is free, open source software ethical?
Mark Tarver
to work for RCA. Right at that time Japan was expanding its
electronics market in the Pacific and the Japanese were capturing the
market from RCA by selling below cost. My friend bitterly condemned
these practices as unethical.
This practice, called 'dumping', is generally condemned, and can often
be prosecuted under law. It has been used and criticised as such on
several occasions e.g. w.r.t. the dumping of subsidised EC surplus
produce on poor African nations, on Rockeller's ruthless expansion of
Standard Oil by undercutting.
In the defence of open source software, Richard Stallman was willing
to condemn closed source software as unethical. Now here is a
thought. Is it rather *free software which is unethical* because the
supplier is dumping a free product from the position of having a
subsidy?
To put some flesh on the bare bones of this proposition. Imagine if
someone were to use their comfortably paid university position to
produce, (e.g), a free GPL algebra tutor, thus putting out of business
a struggling company trying to sell their own version. Would this be
ethical? Is it not the ethical equivalent of dumping?
This is posed as an open question, and a fairly important one (hence
the cross post). You should not assume that I'm against free/open
source from my posing this question, although I'm willing to 'play
black' (attack OS/free) in this thread if the responses are too one
sided.
Mark Tarver
www.lambdassociates.org
Paul Rubin
Richard Heathfield
followups. A philosophy group, maybe?]
Mark Tarver said:
<snip>
> In the defence of open source software, Richard Stallman was willing
> to condemn closed source software as unethical. Now here is a
> thought. Is it rather *free software which is unethical* because the
> supplier is dumping a free product from the position of having a
> subsidy?
The world does not owe software company shareholders a living. If software
houses can't produce software that is sufficiently superior to free
software to justify the price they charge, then they don't really deserve
to succeed. After all, they have far more resources than a typical Open
Source developer.
> To put some flesh on the bare bones of this proposition. Imagine if
> someone were to use their comfortably paid university position to
> produce, (e.g), a free GPL algebra tutor, thus putting out of business
> a struggling company trying to sell their own version. Would this be
> ethical?
If I give a starving child a meal, am I unethically depriving Macdonald's
of business?
If, somehow, I manage to acquire the resources to give a million starving
children a meal each, am I /now/ unethically depriving Macdonald's of
business?
> Is it not the ethical equivalent of dumping?
I don't see why. What you call "dumping" was a medium term strategy for
profit maximisation. Open Source is generally a "goodness of their hearts"
phenomenon. People give their software away because they want other people
to be able to share it. They don't do it to make a profit. (Or at least,
if they do, they need to have a think about their pricing!)
--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Mark Tarver
> On 4 Mar, 19:34, Mark Tarver <dr.mtar...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > A long time ago...
>
> (...could we please rename this group in 'Philosophical Hypotheses and
> Incidental Spamming Group', as the 'Practical Common Lisp Questions'
> here are going down every moment coming...)
>
> If you agree, please stay quiet, many "thank you"'s!!
>
> -JO
Actually, the first time I heard this question in raised in public was
at the International Lisp Conference 2002 where the speaker delivered
an address on this very question. He got me thinking. I remember who
this person was, but out of courtesy, I leave him out of it here.
Regarding this 'troll' nonsense, it is up to people to decide (a)
whether and (b) how to respond. This is *their* responsibility and not
that of the OP and it isn't for you to tell people what to do.
'Troll' is too often being used now as a term to silence people from
raising questions or defending positions which might be
controversial. I'm not going to take responsibility for maladjusted,
irrational and angry responses to a rational question.
The guy who spoke thought that programming forums were not just narrow
technical ghettos for asking geek questions, but also forums where we
could discuss the important social aspects of what we do and I agree
with him. This is a social aspect of programming.
Like my old man said about people who wanted to censor nudity on TV.
If you don't like it - change channel and be upset somewhere else.
Ron Garret
Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
> > Is it not the ethical equivalent of dumping?
>
> I don't see why. What you call "dumping" was a medium term strategy for
> profit maximisation. Open Source is generally a "goodness of their hearts"
> phenomenon. People give their software away because they want other people
> to be able to share it. They don't do it to make a profit. (Or at least,
> if they do, they need to have a think about their pricing!)
Not that I really want to fan these off-topic flames, but this is just
factually incorrect. People generally do not write open-source software
out of altruism. They do it because they are hoping for some form of
compensation, like the ability to use other people's open-source
software, professional recognition and respect, or monetary compensation
in the form of employment, contracts, or investments in some commercial
venture. Whether this motivation is wise or ethical is a separate
question, but the fact is that most open-source developers do have a
profit motive, even if only indirectly.
rg
D Herring
> In the defence of open source software, Richard Stallman was willing
> to condemn closed source software as unethical. Now here is a
> thought. Is it rather *free software which is unethical* because the
> supplier is dumping a free product from the position of having a
> subsidy?
>
> To put some flesh on the bare bones of this proposition. Imagine if
> someone were to use their comfortably paid university position to
> produce, (e.g), a free GPL algebra tutor, thus putting out of business
> a struggling company trying to sell their own version. Would this be
> ethical? Is it not the ethical equivalent of dumping?
Meh. There is no moral reason for a company to make money and not
fail. (that means you, Amtrak, GM, United Airlines, ...) But it is
good for society when they invest wisely and succeed. Dumping is a
short-term loss with the hope of outlasting competitors and raising
prices later -- something that I don't think free software can do
effectively.
