Now let's say somebody in a corp uses the software for some minor task. Are they allowed? Is it the person or the corp "using" it?
If the latter, let's say me and my buddy both use the software individually, legally. We sit in the same room. Ok? We are together working on some non-profit project not involving the software. Ok? Now we use the software for it. Ok? Niw we make a profit. Ok?
> Now let's say somebody in a corp uses the software for some minor task. Are they allowed? Is it the person or the corp "using" it?
Not allowed.
>If the latter, let's say me and my buddy both use the software individually, legally. We sit in the same room. Ok? We are together working on some non-profit project not involving the software. Ok? Now we use the software for it. Ok? Niw we make a profit. Ok?
All allowed.
The answer to all those questions are pretty simple and straight forward. I'm not sure why you're trying to muddy the waters here.
>RMS would be pretty opposed to these ideas.
RMS has failed catastrophically in his goal of letting users have access to the source code of the applications they use. I don't really care for what he has to say.
>RMS has failed catastrophically in his goal of letting users have access to the source code of the applications they use. I don't really care for what he has to say
I don't know how you can say that unless you have impossibly high standards. If it wasn't for the GPL, Intel and AMD would have had zero incentive to opensource their drivers. NVIDIA and arm drivers are still proprietary but panfrost is in development. In an alternative timeline it is plausible that none of this would have happened.
> If you are not married and one partner makes significantly more than the other, what's to stop the wealthy partner just deciding 20 years into the relationship that they want a newer model and just leaving the former partner destitute?
So you like to force your spouse to stay in an otherwise unhappy marriage by putting a ring on their finger and have them sign a paper? So romantic!
Kidding aside, among the many reasons people like to marry, this is one of the worse ones.
And you are saying we are anywhere close to the maximal energy that humankind can harvest?
I'd say you have seen nothing yet. And history is on my side here.
Besides, creating smarter things doesn't necessarily need more energy. We are pretty wasteful with energy at the moment. What you are talking about, entropy in the sense of progressing anywhere, is a ridiculously small fraction of what we are currently using energy for. Most of it goes to waste. There are generations of better energy efficiency to come before energy availability that can't be compensated with higher efficiency even becomes an issue. By then, nuclear fusion will be paramount and/or our use of the energy that comes from the sun will be magnitudes improved from what we do today. Just look back 100 years.
If we haven't bombed ourselves back into the stone age before that. Quite a possible outcome too.
> And you are saying we are anywhere close to the maximal energy that humankind can harvest?
Nope. But any exponential growth in consumption of energy will hit the existing limit very quickly. Even if that limit was magically increased by 10x we'd still hit it very very quickly.
> higher efficiency even becomes an issue. By then, nuclear fusion will be paramount and/or our use of the energy that comes from the sun will be magnitudes improved from what we do today. Just look back 100 years
Technological gambles are speculative. The failure of fusion is unfortunately just as realistic of a possibility that must be considered in a logical analysis.
>1. "Progress" does not need to imply "exponential growth in consumption of energy".
It doesn't need to imply it. But from historical evidence it DOES imply it.
>2. Even if it does, we may be many thousand generations away from hitting a ceiling.
Not necessarily true. We don't fully know that. We're hitting ceilings with oil already. In the US peak oil already happened and we shifted to shale. We have about 5 more years of that. We're not sure what's left of middle eastern sources.
Other sources aren't ready yet, they're up and coming but we can't fully be sure technology will play out the way we want it to play out.
If the latter, let's say me and my buddy both use the software individually, legally. We sit in the same room. Ok? We are together working on some non-profit project not involving the software. Ok? Now we use the software for it. Ok? Niw we make a profit. Ok?
Where do you draw the line?
RMS would be pretty opposed to these ideas.