this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2025
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Did you not notice that almost the entire realm of technology runs on open source software largely written by volunteers? Yes your laptop may run a proprietary piece of software but not the servers it talks to, your phone, your apps, the cash register at the store, the computer chip in your kids toys etc.....
Now imagine if ip laws were removed. Any company could take open source work and sell it as their own while ignoring any GPL that requires the source code to be distributed.
I would point at Android as an example of what would happen. It's not public domain but the end result is similar, namely that the open source originator (AOSP) suffers from a severe lack of features compared to the commercial offerings.
The default AOSP apps are incredibly barebones compared to the ones Google and the carriers put in their ROMs. You have to choose between "have nothing more than the basic features and compatibility with only well-established services" or "get the latest and greatest with all the bells and whistles (plus a huge heaping of telemetry and invasive advertising)".
It turns out it's really hard to compete with a major corporation who can throw entire teams at a problem and can legally copy anything you add to your own version. That's not even getting into the things that open source projects lack due to their haphazard team structure such as unified UX designs (Blender pre-2.8 and GIMP pre-3.0/unified window mode being the most famous examples of terrible user interfaces that lingered for far too many years).
Yet they did it anyway, my point is about the power of our intrinsic motivation to create, not our obvious need for food and shelter etc...
Do you not notice that those volunteers have bills to pay and need jobs and income from somewhere? The world doesn't run on goodwill.
So... what, are you denying that open source software exists because people have to pay bills...?
The point is every business cannot be a volunteer organization. And those companies that build that sort of infrastructure are supported by larger, proprietary companies.