Consider two software business models:
1) Develop some code. Spend 59% on marketing, 29% on support, 9% on
management, and 3% on further development. Sell shrink-wrap binaries
in perpetuity.
2) Pay someone to develop some code. Release it so that others can
freely use/enhance it as they see fit. Hope others do the same.
Neither seems particularly unethical. Both have their problems. Both
will continue to flourish.
As a poor student for most of my life, I have generally preferred the
free software model. Yes, time is money, but "learn to use/extend the
free software" always seemed like a better option than "earn money at
some random job to buy pre-packaged software".
Aside from cost, "free" software never goes away. Have you not heard
a vendor say "we no longer support that hardware/software"?
Open source gives the user a fighting chance of breaking out the
debugger and fixing problems when the vendor says they don't care
unless a support contract is purchased. Users who lack the technical
expertise are still free to bid on the open market for a developer to
fix the problem; and this fix can be shared throughout the community.
After buying a car, house, or bridge, you are not at the mercy of
the original contractor to do repairs. Why should software be different?
Thinking about the future, opening the software lets a new generation
learn from our code.
IHBT HAND
- Daniel
Paul Rubin
> The guy who spoke thought that programming forums were not just narrow
> technical ghettos for asking geek questions, but also forums where we
> could discuss the important social aspects of what we do and I agree
> with him. This is a social aspect of programming.
Programming in general: maybe, though dubious. The specific subfields
of functional programming or Lisp: no I don't think so.
> If you don't like it - change channel and be upset somewhere else.
Spoken like a spammer as well as a troll.
Could you please at minimum take cll and clf out of your newsgroup
list. Well, clf anyway.
Richard Heathfield
> Richard Heathfield wrote:
>
>> People give their software away because they want
>> other people to be able to share it. They don't do it to make a profit.
>> (Or at least, if they do, they need to have a think about their
>> pricing!)
>
> Not that I really want to fan these off-topic flames, but this is just
> factually incorrect. People generally do not write open-source software
> out of altruism.
Well, some do. I will cheerfully accept that not all do.
<snip>
Richard Heathfield
<snip>
> Like my old man said about people who wanted to censor nudity on TV.
> If you don't like it - change channel and be upset somewhere else.
That response, more than anything, convinces me that this discussion is
rapidly heading nowhere useful.
There is a big difference between "we would rather you didn't talk about X"
and "we would rather you didn't talk about X *here*".
If you think that the division of Usenet into topic groups constitutes
censorship, then you don't want to waste time here - there's bound to be a
government conspiracy or two that you could be unmasking instead, or
perhaps you could be thinking up ideas for perpetual motion machines.
user923005
Can I make a guitar and then give it away?
How about ten guitars? 100, 1000?
As I see it, if I want to spend my own money and resources making
guitars and giving them away, it is my own business and there is
nothing wrong with it, even though some guitar companies might not
like it.
On the other hand, I do see one small exploitation. Sometimes, a mess
of college kids throw themselves into creating these free tools,
because 'Hey -- stick it to the man!'. And then someone else bundles
them up and puts them on a CD (Let's call it "GreenHat") and sells it
for $170 {the kids get nothing, and they did a large fraction of the
work}. Oh, wait, they don't sell the CD -- that's a violation of GPL
-- they sell a service contract. Anyway, the odd man out I see in
this picture is those kids who were more or less tricked into working
for nothing. Now, lots of them do go into it with both eyes open but
some of them are fooled also.
At any rate, I see open source software as generally a good thing, but
I also think it should be a choice. I do think that algorithms are a
form of mathematics and should be public domain like mathematics
itself (which cannot be patented) but that is neither here nor there.
Of course, I would obey even those laws that I disagree with, because
society has chosen them.
So here is the ideal situation that I would like to see:
1. Lots of software licenses from commercial, totally closed to
public domain and everything in between.
2. Lots of innovation shared by projects like those hosted at
sourceforge.
3. Lots of excellent research like that which is hosted at
universities around the world and then made available on Citeseer (I
*Hate* those 'pay $25 for this article' places -- but I also recognize
their right to do that)
4. Oh, and no software patents.
I have been involved in just about every sort of open source and
closed source project that there is. I have done GPL, LGPL, BSD,
Public Domain, etc. as well as commercial software. I have no
problems with any of it.
dave_m...@fastmail.fm
> [I'm not sure where this discussion belongs, so I don't know where to set
> followups. A philosophy group, maybe?]
>
> Mark Tarver said:
>
> <snip>
>
> > In the defence of open source software, Richard Stallman was willing
> > to condemn closed source software as unethical. Now here is a
> > thought. Is it rather *free software which is unethical* because the
> > supplier is dumping a free product from the position of having a
> > subsidy?
>
> The world does not owe software company shareholders a living. If software
> houses can't produce software that is sufficiently superior to free
> software to justify the price they charge, then they don't really deserve
> to succeed.
Do you feel the same way about Microsoft v. Netscape? Are you against
antitrust legislation altogether? After all, the world does not owe
anybody the right to make a living in any business. If a monopoly
squeezes them out by giving away product or undercutting them, too bad
for them.
