This is exactly why Stallman invented free software: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-impor....
Solution: Software development should be the only creative profession in the entire world with no legal protection on their work!?
It's insane to me. Absolutely insane. Copyright is not immoral. Almost nobody in this thread would be able to make any money as a software engineer if software were not allowed to make money. And yes, I've heard the arguments for how free software could kinda maybe carve out a niche of funding and keep a few passionate people employed for not quite enough money. Spare me. It's like every aerospace engineer deciding that what they're doing is immoral and they should all just be aircraft maintenance techs. It's a completely different, much less creative, and much less satisfying job (for the engineering-minded, anyway).
Of course patents are a different story, and basically are immoral under the current system. And there are clear "right to repair" and ownership rights that we also need to fight for. Can we focus on those fights instead of shaming software developers for wanting to make money on the code they write?
> if something is abandoned by a company, then it should be made open
Totally agree! Once you start selling a product, you should be required to make provisions for your company not existing anymore. Source-code trusts that have the authority to make code public domain or provide it to stakeholders in certain situations, when it can be shown the current IP-holder is not meeting their obligations, would be a great idea. This does not interfere with the interests of active, good-faith copyright holders, except perhaps by charging them a small fee to the trust.
>User repair-ability/unlocking/jail-breaking of devices should be legally protected.
Totally agree! That is what "right to repair" is referring to.
There are ways to solve these problems, and banning copyright on software isn't really even one of them.
[1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms
Extending that freedom to allow distributing the end result of those patches to people who don't have a license to use the original software (as freedom 2 does) would just be another, slightly less direct way of abolishing software copyright.
Which is the right thing to do. Copyright creates artificial monopolies and harms users, as was predicted by Stallman: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-impor.... There should be a different, just way to be paid for software.
Fantasy land. Open source projects have been looking for such a way for decades now, with no luck. Copyright has so far proven to be the only practical, "just" way to make software development viable as a business.
Copyright does not in and of itself "harm" users, unless you consider having to pay for the goods you use to be "harm". The harms described in the article you linked could be mitigated by freedom 1 alone (combined with the portion of freedom 3 that's already allowed under existing law, as discussed).
Free software is not against allowing people to make money. In fact, their model is that people are paid to make changes and support the free software and those changes are shared. And it's still possible to make software and get paid without sharing it.
Free software in fact depends on legal protection.
Free software means that in theory you can modify and maintain the software you run on your machines to your liking (not hardware though, or backends). But this is so incredibly far beyond the capabilities of the enormous majority of people that it might as well not be a thing in the first place.
> But this is so incredibly far beyond the capabilities of the enormous majority of people that it might as well not be a thing in the first place.
You don't have to be a programmer to benefit from free software. The latter simply removes the monopoly of the software developers and allows alternative developers to work for you if you pay them.
And where is this font of developers writing replacements for abandoned free software? We've had decades of GPL software. The number of people who have actually used this lever is incredibly small.
Where can I go to a shop and buy, e.g., a laptop with Linux? It's practically impossible. I guess it's because the monopolies don't allow anyone to enter the market. In practice, Linux is already better for many use cases.
I also have no idea how this is related to the fact that almost no actual consumers are taking advantage of GPL code to continue to maintain their products beyond support offered by their developers. If anything, this would be evidence that GPL software isn't a panacea since doing something as basic as installing Linux is far beyond the capacity of most consumers.
Yes, I can do it, but 95% of people can't. Incidentally, about 5% of people run Linux.
> how this is related to the fact that almost no actual consumers are taking advantage of GPL code
Because the more people use the code, the more development occurs there.
I don’t know what I’d do with any of that other stuff. Does your dishwasher actually try to measure water quality? Because that seems like a really poor fit. I wouldn’t trust water quality measurements coming out of my dishwasher anyway. It’s measuring hot water which isn’t what you should be drinking, and I’d give it a 99% chance that the person who crammed those sensors in didn’t do a good job of insulating them from the heat, vibration, etc.
And I thought at least some dishwashers heated the water themselves, like my washing machine. At least the water-hardness value is nice to know, and (since it's super-easy with HA) log/graph it over time. Plus detergent and salt levels are nice to know for shopping-list-planning.
But why? If I haven’t run it in three days, then I don’t need it to run. The only way this might be useful for me would be if HA could magically realize the dishwasher is full and I forgot to run it, but it’s not going to be able to do that. It can’t tell the difference been “I forgot” and “I don’t want it to run yet” and I absolutely do not want HA sending me a message every time I leave asking if I meant to run the dishwasher.
> And I thought at least some dishwashers heated the water themselves, like my washing machine.
Maybe some dishwashers do have internal heaters to reheat the water? Mine definitely is connected to the hot water supply, though. I am not aware of it containing an internal heater. Definitely some dishwashers have a heating element for drying (mine does not) but I don’t think they use those elements for heating the water.
Also, does your clothes washing machine actually heat water? That seems pointless when you already have a device intended to provide hot water to the whole house. Mine connects to the hot and cold lines. I’d be annoyed if I bought a washing machine and then realized it had a heater inside instead of using the hot water supply. The extra complexity and failure modes and wasted time to heat the water do not seem to provide any value.
> At least the water-hardness value is nice to know, and (since it's super-easy with HA) log/graph it over time. Plus detergent and salt levels are nice to know for shopping-list-planning.
Personally I don’t want “nice to haves” that requires my devices to be internet connected and have apps etc. The value is way too low for the complexity it adds. I especially don’t trust these device manufacturers to keep these systems running long term.
If you find value, though, I’m not saying you shouldn’t be able to buy one of those smart dishwashers.
A quick search indicates that most (all?) dishwashers have a heater to bring the water up to the necessary level. But also that you should give them the hottest water you can from your plumbing for efficiency.
So you use the hot water line so the water is in the ballpark of the proper temperature, then use the internal heating units to hit and maintain the target temperature.
Although there’s also a big push to start using cold water for clothes. Supposedly modern detergents don’t need hot water typically.
By all means, turn our home PCs into supercomputers and our televisions into 3D hologram projectors, but let "dumb" but reliable goods persist.
Next they'll start making smart cissors, smart drinking glasses, smart pens...
Unfortunately if his goals came to fruition the vast majority of people would be in the same place. I'm not sure what the answer is, but it seems like free software is only a small piece of it.