Let us talk when things like Google search and Watson are built from scratch for free. If sharing the source code for Google does no harm, why have they not done it?
Another radical example: Github. Why is the source for Github not open or free? Why are they not sharing that with us? Surely a company so invested in open (and to a large extent free) software must know better right?
I would argue that some free software projects can be compared to Google search and Watson.
Sharing the source to Google would be better for society, but a bit bad for Google, and since Google decides, they are deciding not to. The same goes for Github. It’s the collective action problem.
You have good intentions that are not realistic. Your model would work if everyone is selfless, honest and moral. Everyone has to be a perfect moral machine.
More concretely: free software always mimics commercial software badly after someone takes risk building it. No free software is comparable to Google or Watson in both technical capability and market results. They need 100s to 1000s of PhDs working full time. These PhDs have already slaved off in academia for years.
If software should not be treated as property, nothing else should be!
One could argue against this, but let’s assume that it is true. Does this have anything to do with the necessity of allowing software makers to forbid the sharing of software? Are you arguing that it is impossible to make money with software which is not forbidden to share, when lots of people are doing it today?
Let’s say the world stopped allowing ideas and other non-rivalrous goods to be considered property. Would the world still need software? Yes. Would the world still need people to write software? Yes. Would the world be willing to pay people to write software they need? Obviously yes.
Well, I never said anything about any such thing, so I’m not sure which strawman you are arguing with. If you think I implied it, please show it, and be more explicit in your reasoning.
> Then why should anything else be considered property?
Because those are rivalrous goods. There is a difference, and I would suggest you look it up before treating them all the same.
> Well, I never said anything about any such thing, so I’m not sure which strawman you are arguing with. If you think I implied it, please show it, and be more explicit in your reasoning.
What is the negation of the statement below?
> Does this have anything to do with the necessity of allowing software makers to forbid the sharing of software?
> Because those are rivalrous goods. There is a difference, and I would suggest you look it up before treating them all the same.
I know what rivalrous goods are. What on God's earth makes them so special and different from non-rivalrous goods?
You are not born with a piece of land attached to your neck. Only a piece paper with words and ideas says so. Who says one should be entitled to anything permanently? If you have a rivalrous good X, why not use it only for Y years and give it to the public for the common good?
The whole idea that you own a piece of a rivalrous good is an unnatural and a relatively new social construct just like intellectual property and ownership of ideas. It is a good solution when we are confronted with scarce resources (land, ideas, software).
Once again, there is no "rivalrous good fairy" granting them special rights. We decided to so as the other option was barbarianism and anarchy.
(Let’s not discuss rivalrous goods; they are not relevant to the question at hand.)
> What is the negation of the statement below?
I don’t understand what you mean. The text below is a question, not a statement.
Software is not a scarce resource; once it has been created, it can be easily defined as non-scarce. And before it has been created, if there is sufficient need for it, someone will pay to have it created.
> why not use it only for Y years and give it to the public for the common good?
Well, some people think this would be a good idea. Other people call those people “communists” and/or “anarchists”. So, the question is hotly debated, but also, for our purposes, irrelevant. We are debating the property or non-property status of ideas, information and software.
> I know what rivalrous goods are. What on God's earth makes them so special and different from non-rivalrous goods?
[…]
> We decided to [grant them special rights] as the other option was barbarianism and anarchy.
And this is exactly why rivalrous goods are different. We have (most of us) decided that we agree they need to be granted “property” status.
However, I do not think that defining software, ideas or other information as a non-ownable non-property would be “barbarianism and anarchy”. If you think so, please elaborate.
> Software is not a scarce resource; once it has been created, it can be easily defined as non-scarce. And before it has been created, if there is sufficient need for it, someone will pay to have it created.
Ummm...creation is not a trivial process. As I said before, there is no software fairy creating new software. Who decides what is the proper compensation for creation? The creators! Not some political goon.
> And this is exactly why rivalrous goods are different. We have (most of us) decided that we agree they need to be granted “property” status.
Um... software has the same legal rights as land. So there is no difference.
Just because X is different from Y in aspect A does not mean we should treat X differently in all aspects from Y.
>However, I do not think that defining software, ideas or other information as a non-ownable non-property would be “barbarianism and anarchy”. If you think so, please elaborate.
We won't devolve into anarchy, but we will devolve into Soviet-style bleakness.
The creators of software, ideas and information do decide the price of their services. The “political goons” decide, however, if the software, ideas and information itself, once created, should possess the status of property.
I am arguing the side that claims that these non-rivalrous goods like software, ideas and information should be changed to no longer be considered property and have owners. I have demonstrated that there are compelling arguments why their status as property has downsides, and why eliminating their being owned should, at least, have no appreciable downsides, and could potentially be a boon to all society. You, however, seem to argue that since software, ideas and information are legally considered property (at least some of them, some of the time, in different forms), they are property. But this would be assuming that the law is correct, and you can’t do that, since this is the question to be resolved.
I would still like to know why and how we will “devolve into Soviet-style bleakness” if software and ideas would no longer be granted property status. As a comparison, you could look at the clothing industry. There are no ownerships of patterns or designs there, but the industry continue to be needed and people are still paid to produce clothes. The odd cases of illegal copies you hear about are about trademark law, i.e. things fraudulently claiming to be a particular brand, but this is an issue of fraud and consumer protection against low-quality knockoffs, not a design or pattern property issue, since the designs of clothes are not property.
Another radical example: Github. Why is the source for Github not open or free? Why are they not sharing that with us? Surely a company so invested in open (and to a large extent free) software must know better right?