Poll of the Day > Proprietary software is slavary.

(+) Yeah! (+)

With proprietary software you are a slave to your Silicon Valley masters.
This is mostly harmless to the unwashed masses, except for the mass surveillance hundreds of companies do on you every day with your willful ignorance.

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Can you give an example and counter-example?

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Lokarin posted...

Can you give an example and counter-example?

Sure, video game DRM prohibits the user from buying a product and running it on non-Native systems. If the user just had access to the source code, they would be able to do the work required if they had the skill.

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Try working on stuff for the defense industry. Shit sucks. But I wouldn't ever change it.

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Did the Web Developent stuff ever go anywhere for you? I'd never work in Defense. There's a lot of job there matching my skillset (I have a lot of experience with network security) but I'm not interested.

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Judgmenl posted...

Sure, video game DRM prohibits the user from buying a product and running it on non-Native systems. If the user just had access to the source code, they would be able to do the work required if they had the skill.

Ok, now which part of being forced to NOT work is slavery?

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Lokarin posted...

Ok, now which part of being forced to NOT work is slavery?

You are forced to use the platform of choice, which only strengthens certain tech monopolies, and confuses or misleads consumers into false beliefs, or that there is no "other choice".

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Judgmenl posted...

Did the Web Developent stuff ever go anywhere for you? I'd never work in Defense. There's a lot of job there matching my skillset (I have a lot of experience with network security) but I'm not interested.

I was doing web development for fun, not professionally. I learned a lot, and I feel like if I ever needed to use it again I can. I won't ever use PHP again though.

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Judgmenl posted...

You are forced to use the platform of choice, which only strengthens certain tech monopolies, and confuses or misleads consumers into false beliefs, or that there is no "other choice".

Analogy doesn't work since you have choices of other products, other mediums, and even other activities altogether.

Even if there were monopolies in place so that EA had all PC gaming, Nintendo had all console gaming, and Hasbro had all board gaming... you could still go watch a movie or read a book.

I was hoping for an example akin to an essential service, something where a monopoly would be dangerous.

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Judgmenl posted...

You are forced to use the platform of choice, which only strengthens certain tech monopolies, and confuses or misleads consumers into false beliefs, or that there is no "other choice".

So you can't play certain games without buying the platform they're locked to? Yeah, I'm really not seeing where you're getting that that's analogous to forced, unpaid labour. Especially where PC games still exist and can be played on a wide variety of systems, so even that "forced to use the platform of choice" thing is nonsense.

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