Hermann,
I actually disagree with that. And what I disagree with is this:
"At least, any knowledge or development"
There is a profound difference between knowledge and development. It would indeed be immoral in the longer term to not share knowledge. But this is not what's happening. Anyone who wants to write their own Skype is free to do that based on industry-level expert knowledge out there, which is not secret at all. Although there are, of course, proprietary algorithms, frequently a lot of them are published or are in many ways irrelevant. Proprietary algorithm doesn't mean good or efficient, it just means you cannot see how its implemented.
Generally, very few proprietary companies have real "secrets" that are translatable into direct benefit to the public once they get known. It's not like Ableton is an app that others cannot reproduce because they are using some secret ingredients. No. Ableton is difficult to reproduce because it requires enormous, unimaginable amount of labor.
Conversely, actual programs are not knowledge. They are implementation of knowledge. And I don't see why someone's r&d work should be available for free. On what basis?
In fact, I find this feeling of entitlement to other people's work on the part of many ideologically charged FLOSS community members quite indecent. If I am writing a program, I don't see how anyone is entitled to my work.
And when we compare commercial programs with FLOSS programs, it is not infrequent to see a dramatic difference in quality. And so if I spent resources - time and effort - hiring people and creating a high quality product - why should I give this away? You have the knowledge, go and write it yourself. Nobody is keeping anything secret.
Relevant paragraphs:
More importantly, he confuses technology with source code.
Stallman commits this error frequently, for example saying "the easy
choice was to join the proprietary software world, signing nondisclosure
agreements and promising not to help my fellow hacker."[149] In other words, to Stallman the lack of source code is equivalent to the lack of help.
There
is, however, an inherent difference between principles, techniques,
algorithms - and source code. Source code is no longer the only or even
the most common source of technological knowledge sharing. In many cases
what's relevant is a description of an algorithm, a code snippet or a
function. It is very rare that someone requires to inspect the code of a
whole program. Even then, what's really helpful is an overview of the
program's architecture, not the code itself.
...
The public is not kept in ignorance of how technology works, either.
Such information is generally open and accessible. For instance, one
might not have access to the source code of Skype, but it is fairly
trivial to get access to information about technologies and techniques
that make Skype possible, and anyone can write a program with identical
functionality based on publicly available knowledge - provided they gain
the expertise and spend a significant amount of time and effort.
L.V.
