Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

It's the usual sleigh of hand that equates capitalism with specific current players. Like the Economist said, "being pro-business is not the same as being pro-market."



The terrifying thing is that it's easy for a good writer/orator to convince legislators that software is a zero-sum game. It's easy to visualize a big pie of software and see open source conversion as cutting into the profits.

Whereas for those of us actually in the industry it's obvious how pathetically shallowly we've scratched the surface of the potential of software, and how commodified open source software is the foundation of future software progress which will never be achieved if everyone has to endlessly pay a tax on every decades-old innovation that a company stole from academia to bootstrap a software business back in the day.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: