> The ironic thing here is that the Free Software helped create this
> world as side-effects of the following.
>
> 1) By offering free alternatives completely destroyed the personal
> paid software market for PC's. The only people who actually buy
> software are corporations or government. The individual user does not
> buy their own software anymore (except from walled garden stores like
> iPhone, etc). Thus software has become a commodity, and it is very
> hard to make a profit selling software to individuals. Thus software
> now is a hook offered for free in order to get the individuals
> attention and private information.
>
> 2) Through GPL licensing created a situation where you could not use a
> library in a closed-source program if you allow the user to run it on
> their own computer. If you did that, you would have to give the source
> code to the user. However, if you make the same application an online
> service, then you do not have to give the source code to the user. As
> a bonus, all the information that the user entered for the software to
> work is now sent to a centralized server, whereas before, it stayed on
> the user's home computer.
>
> 3) Through open source (free) operating systems, greatly decreased the
> cost of the massive datacenters needed to run these server-based
> applications. Before, the licensing headaches of server edition
> operating systems tilted software companies towards releasing
> applications that run entirely on the end-user's computer and do not
> require a centralized server. Now, you can have as many users connect
> to a server as the network and server can support without worrying
> about per user license fees for the operating system. Now you have
> much less incentive to make stuff just work on the end-user's
> computer. Instead, combined with the above, you try to do a lot more
> on your server so you have access to more information about the user.
>
> The online advertising that is so decried here probably runs on
> GNU/Linux (GPL), is powered by an opensource language which is
> probably using GCC(GPL) to compile the interpreter, and stores its
> data in MySQL or MariaDB (GPL).
>
> GPL: Powering the online advertising that auctions your privacy to the
> highest bidder.
It badly needs a reply and it's astounding that this kind of FUD still exists. Apparently GPL has destroyed the market for licenses and spawned all the SaaSS (Service as a Software Substitute) out there! Which totally ignores Wordpress's success where they get paid to host people's blogs, and both first and third party developers get paid to provide services such as hosting, development and theming. The GPL in Wordpress's case ensures this "free" market continues to exist and isn't monopolized by any one player.