Proprietary software has no users, only hostages
The quotation in the title is based on a comment read on slashdot (in reference to Windows), but it applies of course to all proprietary software. Even more so if the formats used to store information are also proprietary. Think about it next time you boot into Windows or MacOS...
I recently used this nice quote in a presentation concerning Open Access. Researchers are also hostages of the commercial publishers. First, we do all the work and then we give them all the copyright so that they can charge our libraries.
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Yeap. The Internet allowed the power balance between publishers and producers to shift towards the latter. And should the net remain neutral, this shift will continue to happen also in other areas (like cinema and television). Probably why so many powerful people are interested in getting rid of that net neutrality thing — in a sense trying to put the genie back into the bottle... (and let's hope they fail!)
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