Hacker News Reader

Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

Yes, it's morally bad to restrict the freedoms of others when not doing so causes no harm to yourself.

Amazon can't "steal" something that is given freely. That's the whole point of free software: it's no longer up to you how others get to use it.

The core idea of copyrights and ownership of sequences of bytes is the problem. We need to stop thinking of information as something that it is possible to own.

View on HN

If an entity makes profit off the back of my labour without compensation a reasonable case could be made that harm has been done to me.

Or at least a labourer may legitimately claim they wish to share "freely" only to some. And they can also choose to change their mind on any subsequent work.

This is especially the case when the entities involved are corporate, not individual humans.

You can make that case, and you're entitled to distribute your software under terms that prevent this.

But this is the deal you sign up for when you make free and open source software. If you want to make another kind of software, that's quite fine, but it's not free software nor open source.

Especially if your complaint is "We got lots of growth because people adopted our open source software but then Amazon published a hosted version and now we can't claim as much of the commercial opportunity, so we need a more restrictive license."

Would the software have attained the userbase it did if they were the terms from the outset? A lot of these companies just assume that it would have been the exact same except for the absence of an amazon competitor if these licenses were used.

No, using information or tools (or tool designs) that you have released to make profit does not do harm to you.

I think this is where I disagree. I'm all for identifying corporate exploitation of free software, but this isn't it. If I work to enrich the commons, and as a result someone profits, I don't think harm has been done to me. Sure, it might feel bad to know that someone is profiting because of my work and they couldn't spare anything for me, but ultimately, I didn't expect to make any money when I did the work. I would have done it anyway. It's really hard to see how I've been harmed here.

Information should definitely be something you can own, and you seem to understand this perfectly, because yesterday you wrote:

"I would feel a lot more comfortable with this if it didn't collect any data of mine"

Having knowledge/access to data does not mean you own it.

I have pirated movies on my hard drive. Do I own them?

I hacked your Facebook account and posted hate speech on it. Your employer fired you. Am I innocent?

Depends on what you mean by "hacked".

> We need to stop thinking of information as something that it is possible to own.

Sure. But until we reach that world, software licenses have a place.

This is a fair point, although not in great alignment with many of the norms that keep society working outside of tech.

However, don't all (or nearly all) licenses imply restrictions of some sort? Do you think code should just be released CC0/Public Domain or are certain restrictions (like copy-left) worth the cost?

Certain restrictions are indeed worth it, sure. But the FSF, OSI, and DFSG unanimously agree that a restriction on commercial use is not.

I personally think that the concept of copyright (that is, using state-sponsored violence (or threat of same) to enforce property rights over the reproduction of certain sequences of bytes) is insane. I understand why it exists and the economic incentives it creates, however I feel that the fundamental idea that someone can “own” a certain sequence of bytes is as absurd as someone owning the number 2.

Overall the concept of property has similar absurdity if you think deeply about it, especially with the concept of land ownership, or ownership in general. Property, title, money and ownership are organization structures for human activity, congruent with human social instincts, enforced ultimately by violence too. It's otherwise a fiction.

I think there are some natural rights to personal property.

As far as land goes, you're right. The same rules for objects probably shouldn't be used for land.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com