Posts by Jearil

You thought you bought software – all you bought was a lie

Re: Public Domain

It doesn't work that way though. You can totally release something into the public domain. Another can't claim copyright on it because there is an original work that predates their copy of it (your version in the public domain). You can't just make a copy of Moby Dick and say "I wrote this and own the copyright for it." It's in the public domain.

Re: Public Domain

Pubic Domain software is probably the most free (as in freedom) you can get. More so than most open source programs.

Most FOSS still has some limitations or restrictions on their use such as needing to include a license file if your redistribute or if you make changes that you offer publicly, having to give those source code changes. They also often prevent you from selling the software or claiming it as your own. None of that is bad, but they do technically restrict freedom.

Public Domain is just totally open. You can change it without telling anyone. Include it in commerical software without a license file. It's rare to see because the authors basically willingly give up all rights, but it does exist in a few places. I don't think it's necessarily better, I think there are advantages to how FOSS adds their restrictions. But there you go.

Re: The price of free?

I absolutely love open source software and have been using Linux since '97, but this rose tinted view that everything works perfectly out of the box all the time is fiction. There are unfortunately still a lot of times that the free versions of some software are only free if you don't value your time.

Yeah, this is the one point I felt was a bit of a lie, or at least misleading. Sure, they might not come pre installed, but as you said you can get Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, IntelliJ, or a variety of other toolchains for free fairly easily on windows. On a Mac, XCode is freely available and no license unless it's selling iOS stuff on the app store or Mac stuff on the built in Mac store. Plus it's a Unix so you can use a Unix toolchain if you want.

If the argument is that they don't come installed from the start, well neither do most distributions of Linux. Most don't bother installing a gcc toolchain and you have to do it yourself. Sure it's not hard, but neither is getting XCode or VS.