there's so much confusion about this maybe a analogy, loath as I am, may help : call a architect and construction management company Oracle and a contractor interior designer / HVAC specialist Azul providing specific undertakings to complete a number of the apartments in different specifications from the Oracle standard. To obtain the opportunity to sell individual apartments for profit in the condo, Azul undertakes to complete a amount of general labor throughout the construction project. The two agreeing to build a condo both will both let apartments therein, however regardless of what proportionate contribution and value of labor Azul provides, the title absolute and whole equity demise to Oracle because there would be no project without Oracle.

Hereby Azul are being paid for all their contributing work with the concession and ability to sublet their allocated apartments with variations in specifications independently and without any lien to Oracle once their part is done.

Oracle being the project lead and majority financiers, contracted to retain the option of applying the same specifications and features built by Azul to their wholly owned apartments.

of course the analogy breaks there because in software applying the Azul spec to more properties doesn't cost additional labor. Such is the intrinsic and amazing value of leading valuable software initiatives.

I'm tempted to suspect that my analogy makes visible to see a unfortunate development in popular opinion concerning software that has emerged in this century : like with property there seems to be intrinsically personal and non objective assumption of illicit and unseen practices at work in creating the accrual to the capital investor which is their whole and fundamentally natural right to receive and enjoy.

this worries me because it effectively co-opts the incredible natural beauty and value of software : labor free replication and reuse.

I will go so far as - only because of the contexts in which I have recently been caused to defend / explain the economics, which have been not pleasant experiences - to say that this is a terrifying and insidious assault on the most important advance of capitalism itself.

with the Times of London in 2018 revealing the record shows Harold Wilson when Prime Minister in 1958 was permitted to receive a prize for poetry composition awarded by the Soviet GDR of £20,000 then that would have bought properties worth over ten million pounds today... Wilson and May and Johnson all unelected and May creating laws for internal passport and visa civilian movement control only after the maximum 3 statutory refusals by Parliament (Lords rejecting) to pass the law before prerogative force majeur was used to force the legislation that devolved the entire legislation and executive implementation of British law to secret meetings without any reporting rules of any two members of the privy council...

the last points you can research at statewatch.org and I must say that I profoundly wish I was inventing this but everything is entirely public information, as is how shortly after that "prize" award, Wilson told a delegation representing all Jewish members of Parliament who sought advice after the security services confirmed their relatives in Soviet counties were credibly threatened and being bullied to seek to cause a reversal to the British position on Palestine which wasn't to grant independence and create Israel at all. I never remember his Foreign Secretary of the time but if you find his long out of print memoir the names are named and it's fully revealed by the highest office concerned. and to this day people wonder why there's anti semitism rampant in the Labour Party. no shoot Sherlock, after Wilson slapped the official secrets act to conceal him throwing the members to the wind without any support or advice, obviously their colleagues considered the en bloc vote face to be treasonous betrayal. We're hiding known public history despite doing so causing incredible tension and racism and intolerance and neutering the only constitutional opposition party we have..

full disclosure : I'm child of a father born 1907 and my uncle who taught me to code b.1900 the one a banker and spy during the war and uncle director of the war office, so I grew up with traditional transatlantic political values that simply no longer exist for at least 30 years. I remember when Bangladesh made the core memory for the PDPs. Which stopped in 80 when Zia demanded Bangladesh cut off for Pakistan to support the CIA in Afghanistan. Samsung only opened a factory in Bangladesh 2 years ago at last. it shouldn't have been so grim and the betrayals are worse than there's time for a book how Britain throws people to the wolves to the advantage of the Soviet initiative. if you don't believe that continues, read the very good Buzz feed series on the assassinations in Britain and how May personally riled the USA and France to high heaven when she declared investigations into obviously professional hits shut and suicide despite a orgy of comic book evidence taunting the question "you can't work out how we did this ". I'm very grateful that critical parts of the software world remain American, as result, no matter how much I want to reintroduce the UK to its balls.