Re: Java and avoiding software piracy?

On Jul 23, 7:35 am, Andreas Leitgeb <a...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Twisted <twisted...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Software vendors "renting" will obviously be worse, ...

Given your dislike against rental models, I really wonder
how you cannot "see" Vendors switching to exactly that
businessmodel, once they would be deprived of their current
right of copy-control...

Privilege of copy-control, and I don't see them being able to enforce
a rental business model in the presence of free non-rental
competition, since someone could freely reverse engineer their
"service" and create standalone software to do the same job that was
100% compatible with the original (or 110% compatible -- now with
support for empty wallets and systems without network access!).

The only exception I can foresee here is where the application is an
MMORPG or similarly, and use of the vendor's servers is necessary for
it to work. Even then, competing servers that can be used with
compatible software could be created.

Evil business models would die. Software that can be implemented as
purely local computation would have free local-computation-only
implementations and there'd be no getting trapped unable to migrate
from something like Windoze while someone like Bill Gates sticks a
hand in your pocket. Server-based stuff that could be implemented
purely locally included. Server-based stuff that is necessarily
online, because it involves multiple users interacting online, might
have decentralized p2p equivalents and certainly would have
competition, so prices would be driven down to operating expenses plus
reasonable margins.

Everyone wins, except the fatcat types. They end up going from rich to
merely being able to make ends meet, at worst, and may remain
moderately wealthy given they have actual talents in a useful area.
Mostly, it's management and lawyer types that would really lose out
and may even have to switch careers and get an honest job. And even
then they won't likely starve.

.

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