CoreCLR is now open source

I think the word 'markets' was a bit misguiding in terms of argumentation. I meant "things which bring people added value and joy" and not "things which can be sold for money". Markets encompass both but I was thinking the consumer added-value in this instance.

"Proprietary software is immoral, and that is the reason you shouldn't be building it"

I think taken without any other context this is not realistic.

I think the concept of ownerhip and responsibility are far more important for high quality software for the point of view of short term end user value than openness.

Software has a philosophical and a mathematical dimension. I don't think anyone should be able to own those and that most software patents are harmful in this way. However.

Software is used as an enabling component everywhere. As an enabling component it's added value does not depend on it's freedom or openness, but from it's capability to function bug free and provide the features end users need. As the canvas in the art program, as the automatic stabilizer in the plane and so forth.

In these instances I claim the biggest human value those softwares bring is indenpendent from their openness.

To enable the example softwares to function correctly require lots of hard labour that is not fun at all. I.e. work. Often it is repeating the same old concepts over and over again, knitting the specific system together piece by piece.

I think there is no Photoshop killer because the people to whom it brings most added value are not programmers and it's usually not fun or rewarding at all to work with such a large codebase. Blender is a fantastic counterexample.

Of course, software should utilize open and hackable data formats so that the data does not vanish.

The long term value for the user and the concept of the software providing free speech capabilities then depends on the underlying software ecosystem, and there open source most definitely helps.

Open formats, open tools to hack on them, open platforms. Yes, definetly! Any other way is harmfull to all stakeholders. IMO, products can be closed source.

Now one of the guys pushing it, is CEO of Microsoft and we are finally seeing a (real) difference.. I joined the MS community a long time ago and this is (again) a heart warming addition!

Good job Microsoft, you're a bit late to the party. But no doubt, the ROI will show sooner or later! ;-)

No, it doesn't actually matter, it's not a financial issue. Open sourcing their libs is good because it gives developers access to the sources of libraries which they use daily. This in turn will make debugging much easier and will also help with understanding what is actually happening when you call some function.

I left MS-land a decade ago, but when I worked with MS tools I'd have gladly paid serious money for access to the source code (that was in C++, I hear debugging is easier in C#), but that wasn't an option. Now they offer access to the source code, which is the important part, and for free, which is kind of nice but very important.

It's one thing to laud the common benefits of FOSS, or the ethical gains of charity. These things resonate with me. But I fundamentally disagree with - and as a proprietary software developer, am alienated by - your statement.

Is that actually what you mean? My day job - making games - is immoral? A daily dose of evil? If so, this is the kind of attitude that puts me off contributing to anything even remotely related to "free software".

Perhaps you're fine with that, but I feel it leaves us all poorer.

(edit: minor improvements to clarity.)