Sohail Somani
> Like my old man said about people who wanted to censor nudity on TV. If
> you don't like it - change channel and be upset somewhere else.
Last night, I was watching "My dad is better than your dad" with my 7
year old girl and in the commercials, there were advertisements for some
whore recruitment show called Girlicious (yes, it isn't even a real
word.) It caught me so off-guard that I had to scramble for the remote.
I understand that they were trying to appeal to the dads to watch the
show after baby goes to bed but OMFG! Some sensible self-censorship would
have been appreciated. No I didn't watch it.
I think the dad show graphics were rendered using Lisp. Ok, not really.
--
Sohail Somani
http://uint32t.blogspot.com
Sohail Somani
> Oh, wait, they
> don't sell the CD -- that's a violation of GPL -- they sell a service
> contract
How does anyone on the Internet still have this misconception? You can
sell GPL code on a CD. You just have to make sure that the source code is
available for a reasonable cost.
Richard Heathfield
<snip>
> Can I make a guitar and then give it away?
No. You *never* lay out the frets properly, and you don't seem to be able
to get the bridge height right. Frankly, it's unplayable. Unless someone
wants it for firewood, I guess. Yeah, that might work.
santosh
> On Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:39:38 -0800, user923005 wrote:
>
>> Oh, wait, they
>> don't sell the CD -- that's a violation of GPL -- they sell a service
>> contract
>
> How does anyone on the Internet still have this misconception? You can
> sell GPL code on a CD. You just have to make sure that the source code
> is available for a reasonable cost.
Doesn't the source have to be freely available and accessible without
undue difficulties?
Joachim Durchholz
Am Dienstag, den 04.03.2008, 11:25 -0800 schrieb Ron Garret:
> Not that I really want to fan these off-topic flames, but this is just
> factually incorrect. People generally do not write open-source software
> out of altruism.
Partly true, but the reasoning is a bit shaky.
> They do it because they are hoping for some form of
> compensation, like the ability to use other people's open-source
> software,
This reason explains why people use FOSS, but not why they write it.
> professional recognition and respect, or monetary compensation
> in the form of employment, contracts, or investments in some commercial
> venture.
Agreed.
Though the financial rewards aren't worth it. If Linux Torvalds had been
compensated appropriately, he'd be at least a millionaire, probably even
a billionaire. I'm pretty sure he is neither.
> Whether this motivation is wise or ethical is a separate
> question, but the fact is that most open-source developers do have a
> profit motive, even if only indirectly.
Not financial profit though.
More along the lines of safety - if you made a name as a FOSS
programmer, your job will be a little bit safer than otherwise.
But not profit in the sense of earning a reward that's proportional to
services provided to the public.
There *is* a strong altruistic motive behind FOSS.
Regards,
Jo
Richard Heathfield
<snip>
>> The world does not owe software company shareholders a living. If
>> software houses can't produce software that is sufficiently superior to
>> free software to justify the price they charge, then they don't really
>> deserve to succeed.
>
> Do you feel the same way about Microsoft v. Netscape?
I don't see the connection. They both wrote terrible browsers. :-)
> Are you against antitrust legislation altogether?
I don't even know what it is. It sounds very American. Personally, I'd
rather write programs. If it's an anti-monopoly thing, well, that's daft.
Nobody has a monopoly on browsers (and I presume you're talking about
browsers - and possible mail/news clients - since I don't think Netscape
did anything else, did they? - well, nothing else famous, anyway). I could
write a browser today if I had ten minutes spare, and be selling it
tomorrow. (No, really I could - C++ Builder has a sort of componenty thing
that you drag - a sort of dehydrated Web browser, just add clicks. Yu too
can be a sofwear genus.)
> After all, the world does not owe
> anybody the right to make a living in any business. If a monopoly
> squeezes them out by giving away product or undercutting them, too bad
> for them.
Absolutely.
Peter Christensen
Not a troll, this was a good question.
I think the difference in this case lies in the cost of reproduction.
If Standard Oil or whatever physical product company "dumps" at a loss
to gain market share, then they're crushing competition under a pile
of cash. For free software, someone could create it for their own
interest or purpose, or open source it to get help with development
and debugging. Once it's developed, there's no additional effort
required for more people to use it. Indeed, not sharing it would be a
loss (in the economic, not monetary sense) for the developers, because
then potential contributors wouldn't know about it. In Open Source,
you trade exclusive control of source for help in development and
debugging. Since you're not selling the software, then access to
source is your next most valuable asset. Software businesses have
developed other resources (a strong brand, better documentation or
support, graphic design, a sales force, etc) that help them pay for
development without having to share source. But it's still something
they can share later, if they choose.
It's a complicated question, and while rms or anyone else can argue
that this is immoral or that is immoral, it's really up to the laws of
the land. And if there's some issue so important and decisive, then
those laws may be redefined.
Joachim Durchholz
Am Dienstag, den 04.03.2008, 19:44 +0000 schrieb Sohail Somani:
> How does anyone on the Internet still have this misconception? You can
> sell GPL code on a CD. You just have to make sure that the source code is
> available for a reasonable cost.
You cannot charge for more than the shipping&handling cost (roughly, the
fine print is a bit more involved).
I wouldn't say that's "selling the software", it's more like "selling
the service".
Regards,
Jo
toby
> ...Is it rather *free software which is unethical* because the
> supplier is dumping a free product from the position of having a
> subsidy?
