There's nothing wrong with commercial software being the origin. What's a crime is that it can stay commercial. Source code should enter public domain in a decade at most.

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aleph_minus_one 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> What's a crime is that it can stay commercial. Source code should enter public domain in a decade at most.

In many cases, people are free to write their own implementation. Your claim "Source code should enter public domain in a decade at most." means that every software vendor shall be obliged after some time to hand out their source code, which is something very strong to ask for.

What is the true crime are the laws that in some cases make such an own implementation illegal (software patents, probitions of reverse-engineering, ...).

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scotty79 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> every software vendor shall be obliged after some time to hand out their source code,

Obviously. Since software is as much vital to the modern world as water, making people who deal with it disclose implementation details is a very small ask.

Access to the market is not a right but a privilege. If you want to sell things we can demand things of you.

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simonh an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I think commerce between individuals is a right.

Infringing on that should be justified in terms of protecting the rights of those involved, such as ensuring the quality of goods, enforcement of reasonable contract terms and such. We are involved in the process as participants in the market, and that’s the basis of any legitimacy we have to impose any rules in the market. That includes an obligation to fair treatment of other participants.

If someone writes notes, procedures, a diary, software etc for their own use they are under no obligation to publish it, ever. That’s basic privacy protection. Whether an executable was written from scratch in an assembler or is compiled from high level source code isn’t anyone else’s business. It should meet quality standards for commercial transactions and that’s it. There’s no more obligation to publish source than there is to publish design documents, early versions, or unpublished material. That would be an overreaching invasion of privacy.

	▲	masfuerte 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		So restrict the obligation to companies.

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dataflow 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Obviously. Since software is as much vital to the modern world as water, making people who deal with it disclose implementation details is a very small ask.

The analogy would be ever-so-slightly more accurate if you said "software is as much vital to the modern world as beverages".

It would also be more accurate if all water was free.

Neither of which is the case.

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esafak an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

You must design your own hardware too, since you can't get the blueprints of commercial products.

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pjmlp 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not everyone buys into FOSS religion, especially when there are bills to pay, and too many people feeling entitled to leech on work of others and being paid themselves, or companies for that matter.