[nonrandomstring]

> Who has the right to throw a stone, here?

- Those who build medical technology that saves lives.

- Those who make educational software that helps raise our young.

- Those who work on the digital support for real world infrastructure that delivers our food, supplies our electricity, and runs our transport.

- Those who work on software for publishing, arts and entertainments which underpin our entire modern culture.

Need I go on? Please don't conflate the ethics of a whole industry with the actions of a relatively few grubby little guttersnipes who make money from near monopolies exploiting other peoples vanity and isolation.

[caslon]

Medical software is primarily proprietary. They are contributing to the problem.

Educational software is almost exclusively for-profit and proprietary. They are contributing to many problems.

Digital support for infrastructure is overwhelmingly proprietary.

IBM may have started the terrible ethics of the software industry, but publishing, arts, and entertainment companies beat the horse until it couldn't move. They are the zenith of what's wrong in the industry.

[nonrandomstring]

I hear you, but think we are talking at cross purposes here because I am not making a Free Software argument. If we can factor out "proprietary is evil" for a moment then there's a world of difference between human activities that serve our mutual day-to-day needs and those that are parasitic upon our vices.

[caslon]

I don't see how this argument isn't roughly writing off the root of all of these problems in exchange for one of the symptoms.