But I think you're on the right track. There's a much much simpler explanation that doesn't have anything to do with different story telling media, and it is this: These projects are undertaken solely to make a quick and easy buck.
It's not that anyone objects to making a buck, or to having a buck handed to them on a silver platter, but I think any movie worth seeing is made by people who actually care about more than collecting a paycheck without embarrassing themselves. Look at the LotR movies. They aren't perfect, and the story wasn't a natural fit for the medium, but the movies were obviously a labor of love.
The same for "Plan 9 from Outer Space". Ed Wood was trying his damnedest to make a masterpiece, and it shows.
It's funny, because I think sacking the head of the MMS, while probably politically necessary, wasn't really a reasonable action.
Birnbaum took office on July 15 2009. She was taking over the most notoriously corrupt and ineffective agency in the Federal Government. The permits for DWH had already been issued, and the relaxation of safeguards that might have prevented the disaster had taken place six years earlier. Any revision of the policy could not have been made in time to prevent the disaster.
So there is no reasonable way that Birnbaum could have been expected to avert this disaster in the 9 months she was in office. It was entirely a political gesture. They'd already decided MMS was so broken it couldn't be fixed, and they were going to split it up and move its functions to other agencies. So Birbaum's "resignation" was purely symbolic.
Except that Katrina was something the government was supposed to be equipped and prepared to do. We have FEMA and the national guard (although a lot the Guard and its equipment was in Iraq at the time).
The government does not have its own petroleum engineering capabilities. Are you suggesting we should have a national petroleum company, like Venezuela does?
If there's a hurricane or similar disaster on land that Obama gets a free pass on, you'd have a point. But here we have a case where the standards are different because the situations are different. It wouldn't be rational to expect the same kind of response from the government to both these situations. Yes, they're both disasters, but they're completely different kinds of disasters.
I think you answered your own scenario quite effectively. The ocean is quite big, and the oil is all over the place. You'd probably need more peroxide than the world produces in years to have any kind of measurable effect.
Being a [NOUN MEANING THE MEMBER OF SOME GROUP] is to support [NAME OF A GROUP], therefore the individual character _does not matter_ because that individual still supports [ATROCITY SOMEONE HAS COMMITTED IN THE NAME OF THAT GROUP].
It doesn't have to be a crime to merit suspension or even expulsion. It just has to be something that is incompatible with the proper operation of the school.
Talking out of turn is not a crime. Calling somebody a "jackass" is not a crime. Be late for appointments is not a crime. Doing these things in class is a crime that merits suspension, especially if they are done habitually, because the school cannot operate when students disrupt the class.
The school can even decide that a suspension is in the interests of the student him or herself. They have a lot of leeway.
Developers are still writing apps for the platform, aren't they?
Here's the deal. You get access to the iPod and iPhone user base... maybe... for as long as it pleases Apple for you to have that. You take the calculated risk that Apple will accept your app, and continue accepting that app long enough for you to recoup your investment. There are no guarantees that it will please Apple to continuing doing so, any more than there are guarantees that users will buy your app.
I don't understand why people agonize over this like its some kind of betrayal, or like Apple owes them something. As far as Apple is concerned they own not only the platform, but the customers for that platform and every aspect of the user experience. What part of that hasn't been made abundantly clear yet? Oh, there are certain well known things you can do to avoid getting your app banned, but Apple could decide tomorrow to change the rules. They could even ban your app because they decide it's not consistent with the image they want to project.
As long as there are plenty of app developers who willing to develop on those terms (basically nothing is guaranteed), and Apple has never pretended otherwise, why should Apple do anything for you? It'd be different if they'd promised you anything like control over your own destiny, or openness, or transparency, or even a fair shake. But they haven't. They promised you a crapshoot, and that's what you get. It's their rules, and those rules are "what we say goes, and we don't owe you any explanation." The only people who might in some conceivable scenario have any cause for complaint are the stockholders, but those circumstances haven't arisen yet.
So, iPhone developers, if you don't like Apple's terms, eat it, or move on. Apple never forced you to develop for the platform, and they aren't forcing you to stay.
That's the problem between selling an item that people buy for the quality of the experience, and buying a commodity item like bandwidth that people buy on price, period.
That's why the bandwidth providers are against net neutrality. They don't want to be in the business of selling a commodity to users. They want to be in the business of making side deals with content providers. Trying to differentiate bandwidth on quality of service is just a form of selling your labor, something you'll never get rich at doing because your costs scale with sales. What management is looking for is the proverbial license to print money. You can only get this show on our Internet service!
