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by randomCSNobody 5911 days ago
Personally, I'd prefer that Apple would release all their code on some sort of open-source license that enables me to compile and study it at will, in addition to the freedom of letting me re-distribute that software any way I want to.

The main problem with any company that releases a piece of software and demands that you pay for it is that the company is trying to create value that isn't there. Information, be it code or anything else, is not valuable because it isn't scarce; I can get the number of copies I have of any piece of data arbitrarily close to infinity very easily. Apple, however, denies this simple fact and decides to use copyright law to extract some artificial value that would not exist under true free-market principles. Granted, Apple is not the only company that does this, but they're not more moral than Microsoft or any other corporation that uses these same tactics.

The main problem with this imaginary value is that it's very difficult for companies to adopt open-source licenses when they don't want to lose their steady stream of revenue. Of course, customers should be free to pay for code if they want, but they shouldn't be coerced by government-granted monopolies in the form of copyright law.