I understand that good software costs money. All of the "evil" things listed in this article such as DRM or the SaaS business model all originated from unique attempts to make money and pay developers for their work (among other things, obviously all of this stuff also enriches shareholders and other people who don't directly contribute to the product). You can't have your free cake and afford to eat it too, per say.
There is not really a solution to this dilemma other than overthrowing capitalism entirely (which I believe will happen eventually with the rise of automation), but that might be too drastic of a change at this point in time.
>I very much do expect people to make sacrifices and I think that people who aren't willing to sacrifice for the greater good...are either misguided or outright malicious
Hey, I can agree with you here!
>"we" shouldn't need to create an electric pickup truck in order for people to stop driving 10mpg guzzlers around cities for ego reasons. We should probably just tax the hell out of it instead and require them to "sacrifice".
Agreed that we should tax them, however...this example ignores that quite a lot of people who drive pickups actually use them for their job. For example, small business owners such as plumbers or electricians benefit greatly from driving pickups that can carry their tools rather than tiny sedans or awkward SUVs.
This type of insight is also missing from other morally guided arguments such as removing all cars from cities to promote walking and biking. What do you do about snow plowing, service vehicles, delivery vehicles, etc. that modern consumers expect to cater to them directly to their households?
Making an electric pick up truck is a far better solution than taxing ICE pickups (although, again, I think that would help) because it benefits everyone without also penalizing the people who truly do need a pickup or something that can perform the role of a pickup.
In a similar way, making better free software to take market share from paid SaaS software is better than deriding SaaS companies as immoral for stepping in to make life easier for their customers. They exist for a reason and they could not survive if enough people didn't find them valuable.
> if society decided - actually we should probably not like, build roads all over the countryside and disrupt habitats - I'd be fairly happy to give it up
Well, this depends on quite a lot of factors you're leaving out. How do you leave your house without a car? How do you visit friends or family, how do you go to restaurants or grocery stores? How do you get to work if you don't work from home?
If your answer is better public transport, then that's not really a sacrifice you are making because there is an equivalent alternative that still does what you want but without the parts you perceive as bad or wrong. Sure you gave up your Tesla, but you'd only do that if you knew there was some other way to get around. I think if your alternative was literally walking or biking everywhere, I"m not sure if you'd be so excited.
> In a similar way, making better free software to take market share from paid SaaS software is better than deriding SaaS companies as immoral for stepping in to make life easier for their customers.
We can do both.
> Well, this depends on quite a lot of factors you're leaving out. How do you leave your house without a car?
The point is that if everyone does something in lockstep, e.g. via taxation or simply an agreement, then these solutions gain pressure to arise.
So again, we can do both. If ICE cars were taxed more heavily then a ton of investment naturally flows into alternative fuels, bus services, etc because suddenly there's an enormous competitive advantage.
FOSS already has the largest competitive advantage - it is literally free and accessible to anyone who has access to a computer.
That paid solutions still manage to trump many FOSS programs tells me that people value their time more than their money, and FOSS developers ought to work to develop software that takes a lot less time to do things with.
There is not really a solution to this dilemma other than overthrowing capitalism entirely (which I believe will happen eventually with the rise of automation), but that might be too drastic of a change at this point in time.
>I very much do expect people to make sacrifices and I think that people who aren't willing to sacrifice for the greater good...are either misguided or outright malicious
Hey, I can agree with you here!
>"we" shouldn't need to create an electric pickup truck in order for people to stop driving 10mpg guzzlers around cities for ego reasons. We should probably just tax the hell out of it instead and require them to "sacrifice".
Agreed that we should tax them, however...this example ignores that quite a lot of people who drive pickups actually use them for their job. For example, small business owners such as plumbers or electricians benefit greatly from driving pickups that can carry their tools rather than tiny sedans or awkward SUVs.
This type of insight is also missing from other morally guided arguments such as removing all cars from cities to promote walking and biking. What do you do about snow plowing, service vehicles, delivery vehicles, etc. that modern consumers expect to cater to them directly to their households?
Making an electric pick up truck is a far better solution than taxing ICE pickups (although, again, I think that would help) because it benefits everyone without also penalizing the people who truly do need a pickup or something that can perform the role of a pickup.
In a similar way, making better free software to take market share from paid SaaS software is better than deriding SaaS companies as immoral for stepping in to make life easier for their customers. They exist for a reason and they could not survive if enough people didn't find them valuable.
> if society decided - actually we should probably not like, build roads all over the countryside and disrupt habitats - I'd be fairly happy to give it up
Well, this depends on quite a lot of factors you're leaving out. How do you leave your house without a car? How do you visit friends or family, how do you go to restaurants or grocery stores? How do you get to work if you don't work from home?
If your answer is better public transport, then that's not really a sacrifice you are making because there is an equivalent alternative that still does what you want but without the parts you perceive as bad or wrong. Sure you gave up your Tesla, but you'd only do that if you knew there was some other way to get around. I think if your alternative was literally walking or biking everywhere, I"m not sure if you'd be so excited.