The disconnect between the business the bandwidth providers are in and what the consumers actually want for them makes me think that bandwidth should be treated as a public good, like highways. If the bandwidth providers want to go into the content business, let them.
Well, I'd bet most SQL Server databases are just backing stores for form data. The main reason to use SQL Server is because you're using Microsoft's development tools and stack. If you follow that methodology, you probably use the IDE GUI to paint your database design and do all your database validation in middle tier or user interface code.
In any case, T-SQL is just about the worst procedural extension of SQL I've ever seen, and I've been in the business for years and used lots of them. What's the first design principle you learn when you take a computer language design class? Orthogonality. T-SQL's various restrictions kind of make sense if you squint at them. They're not logical necessities, but they're the kind of thing you might impose if you wanted to make sure the database routines ran fast without doing too much work on the optimizer.
T-SQL also is the worst version of SQL I've used, among the major database players. What surprised me when I looked into it was that the things that were really a pain were allowed by the ANSI SQL standard (e.g., T-SQL's handling of column aliases). Again, I think this is because the target audience for MS SQL don't do a lot at the database tier, in comparison to the audience for a product like Oracle.
That doesn't mean it's a bad product for its intended audience: people who want a database as part of an all Microsoft toolbox. But for people who are seriously interested in the database tier, T-SQL is crap as a SQL implementation and even more so as a procedural language. Once you get to the point of using T-SQL, chances are you'll decide there must be some other way of getting the job done.
Interesting question though. Let's say that's what the customers want. Is it what the customers should want?
Is there any objective evidence that an impressive, "standout" design generates any more revenue for customers? What kind of sites have users who come back again and again for the experience? Is that true for all kinds of web sites?
I look at elaborate, show-stopping design sites, and I wonder, who is this performance supposed to be for?
Let's say you have a site where customers come with a purchase in mind. It seems to me you want to get them to "Buy Now" button as quickly as possible. The aspects of a whizzy design that get them there are good. The aspects that don't are superfluous. It seeems to me many designs are too tied to somebody's need for self-expression, not enough to triggering a response in the user. I am not impressed by animated guys walking across the screen and obscuring the link I'm looking for.
It's largely a matter of convention. Wolves hybridize with coyotes to produce viable offspring... but the two species are genetically, behaviorally and ecologically distinct (in most places) so it seems reasonable to treat them as different species.
Insect species are often split based on tiny morphological details, even where the two populations hybridize. Other times they are organized into "subspecies", or species within a genus are organized into "subgenera".
What might make more sense is some kind of measure of genetic entropy. That would also count low species diversity, as in cases of species that pass through genetic bottlenecks (e.g. cheetahs), and so which represent a less stable population.
So in all "fairness", we should let 3rd world dictators hold onto power and thus lower the standard of living for the rest of us?
That has to win the prize for the biggest non-sequitur I've ever read on Slashdot... and that's saying something. That's like saying, "Our policies should take into account that this neighborhood is already experiencing more than its share of robbery. THEREFORE we should let the rapists run wild there."
This is why I don't develop for Apple platforms any longer. Courting developers then pulling the rug out from under them goes way back: A/UX, OpenDoc, HyperCard, the AppleScript double-fake (it's going away! no it's not!). Apple is not good to its developers. I'd much rather tie myself to Microsoft, which values developers. As long as you don't look like you're getting too much market clout, of course.
Actually, I'd never develop again against a proprietary platform if I could help it. It's putting too much trust in the platform owner. It's not that the platform owners are hostile (although sometimes you wonder...), but they can decide next quarter they're in a totally different business if they want to, and they don't see the problems that makes for you as *their* problem.
Actually, Apple timed this product just right. The appeal of tablets have been clear for years, it's just that the technological infrastructure wasn't good enough and the implementations were lousy. Windows tablets anyone? I have one, and I almost never use it as a tablet.
If you look at the iPod, iPhone and iPad, they're all cases where Apple chose the right time to capture the second mover advantage. It's a natural role for a company driven by a perfectionist like Jobs who sees the mistakes the first generation products make and does not repeat them.
Now if things go true to form, the third generation competitors will scramble for scraps from Apple's table by copying whatever they can, repeating the mistakes made in the first generation products, and trying to come up with bullets for a side by side comparison. It'll take several iterations before a credible competitor to the iPad emerges.
