The idea was that capitalism gives you a choice between proprietary, shitty, or non-existent software. Not much of a choice. Photoshop is often showed as an example where free alternatives aren't up to snuff (I personally don't have an opinion on this one).
It's not for a lack of good faith in interpreting your words (IMO), but a genuine difference of opinion on a critical point.
I don't view software on a spectrum from proprietary through shitty to non-existent. I view it more as a two-by-two matrix of high quality/shitty on one axis and FOSS/proprietary on the other. All four quadrants are populated.
The economic incentives that capitalism and proprietary software provide allow for the massive investments that Adobe is able to make in Photoshop/CSuite, by providing a clear path to financial returns on those investments.
In the 22 years since GIMP started, it hasn't caught Photoshop. (There are many other examples where free or open source software has caught and surpassed the proprietary alternatives/previous market leaders.)
>In the 22 years since GIMP started, it hasn't caught Photoshop.
I think it's important to look in that quadrant, though. Why does that quadrant exist? In my judgement, it's beacuse such software requires a large amount of research and time to be devoted to it, and while certain free software projects are able to catch up to it, they are few and far between.
The next question to ask is why such development-intensive software is proprietary. In my judgement, the answer to that is because the development must be funded somehow, primarily in the case of programming that funding is wages. Open source/free software business models, while existing, do not have the same return, especially for these sorts of programs (though they do for Red Hat for instance.)
So presumably, such software could exist being free software if its developers were already accounted for in terms of wages, so they can spend more time making it.
This is where alternatives to capitalism enter - Socialist systems do not have wages, and people have much more free time to pursue their interests, while being sustained by communal production, to which they also participate in part. As such, such development may be possible under Socialism, but not capitalism. There is much less incentive to have proprietary software under Socialism.
Oh, please. When are going to stop making objective comparisons between the Real World and crazy Utopias?
If we are getting closer to living in a post-scarcity world, it is thanks to these "horrible" things Capitalism brings us like private property, freedom to enterprise, rule of law that enables trade, etc, etc.
"In Socialism people have more free time to pursue their interests"? People in North Korea are more busy trying not to starve to death. Venezuela is facing shortages of toilet paper, and their government is pushing for forced labor. How can one even think that there will ever be a society rich enough to afford people universally free to do whatever they want?
I do see many problems with capitalism itself, though, so I didn't word my initial comment as well as I should have. I should have said "it would indicate a problem with capitalism".