No. *plonk*
Sohail Somani
Doesn't have to be freely accessible afaik. But that is what lawyers are
for :-)
In general, it is unfair to ask me to pay for my bandwidth so you can
download 5G of source code unless I recoup the cost in some way.
Kaz Kylheku
> to work for RCA. Right at that time Japan was expanding its
> electronics market in the Pacific and the Japanese were capturing the
> market from RCA by selling below cost. My friend bitterly condemned
> these practices as unethical.
>
> This practice, called 'dumping', is generally condemned, and can often
> be prosecuted under law.
If you have the cash to absorb the cost of dumping, then it's fair and
square. Nobody has the right to tell you how you wish to spend your
money.
If you want to ``buy'' customers, and can afford it, you should be
able to do that. You're competing with your cash base.
You're obviously better than that other company, because you can sell
below cost for the next couple of years, and still make the payrolls,
pay the leases on capital, service debts---in short, do everything
else required to stay afloat.
It's not like you're drowning puppies, or dumping toxic waste.
Ultimately, the choice is up to the customer. It's the customer's
behavior that they want the cheapest thing. They buy it knowing that
they are undermining competition, which will reduce their choice in
the future. The undercutting company will wipe out the others and then
jack up prices. Since the consumers are willing to live with that, let
them live with it.
> In the defence of open source software, Richard Stallman was willing
> to condemn closed source software as unethical.
This is something that many other almost equally staunch supporters of
free software are not willing to do. Stallman is not representative of
everyone.
> Now here is a
> thought. Is it rather *free software which is unethical* because the
> supplier is dumping a free product from the position of having a
> subsidy?
Ah, if there is a subsidy, that is unethical. That is to say, the
subsidy itself, not what you do with it. (Government) subsidy means
stealing wealth from one to give to another. Using stolen wealth for
any purpose is unethical. Instead of being used for dumping, the
subsidy money could be used for improved advertizing. That would make
the advertizer more competitive in the marketplace. Or the subsidy
money could be used for research and development, which would give the
subsidy benefactor an edge also. Or the executives could take the
money and go on luxurious vacations. All of these uses are equally
unethical since they are connected to stolen property.
> To put some flesh on the bare bones of this proposition. Imagine if
> someone were to use their comfortably paid university position to
> produce, (e.g), a free GPL algebra tutor, thus putting out of business
> a struggling company trying to sell their own version. Would this be
> ethical? Is it not the ethical equivalent of dumping?
That depends on whether it was done while on duty. What that staff
member does with his or her evenings and weekends is his or her
business.
The unethical part is accepting a salary, which is understood to be in
exchange for your work for the university, but actually spending the
time doing your private work.
If that GPL-ed algebra tutor was developed on university time, then it
in fact belongs to the university, and not to that staff member. It's
unethical for that staff member to be releasing software which doesn't
belong to him or her.
It could be the case that he has the university's permission, even
approval, to do so. If that university is privately funded, then there
is nothing wrong. It has chosen to spend its rightfully owned money on
an employee who is mandated with the task of producing this program
and releasing it under the GPL.
If the univerity is funded by government money, well, that is theft.
Once we can can assign an unethical attribute the root node of an
economic tree, there is no point in evaluating the ethics of the child
nodes; the unethical property flows out from that root toward the
leaves. Stolen money taints all derived transactions.
Sohail Somani
Semantics cause wars. Anyawy, here is the relevant section from GPL2:
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to
give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically
performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the
corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections
1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
Ken Tilton
Richard Heathfield wrote:
> Mark Tarver said:
>
> <snip>
>
>
>>Like my old man said about people who wanted to censor nudity on TV.
>>If you don't like it - change channel and be upset somewhere else.
>
>
> That response, more than anything, convinces me that this discussion is
> rapidly heading nowhere useful.
Let's decide on the shape of the table before deciding if the discussion
to decide if free open software is ethical is going anywhere.
kenny
--
http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
"In the morning, hear the Way;
in the evening, die content!"
-- Confucius
Kaz Kylheku
> [I'm not sure where this discussion belongs, so I don't know where to set
> followups. A philosophy group, maybe?]
> Mark Tarver said:
> > thought. Is it rather *free software which is unethical* because the
> > supplier is dumping a free product from the position of having a
> > subsidy?
>
> The world does not owe software company shareholders a living.
However, the world puts up a government which steals taxes from the
pockets of those shareholders, and then fucks them over a second time
with unfair competition funded by subsidies from that money, which
devalues their holdings.
Mark has a good point regarding the subsidies.
If you fund that free software with your own capital that wasn't
stolen from anyone, then it's fair and square.
What is the difference between dumping, and offering discounts?
Should the US government try to prevent Walmart from holding price
rollback events? Is that dumping?
What about proprietary software houses that offer evaluation versions
of their software that do not ever expire?
user923005
This is a very interesting post and I agree with almost everything.
I think that there is at least one exception to the dumping rule,
though.
If I am in an economic position to destroy all of my opponents, with
an *intention* to corner the market and raise my prices later, then I
may have committed a crime.
