I completely agree, it’s not always black and white and there are plenty of cases where having inefficient software is better than not having anything at all. My main complaint is that the mechanics of the system select for bloat, and there’s little incentive to go back and optimize things. In a sane system you could make something that’s inefficient first, and then spend time to make it better if it becomes widely used. To a certain extent, we see this happening with open source stuff like Linux, where you can have a very lean system compared to commercial alternatives.
Well there’s definitely socialist dynamics in FOSS development. Most drivers in the Linux kernel were implemented because someone needed them, not for profit. The same is true for most things in the Debian repository. Also people generally own the means of producing that software. How do proprietary systems produced to maximize profit compete with software written to just work and cost nothing? FOSS is doing software product dumping! :D And the rest of the software economy has grown tremendously as a result. Imagine having to pay good money for a compiler. There were huge barriers back in the day.
I completely agree, it’s not always black and white and there are plenty of cases where having inefficient software is better than not having anything at all. My main complaint is that the mechanics of the system select for bloat, and there’s little incentive to go back and optimize things. In a sane system you could make something that’s inefficient first, and then spend time to make it better if it becomes widely used. To a certain extent, we see this happening with open source stuff like Linux, where you can have a very lean system compared to commercial alternatives.
Well there’s definitely socialist dynamics in FOSS development. Most drivers in the Linux kernel were implemented because someone needed them, not for profit. The same is true for most things in the Debian repository. Also people generally own the means of producing that software. How do proprietary systems produced to maximize profit compete with software written to just work and cost nothing? FOSS is doing software product dumping! :D And the rest of the software economy has grown tremendously as a result. Imagine having to pay good money for a compiler. There were huge barriers back in the day.
Exactly!