Information wants to be free. Nothing will stop it. Humanity has been copying "proprietary" information forever. People gossip about work and other secrets, copy other people's notes, etc. Computer software is just yet another example of it, the scenery of old Soviet block just puts a bit more contrast to it in comparison to Western experiences. Now, generating a trend, by for example making your information the dominant one (ie. Microsoft and MS Office) is a great tactic, that bears long-lasting fruits.
You might be too young to have read this in Phrack, but I feel it's apt:
Let me tell you something. Information does not want to be free, my
friends. Free neither from its restraints nor in terms of dollar value.
Information is a commodity like anything else. More valuable than the
rarest element, it BEGS to be hoarded and priced. Anyone who gives
something away for nothing is a moron. (I am indeed stupid.) I can't
fault anyone for charging as long as they don't try to rationalize their
reasoning behind a facade of excuses, all the while shouting "Information
Wants to be Free!"
Trade secrets don't want to be free, marketing projections don't want to
be free, formulas don't want to be free, troop placements don't want to
be free, CAD designs do not want to be free, corporate financial
information doesn't want to be free, my credit report sure as hell
doesn't want to be free!
I feel like you and your source misunderstand the phrase. It is worded confusingly, so it's not all that surprising.
Perhaps a better wording would be "Information tends to spread". It's really about the arrow of time. It's much easier to give someone information than to take information away from them. Taking public knowledge and making it secret is a lot harder than taking secret knowledge and making it public.
> Trade secrets don't want to be free, marketing projections don't want to be free, formulas don't want to be free, troop placements don't want to be free, CAD designs do not want to be free, corporate financial information doesn't want to be free, my credit report sure as hell doesn't want to be free!
Personification confuses the issue here, but assuming those examples were meant as "want to be secret" rather than the much weaker "don't want to be free ('cause they're information, and have no will of their own)" then I should point out that it's actually YOU that wants your credit report to stay secret, and the army that wants troop placements to remain secret. The information wants nothing, but will tend to spread.
There's nothing to stop you working against this natural tendency, but it requires you to put in a certain amount of effort and maintenance. Water tends to flow downhill, but we can make hollows and dams and the like to keep it in, and that's a very useful thing to do. But in a sense water could be said to "want to flow downhill".
Of course, if someone argued against dams because "water wants to flow downhill", that would be ridiculous. I'm sure that a lot of (most?) people who use that phrase mean it in exactly the way that you interpret it, which is unfortunate as it is then reduced to something more like "I feel we have a moral imperative to share information". And surely there's a better way of phrasing that.
So maybe I'm the one misunderstanding. But I like my interpretation better.
