<story><title>Qt Could Go Proprietary, KDE Relationship and Qt-Based Free Software in Jeopardy</title><url>https://linuxreviews.org/Qt_Could_Go_Proprietary,_KDE_Relationship_And_Qt-Based_Free_Software_In_Jeopardy</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kick</author><text>Oracle solely sells proprietary software that users can&amp;#x27;t own; AWS is proprietary software users can&amp;#x27;t own; Microsoft&amp;#x27;s suite is proprietary software users can&amp;#x27;t own: proprietary software is still causing the most harm, people who defend proprietary software are still acting incredibly stupid about it.&lt;p&gt;Like seriously, &amp;quot;seems how a lot of software engineers* are ultimately paid these data&amp;quot; (by proprietary companies). Google is a proprietary software company, so is Facebook, so is twitter. All companies that relentlessly abuse users.&lt;p&gt;Free software advocates meanwhile have a social network with a few hundred thousand active users, they&amp;#x27;ve got privacy-respecting search engines, and have operating systems that don&amp;#x27;t spy on you.&lt;p&gt;Proprietary software caused the problems you&amp;#x27;re ranting about, and your comment reeks of &amp;quot;I work at a company that sells proprietary software and am trying desperately to pin my own sins on people releasing software making the world more free.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m nowhere near a free software extremist. Many of the people I find admirable release proprietary software. But your comment is ridiculous. Proprietary software is undeniably immoral.&lt;p&gt;* &amp;quot;Engineers&amp;quot; is the wrong term because software engineers don&amp;#x27;t exist.</text></item><item><author>RcouF1uZ4gsC</author><text>&amp;gt; while commercial developers of immoral proprietary software have been required to license the toolkit under a commercial license.&lt;p&gt;I wish free software advocates would stop calling proprietary software immoral. If anything, free software underlies and has enables the locked in, sever based, surveillance monetizing world we live in.&lt;p&gt;Back when software ran on your machine, you defacto owned your data because it was on your machine. Now, because the data is not on your machine, you don’t own the data.&lt;p&gt;Selling proprietary software for money is a lot less immoral than using free software to sell user data for money, or using scale to run roughshod over regulations which seems how a lot of software engineers are ultimately paid these days.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cormacrelf</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not saying they&amp;#x27;re right, but I think the point was that:&lt;p&gt;- GPL code can be used in a program you do not distribute&lt;p&gt;- Not distributing can be done by running it on a server instead of local machines&lt;p&gt;- Run on server almost always means users don&amp;#x27;t own data&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s missing a step, which is that the GPL code in the world was so important that people NEEDED to use it so much that they were willing to change the way they distribute (or don&amp;#x27;t) their software... that&amp;#x27;s a pretty tough claim to make out. What&amp;#x27;s the evidence for that?</text></comment>
<story><title>Qt Could Go Proprietary, KDE Relationship and Qt-Based Free Software in Jeopardy</title><url>https://linuxreviews.org/Qt_Could_Go_Proprietary,_KDE_Relationship_And_Qt-Based_Free_Software_In_Jeopardy</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kick</author><text>Oracle solely sells proprietary software that users can&amp;#x27;t own; AWS is proprietary software users can&amp;#x27;t own; Microsoft&amp;#x27;s suite is proprietary software users can&amp;#x27;t own: proprietary software is still causing the most harm, people who defend proprietary software are still acting incredibly stupid about it.&lt;p&gt;Like seriously, &amp;quot;seems how a lot of software engineers* are ultimately paid these data&amp;quot; (by proprietary companies). Google is a proprietary software company, so is Facebook, so is twitter. All companies that relentlessly abuse users.&lt;p&gt;Free software advocates meanwhile have a social network with a few hundred thousand active users, they&amp;#x27;ve got privacy-respecting search engines, and have operating systems that don&amp;#x27;t spy on you.&lt;p&gt;Proprietary software caused the problems you&amp;#x27;re ranting about, and your comment reeks of &amp;quot;I work at a company that sells proprietary software and am trying desperately to pin my own sins on people releasing software making the world more free.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m nowhere near a free software extremist. Many of the people I find admirable release proprietary software. But your comment is ridiculous. Proprietary software is undeniably immoral.&lt;p&gt;* &amp;quot;Engineers&amp;quot; is the wrong term because software engineers don&amp;#x27;t exist.</text></item><item><author>RcouF1uZ4gsC</author><text>&amp;gt; while commercial developers of immoral proprietary software have been required to license the toolkit under a commercial license.&lt;p&gt;I wish free software advocates would stop calling proprietary software immoral. If anything, free software underlies and has enables the locked in, sever based, surveillance monetizing world we live in.&lt;p&gt;Back when software ran on your machine, you defacto owned your data because it was on your machine. Now, because the data is not on your machine, you don’t own the data.&lt;p&gt;Selling proprietary software for money is a lot less immoral than using free software to sell user data for money, or using scale to run roughshod over regulations which seems how a lot of software engineers are ultimately paid these days.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>easytiger</author><text>&amp;gt; Proprietary software is undeniably immoral.&lt;p&gt;One of the most ridiculous things I&amp;#x27;ve ever heard. Also a complete failure to understand the philosophy behind the success of FLOSS.&lt;p&gt;Generic problems that are widely shared with limited variations in functional need are successful FLOSS solutions or platforms.&lt;p&gt;Specific problems that are more nuanced and meet niche requirements are what works best in commercial software.&lt;p&gt;It philosophically makes no sense to call something immoral because a subset of entities are happy to pay for it to achieve their goals. Symbiotically most FLOSS is supported by these solutions which are often based on them.</text></comment>