Stefan's headers [was:Names and identifiers]

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Jun 10, 2018 at 1:07 PM, Gregory Ewing
<greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Richard Damon wrote:
>>
>> Our current computing environment grew out of the ability for companies
>> to make a profit out of the sales of software. Without the base of
>> commercial software, the demand for inexpensive hardware to run it on
>> wouldn't be there, and computers then would be expensive, and a limited
>> base to promote the development of the Free Software movement.
>
>
> That's all speculation. It's impossible to say how things
> would have turned out if copyrights didn't apply to software.
> Certainly different, but not necessarily worse.
>
> In the early days, computer manufacturers didn't worry about
> people copying their software, because it was no use without
> the hardware, and selling hardware was how they made their
> money. There's no reason that business model couldn't have
> continued into the PC era.
>

It would have meant that third-party software would not exist.

The nearest comparison we have today is game consoles. You cannot, to
my knowledge, publish a game for the PS4 or Xbox 360 without
permission from Nintendo or Microsoft. Take that just a little bit
further and imagine that the game console you just bought is populated
SOLELY with games by the same publisher. And now imagine that this
applies to every piece of computing hardware: an IBM computer runs
only IBM programs, etc. Nobody can sell software without also selling
hardware, which is an expensive industry to get into. Is that an
improvement over what we now have?

ChrisA