I'm both enjoying and cringing at all of these HNers indicating that Linux is the only major exception they can think of(thus open/free source is obviously a novelty), when many of our livelihoods likely depend on these products.
It just feels like fighting the same battles from 15 years ago. How long will it take? Before people stop trotting out the argument that "you gotta charge for everything! otherwise how does stuff get made eh?" It's old guys. It's been debunked a billion times over.
Open source ain't communism, nor is it doomed to failure. Even if you bind your hands to make it legally impossible for you to control the distribution of your work that doesn't mean that you can't make money off of it or that you must stop working.
Video games alone are a 16 billion dollar per year industry. It employs over 22,000 software developers. (http://www.theesa.com/games-improving-what-matters/economy.a...) Are you seriously suggesting that this industry would produce just as much software if their work wasn't copyrighted, or that listing 35 open-source projects says anything about what would happen to the industry overall?
You're focusing on one very small part of the software industry and ignoring the rest.
It's funny you trot out that example just as so many games are switching to "free to play" models.
I'm focusing on a "very small part of the software industry" which creates the software which runs the vast majority of web servers. Oh, and every android phone too.
All I'm saying is that if you can't accept that there is "another way" of making stuff, even hugely important stuff, then you simply have not been paying attention.
The argument that failing to charge for every single copy of software/music/books/movies must necessarily translate to a diminution of those works has been made time and time again, but there are so many counter examples today that it's patently ridiculous to make it yet again.
Do you have a better argument to make or are you going to stick with this one?
Because honestly I would imagine that reusing the same old tired FUD that companies like MS have tried to use to scare people away from using Linux or Apache back in the mid-90s would have a limited shelf-life.
> All I'm saying is that if you can't accept that there is "another way" of making stuff, even hugely important stuff, then you simply have not been paying attention.
I have done open source development for over 10 years (I was developer #3 on one of the open-source projects you mentioned), have used Linux for about 15 years, and use it every day at my job working at the company that develops the Android code that you mention. That you would question my open source credential is... amusing.
I believe in open source too (and have spent a significant portion of my life developing it). That doesn't mean that I'm naive enough to think that you can take away the licensing-based revenue from the for-pay software industry and continue to get just as much software.
It's not a matter of being open source or not. I think his argument is that you can make money without copyright. Regardless if you open source your software or not. And not only you "can", but it's also the most profitable choice of today. You pointed to the gaming industry, which is an interesting example because our industry is moving toward free to play exactly because copyright haven't been paying off recently. Although I'd argue companies are doing this extremely slow because of their own bureaucracy and incompetence.
So my answer to your question of "do you think they would be making as much money without copyright" is that they would be making much more without copyright.
