No one-size-fits-all licensing model exists that works for all purposes. Classic foss licensing is a model that can work well for shrink-wrapped software where one wants to form a cooperative relationship with downstream users, and so does still work well for things that need to be delivered as part of an OS, for example. It has been much harder to equitably adapt for the purposes intended in cloud models where the end user really only has access to and uses "output" rather than also to the "compute".
A key presumption in classic foss licensing is that end users will "run" the code. But if they do not have the compute, they cannot run it. If they cannot really run it themselves, they often cannot and won't participate, either. The actual value of the source to real users then becomes minimal and effectively read-only. Things like the AGPL do not really fix this problem at all, but they do benefit your few commercial scale competitors who also do have the means to run it, too.
Somewhere in between there are those end users who were intended to be liberated. But as the total user base of software has grown, the active participation of users has not. Software complexity and specialization has lead to a form of exclusion. This has created a priesthood of those capable of working with your code, and a large mass of users who are not and do not care to.
I think if software had evolved differently, we would have been far better off. I love the vision of Alan Kay's dynabook, where everything is open, interactive, and inspectable in place in easy to explore ways. But we did not get that world, we do not have masses of people educated about software that way, and so we have end users who do not understand and so simply do not care.
However, as my interjection of the dynabook suggests, I think the thesis of this article should be inverted. Rather than licensing failing to keep up with technology, it is technology that failed us by failing to keep up with licensing.
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No one-size-fits-all licensing model exists that works for all purposes. Classic foss licensing is a model that can work well for shrink-wrapped software where one wants to form a cooperative relationship with downstream users, and so does still work well for things that need to be delivered as part of an OS, for example. It has been much harder to equitably adapt for the purposes intended in cloud models where the end user really only has access to and uses "output" rather than also to the "compute".
A key presumption in classic foss licensing is that end users will "run" the code. But if they do not have the compute, they cannot run it. If they cannot really run it themselves, they often cannot and won't participate, either. The actual value of the source to real users then becomes minimal and effectively read-only. Things like the AGPL do not really fix this problem at all, but they do benefit your few commercial scale competitors who also do have the means to run it, too.
Somewhere in between there are those end users who were intended to be liberated. But as the total user base of software has grown, the active participation of users has not. Software complexity and specialization has lead to a form of exclusion. This has created a priesthood of those capable of working with your code, and a large mass of users who are not and do not care to.
I think if software had evolved differently, we would have been far better off. I love the vision of Alan Kay's dynabook, where everything is open, interactive, and inspectable in place in easy to explore ways. But we did not get that world, we do not have masses of people educated about software that way, and so we have end users who do not understand and so simply do not care.
However, as my interjection of the dynabook suggests, I think the thesis of this article should be inverted. Rather than licensing failing to keep up with technology, it is technology that failed us by failing to keep up with licensing.