Something I have been wondering for a while.
If your free and open-source application/tool is good enough that makes people not want to use other non-free tools, are you responsible for a company closing down?
You can argue about business models and ethics, but a few things can really just stop existing because a "free" tool is simply good enough. It is not just software that disappears, it is jobs and careers.
The bar for some open-source tools competition is very high. With real side-effects
@falktx if you can make a commercial product obsolete with the little work you can put into a new code base as unpaid free software author, then the original threshold of originality was not very high. So the price of the commercial product was too high. Or do you mean VCV Rack?
@falktx and honestly, a company developing a new product to beat competition does not think about the jobs of their competitors or ethics of their doing. Companies love to fight each other, with the employed people being their soldiers. There are no ethics in the free market, thats why it's regulated by (good) governments.
@weirdconstructor some good points, yeah there is always competition (unless some agreement is in place, but that is not too common).
Making a better product that will "steal away" someone else's users can even be the reason-to-be for brand new companies sometimes 🤔
@falktx No, they're responsible for not having their shit together enough to make something people want to use.