Somehow, the gas wars of the 1970's in the US were legal (e.g. large
oil companies would sell their gas at 8 or 10 cents per gallon for a
few months until the independent companies went under, and as soon as
all of the independents folded, the prices shot up to above where they
were before. -- That was apparently legal since nothing was done about
it, but I am not sure that it should have been). At any rate, if you
are in a position of power, and the temporary benefit you provide is
intended to cause harm to your opponents and eventually the customers
also suffer, then it is illegal (or perhaps it should be if is
isn't). See (for instance):
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/predatorydumping.asp
Kaz Kylheku
> The guy who spoke thought that programming forums were not just narrow
> technical ghettos for asking geek questions, but also forums where we
> could discuss the important social aspects of what we do and I agree
> with him. This is a social aspect of programming.
But is there a social aspect of programming in functional languages
(comp.lang.functional) or in Lisp (comp.lang.lisp) which is separate
from that of programming?
I don't mind this troll thread because these newsgroups don't carry
that much volume. Besides, your work on Qi gives you kind of a troll
waiver. Not a full season pass, but, say, a tear-off sheet of five
tickets, dispensed for every new release.
:)
tim
> 'Troll' is too often being used now as a term to silence people from
> raising questions or defending positions which might be
> controversial.
> Mark
This is true. I once asked in a dentistry-related group whether there was
any evidence that flossing teeth reduced tooth decay. There were
accusations of trolling. It turned out that flossing does not actually
reduce tooth decay after all. (It does reduce gum disease though, so it's
a useful thing to do).
A decision that someone is a troll is best based on the pattern of their
posts. Usually one sees frequent posts that provoke dissent and arguments,
and that in themselves provide little information or insight while asking
others to do lots of work to provide a response.
Tim
Daniel Pitts
> A long time ago, sometime in the 70s I believe, a friend of mine used
> to work for RCA. Right at that time Japan was expanding its
> electronics market in the Pacific and the Japanese were capturing the
> market from RCA by selling below cost. My friend bitterly condemned
> these practices as unethical.
>
> This practice, called 'dumping', is generally condemned, and can often
> several occasions e.g. w.r.t. the dumping of subsidised EC surplus
> produce on poor African nations, on Rockeller's ruthless expansion of
> Standard Oil by undercutting.
>
> thought. Is it rather *free software which is unethical* because the
> supplier is dumping a free product from the position of having a
> subsidy?
>
> someone were to use their comfortably paid university position to
> produce, (e.g), a free GPL algebra tutor, thus putting out of business
> a struggling company trying to sell their own version. Would this be
> ethical? Is it not the ethical equivalent of dumping?
(including the struggling company), and used, modified, updated, resold.
You can't do that with material goods.
>
> This is posed as an open question, and a fairly important one (hence
> the cross post). You should not assume that I'm against free/open
> source from my posing this question, although I'm willing to 'play
> black' (attack OS/free) in this thread if the responses are too one
> sided.
Daniel.
--
Daniel Pitts' Tech Blog: <http://virtualinfinity.net/wordpress/>
[Jongware]
news:aKCdnagGXOmtOlDa...@bt.com...
> user923005 said:
>
> <snip>
>
> > Can I make a guitar and then give it away?
>
> No. You *never* lay out the frets properly, and you don't seem to be able
> to get the bridge height right. Frankly, it's unplayable. Unless someone
> wants it for firewood, I guess. Yeah, that might work.
Which is, actually, a good thing -- giving the guitars away, not the firewood
part.
To continue this analogy:
A lot of people 'd like to strum one at some time, but don't want to fork out
big bucks for a Gibson. When they *do* have a lot of training on that piece of
firewood and still like it, they are prepared to pay for the real job.
[Jongware]
Frode Vatvedt Fjeld
> What is the difference between dumping, and offering discounts?
I'd say that it is that dumping is when you use your capital (or
subsidies etc.) as a "weapon" in the marketplace. I.e. it's not the
act of giving (or discounting) something away that constitutes
dumping, but doing so with the intention (or just effect) of driving
someone else out of business (or less drastically just change consumer
habits etc.) so that you establish yourself as a market leader not on
the merit of your products but rather based on the size of your wallet
(i.e. how long you can hold out while losing money).
--
Frode Vatvedt Fjeld
(Can you tell that I like parens?)
mike3
> In article <QK-dnWj3R9L6BlDanZ2dnUVZ8vKdn...@bt.com>,
> Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>
> > > Is it not the ethical equivalent of dumping?
>
> > profit maximisation. Open Source is generally a "goodness of their hearts"
> > phenomenon. People give their software away because they want other people
> > to be able to share it. They don't do it to make a profit. (Or at least,
> > if they do, they need to have a think about their pricing!)
>
> factually incorrect. People generally do not write open-source software
> compensation, like the ability to use other people's open-source
> in the form of employment, contracts, or investments in some commercial
> question, but the fact is that most open-source developers do have a
> profit motive, even if only indirectly.
>
Then you should perhaps concentrate on Free software, not "Open
Source", which are different things. (Although Free software is
also "open source", "open source" need not be "Free software".)
Free software _is_ about freedom (although it might be about
business as well, freedom is the main issue.). Open Source is about
business.
mike3
> A long time ago, sometime in the 70s I believe, a friend of mine used
> to work for RCA. Right at that time Japan was expanding its
> electronics market in the Pacific and the Japanese were capturing the
> market from RCA by selling below cost. My friend bitterly condemned
> these practices as unethical.
