Having recently switched from android to iphone, the idea of software licenses has been on my mind. When we buy a computing device, we own the hardware, but not the software that runs and controls it. In a sense, we only think we own the hardware, in that most of us are not tech-savvy enough to swap out the software with stuff we can “own and control”. In the case of apple products I’m not even sure that’s possible.
The hypothetical situation I eventually came to is this; what is software licensing, what does it mean for individual end-users, the you’s and me’s? What are the ramifications of software licensing being made illegal, Apple, Microsoft et al being told that they can no longer control the software the way it’s done now and that once they sell a copy, that’s it, it’s sold and the buyer can change it modify it how they please?
I know this is vague and poorly worded, I’m pretty sure I have no real idea what I’m asking, so please take that into consideration.
I think you’re mostly talking about applying the concept of the First Sale Doctrine to software sales. First Sale says that you can’t attach future requirements to something after you sell it.
But you’d have to do something much more extreme and invasive to software. A book or a toaster exist as independent objects that work on their own. Lots of software exists as one part of a larger ecosystem and is regularly updated or relies on services outside of itself to function. And of course software can do what it wants. There’s no reason you can’t write a piece of software that only runs for three hours and then destroys itself. Ok, sure, the software company might say. You own the software, but it’s a limited-use object and if you want more you have to buy another. There could be other laws or regulations about duration, or utility, or other things. But it wouldn’t be as simple as reselling some other item.
I think that making software licensing illegal would just accelerate the already-ongoing process of converting most software sales to services. Already, lots of software isn’t licensed at all. It’s only ever run on the servers of the company that makes and owns it. People who want to use it pay to access it, or pay to receive the results of running it (“Software as a Service”), but they don’t get to download a copy.
You license a copy of Microsoft Word, but Google Docs just exists on Google’s servers. You don’t get a copy, you don’t get to do anything with it. All you get to do is what Google decides to show you in a web page today.
As you say it is not entirely clear what you’re asking. However, I suspect part of an answer to your implied question is to consider that you can choose to put whatever software you want on a PC including open source operating systems which you are free to modify as you will (Linux for example). Despite this freedom, relatively few people use Linux systems in the consumer market. I appreciate there are perhaps some more complex factors involved but to at least some extent the world has said “you can have the Wild West or you can have a walled garden”, and a large part of the market has said “we like a walled garden”.
I’m not sure of the position for phones but I suspect you can buy unlocked phones on which you can load your own chosen open source operating system if you wish.
If the law as you propose was imposed, so that hardware manufacturers had to unlock the embedded systems on their hardware, I suspect a substantial segment of the market (myself included) would regard it as a backward step. I’m actually quite happy that the software on my phone, which is a critical tool for me in my work and personal life, is locked down and can only be modified by a company that - while undoubtedly voracious and not without flaws - at least has a substantial stake in ensuring it maintains a reputation for producing phones that pretty much always work.
Indeed, and although nobody in their right mind is always delighted to hand over their hard-earned money in exchange for goods and services, we do expect and hope the suppliers of those goods will still be there next time we want them, and will offer us even better versions of the thing we bought this time. Paying for stuff is sort of like insurance that the supplier of that stuff will continue to exist.
Software licensing has nothing to do with making sure you pay for stuff. It restricts what you can legally do with the software. Not always in an evil way; for instance there is the GPL (endorsed by many huge corporations, as “free software” licenses explicitly allow commercial use).
Somebody once had thoughts along this line, and it changed the world. Look at some of Richard Stallman’s essays (or collected in a book (free pdf)).
The basic idea is that all software should be free, and everybody should have the rights to use, modify, and redistribute it any way they want. Towards this end he (along with others) developed the GPL which is a software license which has very few restrictions. The most important one being that the anybody redistributing software derived from software covered by the GPL, must also distribute the new software under the GPL. So the software remains perpetually free (see Tivoization and software as a service for loopholes in GPL 2).
It is my claim that we would not have had the free Internet if it had not been for free software. So much of the ecosystem that underlies all aspects of the Internet are based on free software, covered by the GPL or other free licenses. Would there have been non-free software to fill the vacuum? Possibly, but the explosive growth and development that occurred in the late 90s and 00s would have been greatly held back.
The Internet is not free anymore, but it is for reasons that have little to do with software.
My point is not so much about remunerating the provider, though I agree on that point. No point in driving your favoured suppliers out of business.
My point is more that I am quite happy for Apple to be absolutely, completely, unarguably 100% responsible for the OS on my phone. No possibility I’ve fiddled with it. That both gives it the best chance of working and keeps them on their toes. Yes I appreciate that the law proposed by the OP wouldn’t mean I (or anyone else) must fiddle with software just because by law I could, but once that possibility is there, the walled garden is less secure.
I’m not the sort of person who generally likes walled gardens. As a rule, I’m the sort of person who responds to “No user serviceable parts inside” with “challenge accepted”. But there are some things that I’m happy to leave alone. And at the moment we have the choice of walled garden or open slather and I don’t think a law imposing the latter is a forward step.
Is it the Apple software license that prohibits “fiddling with software” on your own personal device for your own personal use (and would such an injunction be valid even theoretically), or just some DRM? I have certainly fiddled with every electronic device I have owned to a ludicrous degree, because it suited me, increased my productivity, or because I felt like it.
An example of a software license issue is that you may not run zOS on your generic laptop. I mean, you easily can, but IBM will not license you to run it on non-IBM hardware, which severely limits your options for running it legally if you are a small business or something. This was investigated by EC regulators, who were OK with the status quo.
I wouldn’t support software licensing being illegal, but I would be on board with legislation prohibiting locking down modifying systems and software at your own risk.
I have never purchased an android phone that didn’t have software bloatware installed that I would love to remove.
All modifications at the user’s risk and the company can charge to fix whatever we’ve borked up.
Now that’s a good idea. Although admittedly we’ll immediately see a range of malware sold (or ransomed) as “Remove the bloatware and unlock the performance potential of your device!!1!!1”
Comparing just Macs & PCs, we see a big difference in how much more hassle MSFT has to go through vs APPL to tolerate the much flakier hardware, drivers, and readily available low quality software be that paid, free, or stolen.
Forcing all the various phone & tablet outfits, plus APPL, to join MSFT in trying to be reliable in the face of processing raw sewage (user software/malware) may cause a lot of harm to go along with the good.