Look. The basic goal of copyright is to create artificial scarcity. "Copyleft" works for the diametrically opposite goal: to preclude anybody creating artificial scarcity for the work or derivative works.
The universal concerns of Free/Open Source licenses are orthogonal to those which copyright is intended to address. FOSS licenses are about social compacts. You take this software from me, but don't sue me if it doesn't do what you want it to. I'll share this with you, but you take responsibility for the consequences of how you use it. In some cases: I'll share this software with you, but you've got to give users of changes you make to it the same rights I'm giving you.
If there were a legal mechanism to enforce such social compacts, I think most F/OSS projects would use it.But there isn't, so they use the machinery of copyright to achieve their very different ends. You can *say* that these people "want" copyright, but it's only true in a trivial sense. It's same as saying that people who gain unauthorized access to a computer "want" computer security. Sure. They "want" computer security so they can break it. They want people to act like their systems are safe so that those systems are, in fact, less safe. If there was no security at all, life would be a lot less interesting for the black hats, because nobody would connect their computers to the net.
In fashion, women are required to constantly buy new clothes lest they be considered "frumpy". Last year's clothes are perfectly good, quality-wise, but a culture has been created by which anyone who wears them is subject to public ridicule.
There's a very, very narrow demographic, who pay attention to fashion "seasons", which only last a couple of months, and have money to buy designer clothes. The closer you try to stay to the bleeding edge, the faster you have to replace your wardrobe. It's a game for people who can afford it. For the average woman, design changes are filtered through the mass market reproduction process. Their clothes are less extreme and have more staying power, probably several years.
There's a healthy secondary market in out of date designer clothes too. My niece made a nice living for a while buying out of date fashions and reselling them. You need a good eye and you need good timing. Wearing clothes informed by last year's fashion trends is chic. Wearing clothes that *set* last year's fashion trends is tacky. But somehow wearing *some* clothes that set *certain* fashion trends several years ago can be chic again. I'm not informed enough to state the precise algorithm, but I think it's a matter of picking a garment that embodies things that people remember favorably, is not so newly out of date that people think you're wearing it because you're ignorant, and has a look that plausibly might come back soon.
I don't think women often get ridiculed unless they look like they're trying to be up to date but failing, or the people doing the ridiculing are fashion enthusiasts who'd probably have catty things to say about anyone.
But it's not an analogy. It's a reductio ad absurdum. Certain economic hypotheses put forward by advocates of stronger and more restrictive intellectual property laws have been repeated so often that people treat them as fundamental principles, as scientific laws. If they are scientific laws, they should apply to every industry, otherwise the proponents of these "laws" are guilty of special pleading.
Fashion is an interesting case because it's exempted from copyright laws, and the legal reasoning for that exemption is specious. Think about it: fashion is too utilitarian to be copyrighted, but *software* is not? I can design an evening gown for somebody to wear to the Oscars, and that's *utilitarian*, but if I write a spanning tree algorithm for a a network hub, that's *creative*?
Fashion is creative expression par excellence; it has almost no value other than the emotional response it evokes in its viewers. We don't judge fashion designers by how comfortable their clothes are (!!!), how well they protect wearers from the elements. We judge them by how provocative their designs are. Therefore any argument that I, a software writer, have to be "incented" to be creative must apply even *more* to a fashion designer. Any argument that creativity in the software industry will collapse without rigorous IP protection is inconsistent with the existence of a fashion industry.
Now let's get to a real analogy. I think without IP protection we'd still have a software industry, but it'd look very, very different. Copyright creates an artificial scarcity. That brings more developers into the market. Copyright protection in the fashion industry would probably result in many, many more fashion houses springing up. The end of copyright in software would mean that many developers would be out of a job, even though the social utility of the industry would be increased and its economic value not necessarily decreased.
Copyright in software makes a programming career possible for many more mediocre developers. On the other hand it makes the best developers less productive by forcing them to waste their creativity reinventing the wheel.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't even think that's it.
But I think you're on the right track. There's a much much simpler explanation that doesn't have anything to do with different story telling media, and it is this: These projects are undertaken solely to make a quick and easy buck.
It's not that anyone objects to making a buck, or to having a buck handed to them on a silver platter, but I think any movie worth seeing is made by people who actually care about more than collecting a paycheck without embarrassing themselves. Look at the LotR movies. They aren't perfect, and the story wasn't a natural fit for the medium, but the movies were obviously a labor of love.
