Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 23:44:12 -0700 From: Arun Sharma <adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The Ethics of Free Software Message-ID: <20000522234412.A11711@sharmas.dhs.org> In-Reply-To: <20000523114956.A39397@physics.iisc.ernet.in>; from Rahul Siddharthan on Tue, May 23, 2000 at 11:49:57AM %2B0530 References: <20000521131809.A6546@sharmas.dhs.org> <20000522170335.B94994@azazel.zer0.org> <20000523085510.A5994@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <20000522222438.A11092@sharmas.dhs.org> <20000523114956.A39397@physics.iisc.ernet.in>
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On Tue, May 23, 2000 at 11:49:57AM +0530, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > > The claim that "for profit software" and "closed source software" are > > different is not supported by market realities. Neither RMS nor ESR > > have come up with a viable economic model which can support all the > > programmers being supported by the current closed source software economy. > > You're suggesting two things here: > (1) All the programmers today have a natural right to be supported by > the economy, even if the glut of software jobs is a result of artificial > scarcities rather than real need. All programmers have a natural right to earn a living. If someone suggests a new economic model and it doesn't support them, they have a right to reject the model. Most people do this silently, without arguing this out on the net, by continuing to work for closed source software companies. > (2) If all software was "free" or "opensource", the number of > programming jobs would decrease. It's not the total number of jobs - it's the total amount of money to be made, that defines the size of the economy. > Quite the opposite, actually. If the windows source code, for > example, was opened, I believe the demand for competent windows > programmers (as opposed to MCSE's who can't set up a webserver without > help) would go up by an order of magnitude or more, simply because > companies -- a few brave ones at first, but more and more as time went > by -- would want to dig in there and customise it for their own > setups, improve its security, add features they need, remove features > they don't need, and so on without having to beg Microsoft. Perhaps if it is released under the BSD license. If it is released under GPL, someone else will come along, write the next big feature (speech recognition or whatever) and the network effects will favor them instead of GPL'ed windows. > Some companies are already on that route with linux. Right now they > don't have that option with proprietary operating systems and software; > if they did have such an option it would be a big gain for them and > a *huge* boost for the programmer market. Again, it depends on which kind of programmers benefit from this. If you're a 20 year old newbie programmer, that's a great situation to have. However, if you are a UNIX architect with 20 years of experience, you don't want to waste your skills customizing perl for a mom and pop shop. > There will be little or no effect on the customised/specialised > software market either -- banking software, airport management, and > so on. These people are always going to hire some software firm to > custom-design a setup for their particular needs, and be willing to > pay heavily for it, and that's not going to change even if all the > underlying software is "free". Most fortune 500 companies have an explicit policy of keeping GPL'ed software out. They don't want to lose their patents, expose their business logic and business practices by doing so. I don't even think that this is anywhere close to reality. > The only programming market which would conceivably suffer a bit is > that of prepackaged, mass-produced, bloated, overpriced junk like MS > Windows and MS Office. Frankly, I have no problem with that scenario. If you talk to the man on the street, he'll tell you how MS outlook, inspite of Melissa and ILOVEYOU does a great job of getting work done. My personal view - free software is an act of philanthropy, tool for education, hobby for personal satisfaction and an ego booster for those who're good at it. -Arun To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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