Classic is offered over the web, so only the AGPL would be relevant (or well, I'm not actually sure how GPL applies to JS apps served over the web but run in browser), and anyway, it's not like MS is making money from Minecraft classic, for a lot of people they did get something out of it: a cool game.
Chris, you know better than this nonsense. No experts know the answer, but the FSF strongly advocates the position that JS running on your computer is just like any other software running on your computer. The AGPL was written to require a server operator to free their patches to software running on their server, not in your browser.
The AGPL exists to close a loophole for code running on the server. Code being served to the client obviously needs the permission of the code’s copyright holder. Otherwise, all those movie piracy streaming sites wouldn’t get constantly shut down.
This is a cynical and wrong viewpoint. Companies are made up of people, and people don't always act in the absolute for-profit interests of the companies. Further, companies can, and do, sometimes take actions that aren't directly profit oriented. And the trope about shareholder liability making it illegal for a company to not act in a directly profitable way is wrong.
It's a cynical and mostly correct viewpoint. Companies that don't make their workers act in their profit interests exist, but they aren't successful. Microsoft is not among them.
When the market works, at least. So it's actually quite possible that Microsoft is being nice and "inefficient" here.
Also, I think there are probably sufficiently small decreases in expected profit ithat many large companies would tolerate.
And even aside from that, there is the possibility of a choice between options which does not have any large-enough-to-predict-or-evaluate-its-direction impact on the bottom line, and in these cases, the decision will likely be made in accordance with how some people working there prefer.
No model is perfect. I guess I should prioritize rhetorics in the future lest someone use my honesty against me.
> Also, I think there are probably sufficiently small decreases in expected profit ithat many large companies would tolerate.
There aren't. A company that accepts decreases in profit does not become large, it fails against its more psychopathic competitors.
> And even aside from that, there is the possibility of a choice between options which does not have any large-enough-to-predict-or-evaluate-its-direction impact on the bottom line, and in these cases, the decision will likely be made in accordance with how some people working there prefer.
If a company cannot predict whether an action is profitable, it will always decide against it and instead invest its resources in something that is.
When I said "sufficiently small" I was including stuff on the order of "an average of .01 cents total as the result of the policy".
> it fails against its more psychopathic competitors
I see no reason why choosing to lose an expected value of .01 cents total, would result in failing against a competitor which does not do so. That just doesn't make sense. It isn't like there is a ranking of "what company in this field made the most profit", and then all of them other than the top 1 or 2 are immediately destroyed each month. No, a company runs out of business when it is not sufficiently profitable. Now, if something results in their products being more expensive, or something like that, in a way that significantly changes their profitability, or other things which might slightly change their per-unit profitability, then yeah, that could make them non-viable.
But, like,
have you worked in a large company? There are certainly inefficiencies in large companies which are the result of the continued choices of individual employees, even among large successful companies. This is obvious.
Companies are not able to perfectly optimize for profitability, even if they wanted to.
All of that is just companies making errors, not intentionally foregoing profits.
> It isn't like there is a ranking of "what company in this field made the most profit", and then all of them other than the top 1 or 2 are immediately destroyed each month.
The process is not that quick, but in principle, this is exactly how markets work. The most profitable companies undercut all others, which then go under. Provided markets work, that is.
Like I said well upthread, this is a cynical and wrong viewpoint. The real world doesn't operate as an efficient market, doesn't operate over infinite timescales, doesn't have ways to exactly calculate the proftabilitiy of a decision or action.
It is overly cynical, and mostly wrong, to take microeconomics 101 theory and try to apply it to a world that doesn't fit any of the microecon 101 assumptions.
On the other hand, you can make a profit-driven motive argument for practically any action a company takes if you try hard enough, even literally giving money away.
Classic is offered over the web, so only the AGPL would be relevant (or well, I'm not actually sure how GPL applies to JS apps served over the web but run in browser), and anyway, it's not like MS is making money from Minecraft classic, for a lot of people they did get something out of it: a cool game.