The same for "Plan 9 from Outer Space". Ed Wood was trying his damnedest to make a masterpiece, and it shows.
It's funny, because I think sacking the head of the MMS, while probably politically necessary, wasn't really a reasonable action.
Birnbaum took office on July 15 2009. She was taking over the most notoriously corrupt and ineffective agency in the Federal Government. The permits for DWH had already been issued, and the relaxation of safeguards that might have prevented the disaster had taken place six years earlier. Any revision of the policy could not have been made in time to prevent the disaster.
So there is no reasonable way that Birnbaum could have been expected to avert this disaster in the 9 months she was in office. It was entirely a political gesture. They'd already decided MMS was so broken it couldn't be fixed, and they were going to split it up and move its functions to other agencies. So Birbaum's "resignation" was purely symbolic.
Except that Katrina was something the government was supposed to be equipped and prepared to do. We have FEMA and the national guard (although a lot the Guard and its equipment was in Iraq at the time).
The government does not have its own petroleum engineering capabilities. Are you suggesting we should have a national petroleum company, like Venezuela does?
If there's a hurricane or similar disaster on land that Obama gets a free pass on, you'd have a point. But here we have a case where the standards are different because the situations are different. It wouldn't be rational to expect the same kind of response from the government to both these situations. Yes, they're both disasters, but they're completely different kinds of disasters.
I think you answered your own scenario quite effectively. The ocean is quite big, and the oil is all over the place. You'd probably need more peroxide than the world produces in years to have any kind of measurable effect.
But ... if those relief wells aren't properly maintained, isn't that just doubling the chance of an accident?
It's like the lottery, in reverse! Sort of. And BP is the winner. BP screws up and everybody pays.
And 2 weeks ago, they had paid a massive $990m on clean up. Your point?
You're being ironic, right? You're referring to the fact that BP announced it will pay its normal quarterly dividend of 2.63 billion dollars.
Oooh. Time for mad-libs.
Being a [NOUN MEANING THE MEMBER OF SOME GROUP] is to support [NAME OF A GROUP], therefore the individual character _does not matter_ because that individual still supports [ATROCITY SOMEONE HAS COMMITTED IN THE NAME OF THAT GROUP].
It doesn't have to be a crime to merit suspension or even expulsion. It just has to be something that is incompatible with the proper operation of the school.
Talking out of turn is not a crime. Calling somebody a "jackass" is not a crime. Be late for appointments is not a crime. Doing these things in class is a crime that merits suspension, especially if they are done habitually, because the school cannot operate when students disrupt the class.
The school can even decide that a suspension is in the interests of the student him or herself. They have a lot of leeway.
Developers are still writing apps for the platform, aren't they?
Here's the deal. You get access to the iPod and iPhone user base ... maybe ... for as long as it pleases Apple for you to have that. You take the calculated risk that Apple will accept your app, and continue accepting that app long enough for you to recoup your investment. There are no guarantees that it will please Apple to continuing doing so, any more than there are guarantees that users will buy your app.
I don't understand why people agonize over this like its some kind of betrayal, or like Apple owes them something. As far as Apple is concerned they own not only the platform, but the customers for that platform and every aspect of the user experience. What part of that hasn't been made abundantly clear yet? Oh, there are certain well known things you can do to avoid getting your app banned, but Apple could decide tomorrow to change the rules. They could even ban your app because they decide it's not consistent with the image they want to project.
As long as there are plenty of app developers who willing to develop on those terms (basically nothing is guaranteed), and Apple has never pretended otherwise, why should Apple do anything for you? It'd be different if they'd promised you anything like control over your own destiny, or openness, or transparency, or even a fair shake. But they haven't. They promised you a crapshoot, and that's what you get. It's their rules, and those rules are "what we say goes, and we don't owe you any explanation." The only people who might in some conceivable scenario have any cause for complaint are the stockholders, but those circumstances haven't arisen yet.
So, iPhone developers, if you don't like Apple's terms, eat it, or move on. Apple never forced you to develop for the platform, and they aren't forcing you to stay.
That's the problem between selling an item that people buy for the quality of the experience, and buying a commodity item like bandwidth that people buy on price, period.
