Schlock Mercenary

I believe that the best way to maximize the societal value of software is for it to be FOSS, actually, and release what I can accordingly.

Finding ways to make money off of that is another matter. There are many things one can do: charge for support/customization, find patrons/sponsors who benefit from your work to fund it, etc.

I don't believe that copyright laws are a good way to fund innovation. And I believe there are a lot of alternate business models that remain unexplored.

Every law has a cost to enforce it. Many worry that the costs (both monetary costs and reduced freedoms) are ever-increasing while the benefit is static, and mostly going to middle-men. After all, I don't believe that the RIAA shares the proceeds of the infringement lawsuits with the artists (feel free to correct me if you can prove that belief wrong).

Rather than trying to make this law work, I think we should look to successful businessman/artists for the way forward. Web comic authors in particular have done rather well for themselves, in spite of giving pretty much everything away for free. For example, if you want the website of one particularly business-savvy author (who has a lot of good advice for anyone trying this), look no further than here: http://www.schlockmercenary.com/

He's done very clever crowd-sourcing (he gets fans to help him ship books), has partnered with fans who make cool merchandise to sell it (rather than shutting them down over trademarks), and does a lot of…

No; for some other posts on this, I did some checking in the agreement and IAP is explicitly disallowed for rental content or services or for goods or services for use outside of the app.

Let's play with your case study a little more, though (it's fun!):

Because IAP cannot be used for goods or services outside of the app, your IAP subscription would have to be clear that it's for access to the premium feed only and not contracting your wife for fitness bootcamp services. What would you do if someone who lives 3,000 km from you purchased the bootcamp service through the app? You'd never be able to fulfill it (which is one reason why IAP can't be used for non-app goods or services, I suspect).

So, in reality, you might offer the premium feed a lot like the Schlock Mercenary app does (and has since it was introduced)[1]: one month for $0.99, three months for $2.99, or six months for $4.99. There's also a way to enter a subscription token, although I've never had one so I don't know exactly how it works. I would presume that they could start offering these directly for sale on the Schlock Mercenary store if people wanted to give Howard more money directly, rather than letting Apple take 30% of his definitely-worth-it $4.99.

Anyway, you'd have a nominal fee for your premium feed, and then you'd give the people who have contracts with your wife for her non-app services access codes to get at the premium feed without having to pay an extra fee.

Everybody wins, especially you…

There's a great concept that I found out about reading Schlock Mercenary (a sci-fi webcomic), about using a gas giant as an interstellar spaceship [1]. It probably originates elsewhere, but it was nicely explained there. You build a "candle" (huge tube) that is inserted into the gas giant on one side, then ignite the gases inside it (iirc the comic uses fusion reactors on both ends, and an intake in the center of the candle). Both ends of the candle are open, "inner" end counteracts the gas giant's gravity to keep the candle from sinking into the core, the other end produces thrust. You put your payload on moons that orbit around the gas giant, and steer by moving the candle. The "thrust end" of the candle also doubles as a light and heat source for the moons, replacing the sun while in interstellar space. There are... some risks involved into the whole operation.

[1]: https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2003-08-03

I figure this sci-fi punchline is relevant:

> Rod: Your kind began as self-repairing distributed storage systems for our supercomputers. When the cities fell, some of you survived, and changed just enough to continue to survive and evolve. You are now at least a million generations removed from anything we created.

> Kevyn: You created? You don't mean you personally, do you?

> Rod: Me personally? What do you think I look like? Some kind of an engineer?

> Kevyn: Actually, What I thought was that you looked really, really old.

> Rod: Heh... You youngsters, are always so cute with your little accidental insults. No, I didn't create you. Engineers did. I created something far more powerful... The marketing campaign that made you profitable.

Source: https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2001-12-16

Because of historical accident, a lot of us come from families that distrust unions. I grew up on stories about how unions are greedy for money, which they use to fund liberal social causes, and also create wasteful regulations, and ultimately destroy industries. The Schlock Mercenary comic, week of June 18, 2001, is an example of our attitude to unions. [0]

And by pushing for labor-saving technology and measurable outcomes, that makes us villains to the unions. Capital trying to cut labor out of the economy. It’s sad that unions discount intellectual contribution so much, but that’s often the way it is.

[0]http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2001-06-18

The long-running space opera comic "Schlock Mercenary" actually has treatments of this topic that are frequently clever (and humorous). As example, here [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2004-08-23] is an instance of an AI making copies of itself to act as the smart guidance in warship-killing high-energy munitions. If the munition survives impact, it can be refurbished and used again; if not, the AI shard dumps a 'gestalt' of new experiences back to the core before the munition breaks up.

Since the AI copies are crafted by the master AI, they don't generally exhibit divergence from its will or an independent survival instinct.