
Richard Stallman and Future of Software Innovation - AliaksandrH
https://hackernoon.com/richard-stallman-future-of-software-innovation-4e591fa93d7f
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krapp
I don't think this solves the fundamental problem of the lack of "innovation"
on the web, or in open source software in general, which is that most users
don't want to, need to, or are even capable of, forking, modifying and
redistributing their own software. Adding freedom doesn't necessarily mean
adding innovation.

Sure, a decentralized and distributed web where anyone can view the "backend"
and fork any site easily might be a more "free as in freedom" version of what
we have now, but the reason there aren't a thousand Netflix competitors isn't
_just_ the closed nature of their backend code, it's that the problems of
scale, rights management and distribution are _hard problems,_ bandwidth and
logistics cost money. There's far more to these sites than mere code.

The end result of such a system is _still_ going to be centralization around a
small number of services, not because proprietary gatekeepers are stifling
innovation, but because that's the most efficient shape a market takes. There
are always going to be vastly more consumers than producers.

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Nomentatus
Start with all the reviews people write for Amazon (including myself.) No way
Amazon should be able to legally claim these as its exclusive property; yet
right now this review pile is probably their most valuable asset.

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SkidanovAlex
Exactly.

Similarly, Google quality is in big part due to invaluable information of what
URLs were clicked for what queries.

If duckduckgo had access to that information, their quality would've been way
higher, and there's no reason I as a user shall not be able to give access to
the information I generated for Google to another service.

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kemitchell
The author seems unaware that RMS has continued writing, on "Services as a
Software Substitute" among other topics. See
[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-
really-s...](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-
serve.en.html)