That's why the bandwidth providers are against net neutrality. They don't want to be in the business of selling a commodity to users. They want to be in the business of making side deals with content providers. Trying to differentiate bandwidth on quality of service is just a form of selling your labor, something you'll never get rich at doing because your costs scale with sales. What management is looking for is the proverbial license to print money. You can only get this show on our Internet service!
The disconnect between the business the bandwidth providers are in and what the consumers actually want for them makes me think that bandwidth should be treated as a public good, like highways. If the bandwidth providers want to go into the content business, let them.
Well, I'd bet most SQL Server databases are just backing stores for form data. The main reason to use SQL Server is because you're using Microsoft's development tools and stack. If you follow that methodology, you probably use the IDE GUI to paint your database design and do all your database validation in middle tier or user interface code.
In any case, T-SQL is just about the worst procedural extension of SQL I've ever seen, and I've been in the business for years and used lots of them. What's the first design principle you learn when you take a computer language design class? Orthogonality. T-SQL's various restrictions kind of make sense if you squint at them. They're not logical necessities, but they're the kind of thing you might impose if you wanted to make sure the database routines ran fast without doing too much work on the optimizer.
T-SQL also is the worst version of SQL I've used, among the major database players. What surprised me when I looked into it was that the things that were really a pain were allowed by the ANSI SQL standard (e.g., T-SQL's handling of column aliases). Again, I think this is because the target audience for MS SQL don't do a lot at the database tier, in comparison to the audience for a product like Oracle.
That doesn't mean it's a bad product for its intended audience: people who want a database as part of an all Microsoft toolbox. But for people who are seriously interested in the database tier, T-SQL is crap as a SQL implementation and even more so as a procedural language. Once you get to the point of using T-SQL, chances are you'll decide there must be some other way of getting the job done.
Actually, it's more like lots and lots and lots of people deciding its somebody else's problem.
Interesting question though. Let's say that's what the customers want. Is it what the customers should want?
Is there any objective evidence that an impressive, "standout" design generates any more revenue for customers? What kind of sites have users who come back again and again for the experience? Is that true for all kinds of web sites?
I look at elaborate, show-stopping design sites, and I wonder, who is this performance supposed to be for?
Let's say you have a site where customers come with a purchase in mind. It seems to me you want to get them to "Buy Now" button as quickly as possible. The aspects of a whizzy design that get them there are good. The aspects that don't are superfluous. It seeems to me many designs are too tied to somebody's need for self-expression, not enough to triggering a response in the user. I am not impressed by animated guys walking across the screen and obscuring the link I'm looking for.
It's largely a matter of convention. Wolves hybridize with coyotes to produce viable offspring ... but the two species are genetically, behaviorally and ecologically distinct (in most places) so it seems reasonable to treat them as different species.
Insect species are often split based on tiny morphological details, even where the two populations hybridize. Other times they are organized into "subspecies", or species within a genus are organized into "subgenera".
What might make more sense is some kind of measure of genetic entropy. That would also count low species diversity, as in cases of species that pass through genetic bottlenecks (e.g. cheetahs), and so which represent a less stable population.
So in all "fairness", we should let 3rd world dictators hold onto power and thus lower the standard of living for the rest of us?
That has to win the prize for the biggest non-sequitur I've ever read on Slashdot... and that's saying something. That's like saying, "Our policies should take into account that this neighborhood is already experiencing more than its share of robbery. THEREFORE we should let the rapists run wild there."
This is why I don't develop for Apple platforms any longer. Courting developers then pulling the rug out from under them goes way back: A/UX, OpenDoc, HyperCard, the AppleScript double-fake (it's going away! no it's not!). Apple is not good to its developers. I'd much rather tie myself to Microsoft, which values developers. As long as you don't look like you're getting too much market clout, of course.
Actually, I'd never develop again against a proprietary platform if I could help it. It's putting too much trust in the platform owner. It's not that the platform owners are hostile (although sometimes you wonder...), but they can decide next quarter they're in a totally different business if they want to, and they don't see the problems that makes for you as *their* problem.
When administered, it kills the monkey instantly.
you must factor in average height as well.
Actually, Apple timed this product just right. The appeal of tablets have been clear for years, it's just that the technological infrastructure wasn't good enough and the implementations were lousy. Windows tablets anyone? I have one, and I almost never use it as a tablet.
If you look at the iPod, iPhone and iPad, they're all cases where Apple chose the right time to capture the second mover advantage. It's a natural role for a company driven by a perfectionist like Jobs who sees the mistakes the first generation products make and does not repeat them.
