Why Giving Away Your Code Is Not Dangerous.
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You can use CC or Copyright laws. Merry Chrismas for you.
Anyone who peeked backstage when Netscape released Moz source knows what
insanitychaos can ensue … it’s right disruptive.You must tell that to my thesis supervisor who insists on “inserting interesting features” (TM) 😉 is a must to avoid “code stealers”…
Blanket statemsnts like “giving away code is not bad” is silly. First it’s too broad to be accurate or true. Second, giving away “code” may be only giving away a technique that is a building block.
Open Source is a way for some to justify making money they feel they don’t deserve. For others it’s a way to be part of a community instead of living “lives of quiet desperation”.
A few are smart enough to use the work of others to make them rich. Bill Gates, Linus Torvolds, Doom and Quake creators, wikipedia … and the list goes on. I don’t see that as Open Source, although some do.
Sadly most are so entreched in their religion (Open Source, Propreitary) they can not see the forest for the trees.
I strongly disagree with pretty much everything you just said.
There is also the matter of the ongoing reduction of the outlay and resources needed to produce a code-solution. Due to improvements of editors etc, and to the growing stock of available (free) code-components … code becomes progressively ‘cheaper’.
It’s like books: a startling percentage of all the original Gutenberg Bibles still exist. The reason is, the Gutenberg printing operation chose to make the product as expensive as the market would bear. So, each copy was a phenomenal treasure … and survived. Like exclusive automobiles that cost a half million dollars.
Later, the cost of printing declined, but the Gutenbergs and others fought this. They delayed the reduction of publishing cost, in order to preserve an exclusive business-model.
Today, some would like to produce code in accordance with a pre-defined model that sets a value on the product, selected by themselves. Increasingly, the tools and resources available to lower the cost of producing code render this strategy less & less tenable.