According to Webster's first set of definitions, "commercial" means:
- occupied with or engaged in commerce or work intended for commerce
- of or relating to commerce
- characteristic of commerce
- suitable, adequate, or prepared for commerce
What's
not in that definition?
Any mention of a proprietor. Every one is a common activity or resource.
Words are important. When you're talking about commerce, that's about
commerce, a common activity. There is no
MY in commerce.
Most of the software essential to the infrastructure of commerce--TCP
stacks, for example--is free. Very little of the software controlled
by any proprietor is essential to commerce in this way.
There are two totally separate concepts people conflate: Control and
licensing. Control is what makes a thing proprietary or common.
Licensing influences how commerce happens around it.
Don't confuse the two!
I would say there is definitely a "MY" (and a "YOUR") in commerce. When dealing with hard goods, it's pretty obvious. If I own a horse and say you're a fisherman and have caught 100 fish, we may agree to exchange MY horse for YOUR fish (which you refer to as MY fish). If instead of trading the fish for my horse, you sold them for gold coins, perhaps you could then trade YOUR coins for MY horse. In essence, you are trading the time and effort that you put into catching the fish for the time and effort I put into raising the horse.
With software and other non-material goods, the issue is who, how and for what should one be compensated for the time and effort of writing or otherwise "producing" the good (the software). If I hire you to write an application for my horse farm and you accept a horse in payment, it's straightforward: you traded your time for the horse.
The sticky point comes with whether the app you wrote can still be considered YOURs or MINE once the trade transaction is completed. Can I resell the app for a horse a piece to other farms, or can I even make a copy for personal use, e.g., to give it to my cousin who also has a farm? Or are you still the owner and can therefore profit more than once from your original time and effort?
Those who believe in copyright or similar government-enforced. limited time monopoly "rights," think the producer, developer or writer of the software, book, song, film, patent or other non-physical good, continues to be the owner, and thus is "entitled" to compensation as he/she sess fit (or can get away with). In your words, they believe "creation" of the software gives CONTROL rights over it, even when the software is at least nominally controlled by the buyer or recipient (however, see Kindle remote erasures of "1984" ebooks).
There's a difference between an individual act of commerce, where MY and YOUR definitely apply, and commerce itself, along with things which make it possible, which are common goods, and lie outside of a given transaction.
I guess I should go into that a little more later.