Now if things go true to form, the third generation competitors will scramble for scraps from Apple's table by copying whatever they can, repeating the mistakes made in the first generation products, and trying to come up with bullets for a side by side comparison. It'll take several iterations before a credible competitor to the iPad emerges.
Never heard of him. Is he a Marvel Universe character?
You mean MI6 (Now called SIS)
Can you imagine the reaction of the operatives when that memo made the rounds?
Look. The basic goal of copyright is to create artificial scarcity. "Copyleft" works for the diametrically opposite goal: to preclude anybody creating artificial scarcity for the work or derivative works.
The universal concerns of Free/Open Source licenses are orthogonal to those which copyright is intended to address. FOSS licenses are about social compacts. You take this software from me, but don't sue me if it doesn't do what you want it to. I'll share this with you, but you take responsibility for the consequences of how you use it. In some cases: I'll share this software with you, but you've got to give users of changes you make to it the same rights I'm giving you.
If there were a legal mechanism to enforce such social compacts, I think most F/OSS projects would use it.But there isn't, so they use the machinery of copyright to achieve their very different ends. You can *say* that these people "want" copyright, but it's only true in a trivial sense. It's same as saying that people who gain unauthorized access to a computer "want" computer security. Sure. They "want" computer security so they can break it. They want people to act like their systems are safe so that those systems are, in fact, less safe. If there was no security at all, life would be a lot less interesting for the black hats, because nobody would connect their computers to the net.
In fashion, women are required to constantly buy new clothes lest they be considered "frumpy". Last year's clothes are perfectly good, quality-wise, but a culture has been created by which anyone who wears them is subject to public ridicule.
There's a very, very narrow demographic, who pay attention to fashion "seasons", which only last a couple of months, and have money to buy designer clothes. The closer you try to stay to the bleeding edge, the faster you have to replace your wardrobe. It's a game for people who can afford it. For the average woman, design changes are filtered through the mass market reproduction process. Their clothes are less extreme and have more staying power, probably several years.
There's a healthy secondary market in out of date designer clothes too. My niece made a nice living for a while buying out of date fashions and reselling them. You need a good eye and you need good timing. Wearing clothes informed by last year's fashion trends is chic. Wearing clothes that *set* last year's fashion trends is tacky. But somehow wearing *some* clothes that set *certain* fashion trends several years ago can be chic again. I'm not informed enough to state the precise algorithm, but I think it's a matter of picking a garment that embodies things that people remember favorably, is not so newly out of date that people think you're wearing it because you're ignorant, and has a look that plausibly might come back soon.
I don't think women often get ridiculed unless they look like they're trying to be up to date but failing, or the people doing the ridiculing are fashion enthusiasts who'd probably have catty things to say about anyone.
But it's not an analogy. It's a reductio ad absurdum. Certain economic hypotheses put forward by advocates of stronger and more restrictive intellectual property laws have been repeated so often that people treat them as fundamental principles, as scientific laws. If they are scientific laws, they should apply to every industry, otherwise the proponents of these "laws" are guilty of special pleading.
Fashion is an interesting case because it's exempted from copyright laws, and the legal reasoning for that exemption is specious. Think about it: fashion is too utilitarian to be copyrighted, but *software* is not? I can design an evening gown for somebody to wear to the Oscars, and that's *utilitarian*, but if I write a spanning tree algorithm for a a network hub, that's *creative*?
Fashion is creative expression par excellence; it has almost no value other than the emotional response it evokes in its viewers. We don't judge fashion designers by how comfortable their clothes are (!!!), how well they protect wearers from the elements. We judge them by how provocative their designs are. Therefore any argument that I, a software writer, have to be "incented" to be creative must apply even *more* to a fashion designer. Any argument that creativity in the software industry will collapse without rigorous IP protection is inconsistent with the existence of a fashion industry.
Now let's get to a real analogy. I think without IP protection we'd still have a software industry, but it'd look very, very different. Copyright creates an artificial scarcity. That brings more developers into the market. Copyright protection in the fashion industry would probably result in many, many more fashion houses springing up. The end of copyright in software would mean that many developers would be out of a job, even though the social utility of the industry would be increased and its economic value not necessarily decreased.
Copyright in software makes a programming career possible for many more mediocre developers. On the other hand it makes the best developers less productive by forcing them to waste their creativity reinventing the wheel.