Hmm I may be confused. Do you believe that software companies shouldn’t be allowed to build and sell libraries? I.e. They should only be allowed to sell full products, ready for an end user?

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not the person you're responding to but I definitely think that Library should be able to be made, however I don't believe that they should be able to prevent a project from going open source in the case of company using the library going under, or if they wanted to keep it closed Source they should have to do something similar to what class action lawsuits do where anyone that is affected by it and opts into the agreement get some sort of compensation. Because it really is like a rug pull you buy a product and then the company makes the product unusable

[–] Maalus@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Except that isn't how it works, and could lead people to buy a library for a day, then opensource it.

Open source means any code used is widely available to anyone. Having a library you pay for means it cannot be widely available, or nobody would buy it. No more licensing game engines, paid libraries cease to exist since there is no incentive to make them, everything goes the "open source way" which means hard to use, opinionated, unintuitive software that is maintained by random people who rarely know what they are doing. No online banking, since you can't certify that easily and it wouldn't be profitable. No card with points and goodies in your supermarket for the exact same reason (points have a calculable value in real money). No online healthcare, etc etc

[–] pimento64@sopuli.xyz 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yes.

I am aware that this would kill SaaS overnight, that's an intended feature.

[–] Lodra@programming.dev 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Fair enough regarding sass, though I disagree with the opinion.

But I’m asking about builders of partial software. For example, consider a single developer that builds a really great library for handling tables. It displays a grid, displays text in cells, maybe performs some operations between cells, etc. On its own, this software is useless but is very useful for other people to build other products. Should it be illegal to sell this software?

[–] eluvatar@programming.dev 1 points 9 months ago

I agree with you.

Though I would say that the grid software on its own IS useful. It's useful to developers, otherwise they wouldn't use it. Saying it's useless is like saying a hammer is useless because it's not a house, it's only good for building a house (among other things).