If you are developer or some sort of IT engineer, don't automatically think your job is not BS. Like job of developing thin client to a windows server running licensed software to get around license costs of software, where price is based on number of users... Yes, this types of businesses generate TONS of money from essentially the fact, that supplier and customer could not get in agreement for more reasonable license...
I'd argue (as would most of the free software community) the creation of proprietary software is entirely bullshit. Because you have to eventually reinvent it with either permissive or copyleft licenses to just avoid the huge black hole that is legal bullshit and bureaucracy around licensing rights to a number that is not even scarce once its made. And until it is foss, you are just denying the users their freedoms to the stuff they are paying you for, and until it is sufficiently free it really isn't even a working product in my book.
Hell, even projects like Tizen vs Android and ZFS vs BTRFS vs XFS and KVM vs Xen vs Vmware vs Virtualbox are all bullshit jobs and unnecessary work reinventing the same wheel over and over to either satisfy a boss need out of the chief developers, the inability for the forerunner to accept others opinions into their project, or just raw license and legalese incompatibility bullshit.
It is, though, 99% bs. And every time someone tries to reinvent IMing after xmpp (without being able to, in a paragraph, describe the intrinsic flaw in xmpp you can't fix through amendments to the standard, and how their alternative immediately fixes them) it is just more BS. All the photo sharing websites, all the web apps, 99.99% of them are all bullshit because someone already did it before, and you just want to tweak a few knobs (which you could have easily done if all involved projects were open contribution and pliable to change and forking) and had simple results, but no, you have to start from scratch and spend a million LOCs reinventing wordpress. And you still write it in Lua! If you wrote it in, say, python, I'd be all over that because that presents a tangible benefit - "Lua is awful, I don't like it, and as a user of my software, you don't like it either, and you can't just patch fix that, so here is a replacement in python".
While I'd agree with that sentiment for most sold software, there's another aspect to consider. There are some jobs that don't ever really go away, and software is one of them. It's similar at times to the traditional "trades" such being a plumber or electrician.
So while "proprietary" (i.e. closed source or limiting who has access to it) may not be the precise description, a LOT of software is (and will be) "in-house" stuff. This is because while commodity solutions are great in many way, the are general tools, and will never map exactly to the current task and needs of a business.
Just like how the plumber is happy to buy common solutions to piping problems (e.g. standard sizes, common specialized parts that solve problems that show up all the time), a software engineer can pull from Free Software as his "standard parts". In the end, though, because every need is at least slightly different, a business will always need to hire somebody to put those parts together - just like they hire an in-house plumber or other specialist.
A consequence of this, though, is that all that specialized work is not going to be particularly useful outside the place where it was originally used. The occasional useful features can be pushed back upstream, but that still leaves a lot of glue around.
As time goes on, and the collection of "standard tools" grows, I expect the ratio of "glue" to "useful new feature" to increase.
My guess is that the ratio of custom to glue stuff should be more constant over time. As old custom stuff becomes standard, it simply enables people to start tackling harder problems and create more custom stuff.
That's where I see place for local integration companies for business model around open source software. They essentially provide tuning for stock software and if certain "tune" look like nice generic feature - release it back to community to leverage.
Initially I wanted to write about proprietary/opensource software, but knew people here will downvote it, so brought up different example. But I am glad you got message :))
I don't care if people downvote me, the only reason to read the comments anyway to is to get other peoples insight into the matters of whatever the threads subject is. Doesn't it defeat the purpose of being here if you are afraid to speak your mind? I have plenty of unpopular opinions, but until someone can persuade me with facts and reasoning and not an arbitrary Internet number that I'm wrong I'll keep espousing them and taking those downvotes with pride!
Each community have its own customs. It wouldn't make any positive effect if I come over to forum about Catholicism and start talking about big bang.. Similar here, i wanted to deliver my point and chose example which should be received well, instead of trying to confront with people here.
I'd argue (as would most of the free software community) the creation of proprietary software is entirely bullshit. Because you have to eventually reinvent it with either permissive or copyleft licenses to just avoid the huge black hole that is legal bullshit and bureaucracy around licensing rights to a number that is not even scarce once its made.
Game engines are a counterexample. There are probably dozens of others.
I'm trying to figure out what people are arguing against. Would you help me understand? Let's assume your argument is true: creation of most proprietary software is entirely bullshit. Ok, so?
I would argue with you that games are not most of the software. Even if it would be, it would benefit a lot from standardized game engines which could be used by workers of art (designers, writers, etc) to build creative games to entertain people.
Most software today is basically CRUD and reporting on top of it. Sadly, all this crap re-implemented so many times each day instead of focusing on inventing. How many corporate time spent on creating login form? retrieve password form? input form validation? In my short life I seen it re-implemented so many times already (and often very poorly btw.) This is one example of engineering BS job I mentioned above.
Or create own protocols only to avoid competition and lock in customer. And there are people who actually engineer it all day long every day. And customers who essentially paying for this person's BS work. It almost feels like corporations are interested in hiring as many people as possible, force them to do non-standardized stuff just to be able to siphon money though corporation bank account to be able to take a cut. It totally make sense to do that for corporation, but for their customers? I am not sure...
From humanity standpoint as a whole, there is place for proprietary software, but way-way less prevalent as it is right now IMHO.
The only game engines that have lasted decades are the id ones. Coincidentally, they are about the only engines open sourced. But even today, games (of foss and not variety) are still being developed for them. Directly.
All the proprietary engines get iterated on, they keep (usually) the same core, but all that old code has gone to rot and waste because of its proprietary nature.
Every game developer is reinventing huge amounts of the wheel. Or more particularly engine developers. Because they all in house whole stack do the thing themselves, rather than work together, and waste everyones time.
> creation of most proprietary software is entirely bullshit. Ok, so?
So the OP was talking about how software is rarely a job without being paid to look busy when actually coding. But really, by reinventing the same wheel thousands of times over, because everyone wants to be a literal 3 year old hiding their toys in their own sandbox and not letting the other kids share with them, it is all a huge waste of time.
In the same way that we have perpetual employment of a lot of people for no reason than to keep them in an office to justify giving them money even if they aren't productive, IP as a whole exists for the same purpose in the modern information age - it is wasting everyones time to add false valuation to something that should not have any. I'm not saying information isn't valuable, but individual copies and licenses and crap like that are not - they are artificial, to prop up a false economy, so it is all bullshit.