>
> This practice, called 'dumping', is generally condemned, and can often
> be prosecuted under law. It has been used and criticised as such on
> several occasions e.g. w.r.t. the dumping of subsidised EC surplus
> produce on poor African nations, on Rockeller's ruthless expansion of
> Standard Oil by undercutting.
>
> In the defence of open source software, Richard Stallman was willing
> to condemn closed source software as unethical. Now here is a
> thought. Is it rather *free software which is unethical* because the
> supplier is dumping a free product from the position of having a
> subsidy?
>
> To put some flesh on the bare bones of this proposition. Imagine if
> someone were to use their comfortably paid university position to
> produce, (e.g), a free GPL algebra tutor, thus putting out of business
> a struggling company trying to sell their own version. Would this be
>
> This is posed as an open question, and a fairly important one (hence
> the cross post). You should not assume that I'm against free/open
> source from my posing this question, although I'm willing to 'play
> black' (attack OS/free) in this thread if the responses are too one
> sided.
>
Free software is released _by it's creator_ as such. The creator
makes a decision that that is what they want to do with their
creation, and they do it. I do not see how that is "unethical".
Perhaps
you could explain that? Why can't the creator allow his/her creation
to be used in the manner given for Free software?
Furthermore, you seem to equate "Free" in "Free software" with "free"
in "free beer". This is wrong: "Free" as in "Free Speech" is the more
appropriate interpretation.
According to your code of ethics, everything must be distributed for
a high price to avoid "hurting" someone else's business. I do not
see the reason for this.
Tayssir John Gabbour
> To put some flesh on the bare bones of this proposition. Imagine if
> someone were to use their comfortably paid university position to
> produce, (e.g), a free GPL algebra tutor, thus putting out of business
> a struggling company trying to sell their own version. Would this be
> ethical? Is it not the ethical equivalent of dumping?
I personally think this as a false dichotomy. Certainly it would be
nice to release the sourcecode freely, but our current system of
consumption and production makes this difficult. Perhaps the system
itself is unethical? Or at least it should go the way of many other
dominant systems of the past which have been obsoleted, including
those which had lasted for millenia?
Perhaps that is why there are so many flamewars on this subject.
Just a thought.
PS: There are many forms of uncompensated work which nevertheless
benefit people. Free software is only one example.
PPS: Hacker culture has this one word...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative)
Joachim Durchholz
Depends.
If you say "any use of taxpayer money that does not follow the purpose
of that money to the letter", then yes it is theft - as is any
festivities or whatever other resources the university is spending for
purposes other than education.
If "converting the money into something that benefits society" is
on-purpose enough, then no it's not theft.
Though that's going off on a tangent to what the OP was asking about.
Regards,
Jo
William Ahern
> A long time ago, sometime in the 70s I believe, a friend of mine used
> to work for RCA. Right at that time Japan was expanding its
> electronics market in the Pacific and the Japanese were capturing the
> market from RCA by selling below cost. My friend bitterly condemned
> these practices as unethical.
> This practice, called 'dumping', is generally condemned, and can often
> be prosecuted under law. It has been used and criticised as such on
> several occasions e.g. w.r.t. the dumping of subsidised EC surplus
> produce on poor African nations, on Rockeller's ruthless expansion of
> Standard Oil by undercutting.
Many economists will tell you that there's no such thing as dumping. It's a
myth--or more generously, a misunderstanding--about how free markets work.
> In the defence of open source software, Richard Stallman was willing
> to condemn closed source software as unethical. Now here is a
> thought. Is it rather *free software which is unethical* because the
> supplier is dumping a free product from the position of having a
> subsidy?
Excellent form. Nice twist. You should run for election, or start a church.
> To put some flesh on the bare bones of this proposition. Imagine if
> someone were to use their comfortably paid university position to
> produce, (e.g), a free GPL algebra tutor, thus putting out of business
> a struggling company trying to sell their own version. Would this be
> ethical? Is it not the ethical equivalent of dumping?
With that information, I can't say. There's no "lost value". Expenditures
the company forwent in sourcing such a product might go to pay the salaries
of some other position, or pad the pockets of some billionaire, reducing the
price of capital. Nothing here tells me whether one manner of production is
more efficient than another; all I have to go on is experience and anecdotal
ewvidence, which tells me that Free Softwate tends to be of higher quality,
and lower cost, than closed-source, proprietary software. In that case, Free
Software has the _potential_ to create more jobs.
If your beef is with the structure of employment, well, that's a political
issue, not an economic issue, per se. Political societies manipulate the job
market for supposed social gain all the time, including, as you intimate,
paying for comfortable university positions. Maybe you should lobby for a
law banning people from distributing software without a reciprocal monetary
fee.
> This is posed as an open question, and a fairly important one (hence
> the cross post). You should not assume that I'm against free/open
> source from my posing this question, although I'm willing to 'play
> black' (attack OS/free) in this thread if the responses are too one
> sided.
