealth inequality. It is not the opposite of proprietary, it's just
a very different model of software development the advantages of which
cannot be trivially compared to proprietary.



Louigi Verona
https://louigiverona.com/
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