The only logical ground--firm or not--for the dumping argument is an ethical
contention that people have, or should have, a right to some particular kind
of employment. It gets fuzzy after that. I'm not sure what kind of
employment we're talking about. Such an argument, similar to Stallman's,
touches on ideas about personal autonomy, and power relationships. Now, what
it means to lead a "moral life", I'm not sure. As an individual, I'd like to
think leading a moral life means making small decisions, every day, which
directly benefit the people around me, or at least people I can have a
direct relationship with, no matter how remote they might be physically, or
whether I know them personally. I sincerely hope that morality doesn't
require me, as an individual, to run monte carlo simulations. In that sense,
writing and supporting Free Software, IMO, directly benefits the people
around me. _Not_ writing Free Software, well, that certainly doesn't
directly benefit the people around me. Maybe, in some larger scheme, its
preferable. That would seriously complicate my life, though. Since I'm an
optimist, and have this crazy idea that civilization in 2008 is vastly more
evolved than civiliation circa 1008, I tend to think think that there's a
nexus between morality and common sense (where common sense means an
intution that I can contribute positively to society merely by contributing
positively to my neighbors). If there wasn't, I can't see how we could've
arrived at this level of sophistication.
gavino
> A long time ago, sometime in the 70s I believe, a friend of mine used
> to work for RCA. Right at that time Japan was expanding its
> electronics market in the Pacific and the Japanese were capturing the
> market from RCA by selling below cost. My friend bitterly condemned
> these practices as unethical.
>
> This practice, called 'dumping', is generally condemned, and can often
> be prosecuted under law. It has been used and criticised as such on
> several occasions e.g. w.r.t. the dumping of subsidised EC surplus
> produce on poor African nations, on Rockeller's ruthless expansion of
> Standard Oil by undercutting.
>
> to condemn closed source software as unethical. Now here is a
> thought. Is it rather *free software which is unethical* because the
> supplier is dumping a free product from the position of having a
> subsidy?
>
> someone were to use their comfortably paid university position to
> produce, (e.g), a free GPL algebra tutor, thus putting out of business
> a struggling company trying to sell their own version. Would this be
> ethical? Is it not the ethical equivalent of dumping?
>
> the cross post). You should not assume that I'm against free/open
> source from my posing this question, although I'm willing to 'play
> black' (attack OS/free) in this thread if the responses are too one
> sided.
>
dumping is a silly concept
free trade is good
free software is good
software patents are as silly as patents on math or english
yes amazon sued barnes & noble for programmign a shopping cart (hardly
an amazon invention )
http://money.cnn.com/1999/10/22/bizbuzz/amazon/
as long as we have keynesians teaching economics, who advocate things
liek deficit spending to help and economy, we will have silly policies
studies showing how much non free software costs people in
integration costs, supposrt of integratin which would not be nedded if
free software was ued, and lobbying and payoff in government would be
interesting
gavino
> In article <QK-dnWj3R9L6BlDanZ2dnUVZ8vKdn...@bt.com>,
> Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>
>
> > profit maximisation. Open Source is generally a "goodness of their hearts"
> > phenomenon. People give their software away because they want other people
> > to be able to share it. They don't do it to make a profit. (Or at least,
> > if they do, they need to have a think about their pricing!)
>
> Not that I really want to fan these off-topic flames, but this is just
> factually incorrect. People generally do not write open-source software
> out of altruism. They do it because they are hoping for some form of
> compensation, like the ability to use other people's open-source
> software, professional recognition and respect, or monetary compensation
> in the form of employment, contracts, or investments in some commercial
> venture. Whether this motivation is wise or ethical is a separate
> question, but the fact is that most open-source developers do have a
> profit motive, even if only indirectly.
>
self interest is inseperable from being human
gavino
I love the bsd license----take all the code you want, we will jsut
write more-----
Barry Margolin
<33479c88-3188-4005...@e10g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,
Kaz Kylheku <kkyl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ah, if there is a subsidy, that is unethical. That is to say, the
> subsidy itself, not what you do with it. (Government) subsidy means
> stealing wealth from one to give to another. Using stolen wealth for
> any purpose is unethical.
But what if the goverment subsidizes all the companies equally, so that
the country at a whole will have a competitive advantage against other
countries? This is presumably for the benefit of everyone in the
country, so it's not giving the stolen wealth to another. One of the
jobs of a government is to promote the country. This is in effect a
reverse tariff, although it's not negotiated by treaty like a valid
tariff.
--
Barry Margolin, bar...@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***
Joachim Durchholz
Am Dienstag, den 04.03.2008, 14:12 -0800 schrieb William Ahern:
> Many economists will tell you that there's no such thing as dumping. It's a
> myth--or more generously, a misunderstanding--about how free markets work.
Many other economists will tell you that's ideological drivel.
Ideally, in a free market, everybody charges the minimum price needed to
provide some goods or services, optimally allocating resources in the
process.
When dumping, a vendor sells for less than that price.
Even in an ideal market, this would lead to nonoptimal resource
allocation. Other than that, the vendor would soon go out of business,
leaving the market to competitors, so there would be no long-term
problems (though that may be ignoring relevant short-term effect - but
that's yet another can of worms).
In a real market, it's a ploy on market entry barriers. By undercutting
all reasonable prices, competitors give up on that market, so the
dumping vendor remains the last on his market. After that, he can raise
the prices above the true market price, as long as he keeps it low
enough that the usual market entry barriers keep new competition from
arriving.
So the practice of dumping is an exploitation of one situation where
real markets diverge from the theoretic ideals. At the end of such a
dumping maneuver, the market is even father from the ideal.
(That's the reason why dumping is considered illegal. Not because giving
gifts is unethical or something, but because it makes markets work less
well. It's the same kind of rationale that makes fraud illegal in most
countries.)
> Since I'm an
> optimist, and have this crazy idea that civilization in 2008 is vastly more
> evolved than civiliation circa 1008,
In fact, "fair" pricing for various goods was subject to intense debate
in medieval times. So the issue isn't particularly new, it's just the
economic price relationships that have changed: food, lodging and
transportation have become vastly cheaper, so today, finding a fair
price for food isn't the matter of life and death that it could be in
1008. (And, of course, medieval people didn't have the theory for the
free market. It didn't matter much though, transportation was so
expensive that no real free market existed anyway.)
Regards,
Jo
Barry Margolin
<33479c88-3188-4005...@e10g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,
Kaz Kylheku <kkyl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If you want to ``buy'' customers, and can afford it, you should be
> able to do that. You're competing with your cash base.
Ah, yes, the Golden Rule: He who has the gold, makes the rules.
>
> You're obviously better than that other company, because you can sell
> below cost for the next couple of years, and still make the payrolls,
> pay the leases on capital, service debts---in short, do everything
> else required to stay afloat.
>
> It's not like you're drowning puppies, or dumping toxic waste.
>
> Ultimately, the choice is up to the customer. It's the customer's
> behavior that they want the cheapest thing. They buy it knowing that
> they are undermining competition, which will reduce their choice in
> the future. The undercutting company will wipe out the others and then
> jack up prices. Since the consumers are willing to live with that, let
> them live with it.
In an ideal world, where most customers were farsighted enough to
anticipate this consequence, this might be a reasonable attitude. But
in the real world most decisions are made on short-term interests. Few
people will pay 10% more now, in the hope that this will prevent 15%
inflation down the road. Especially since they can't even tell for sure
that buying from the cheap guy really will put the others out of
business. A bird in the hand really IS better than 2 in the bush.
We would prefer that vendors compete on the merits of their products,
not the depth of their pockets. If a company makes really great
gadgets, and they become rich selling those gadgets, this is deserved.
But if they decide that they also want to corner the market on widgets,
but they don't make very good widgets, it doesn't seem right that they
should use all their gadget profits to undercut the other widget vendors
and drive them out of business.
You say this is the consumers' fault -- they knowingly bought the
inferior widgets. But they make a reasonable economic choice at the
time, buying something 90% as good for 85% the price. The problem is
that once the competitors are gone, GadgetCo can raise the prices of
their widgets, while not improving on their quality.
In general, anti-trust laws would not be necessary at all if we could
expect the marketplace to protect itself against these eventualities.
And social security wouldn't be necessary if everyone saved for
retirement. And people who lost money to con men were just stupid,
right? We could just live our entire lives based on "caveat emptor",
but we think it's better to have some watchdogs protecting us.
Mark VandeWettering
On 2008-03-04, Mark Tarver <dr.mt...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
> A long time ago, sometime in the 70s I believe, a friend of mine used
> to work for RCA. Right at that time Japan was expanding its
> electronics market in the Pacific and the Japanese were capturing the
> market from RCA by selling below cost. My friend bitterly condemned
> these practices as unethical.
>
> This practice, called 'dumping', is generally condemned, and can often
> be prosecuted under law. It has been used and criticised as such on
> several occasions e.g. w.r.t. the dumping of subsidised EC surplus
> produce on poor African nations, on Rockeller's ruthless expansion of
> Standard Oil by undercutting.
>
> In the defence of open source software, Richard Stallman was willing
> to condemn closed source software as unethical. Now here is a
> thought. Is it rather *free software which is unethical* because the
> supplier is dumping a free product from the position of having a
> subsidy?
No.
> To put some flesh on the bare bones of this proposition. Imagine if
> someone were to use their comfortably paid university position to
> produce, (e.g), a free GPL algebra tutor, thus putting out of business
> a struggling company trying to sell their own version. Would this be
> ethical? Is it not the ethical equivalent of dumping?
The difference is that when companies dump, it is obviously to eliminate
competition so that they can then raise prices in an environment of
lowered competition. That is neither the goal, nor the effect of
open source software.
Mark Tarver
1. Producing FOSS is OK (unlike dumping) because it is done with good
intentions.
Quote
"What you call "dumping" was a medium term strategy for profit
maximisation. Open Source is generally a "goodness of their hearts"
phenomenon."
Unquote
This comes up most often as a defence of FOSS. It is based on anti-
consequentialism which states that it is the goodness of the intention
that determines whether the action is right and not the goodness of
the consequences (consequentialism). See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism
I'm not sure about this one. In law, intention does count in cases of
(e.g.)
murder where intent to cause death has to be established before a
guilty verdict can be returned. However indifference to the probable
or possible consequences of action leading to harm can be sufficient
to lead to the conviction of manslaughter or criminal negligence.
In this case if a person produces FOSS using tax money and is
indifferent to the consequences of bankruptcy of a small private
company who is trying to operate without that support, is his intent
that noble? This is not an idle question because FOSS started
(allegedly) as a feud between Richard Stallman and Symbolics w.r.t.
sharing code. RMS was reverse-engineering Symbolics code and FOSSing
it, making it difficult for his former buddies to make a buck.
Personally I've been very much on the side of Symbolics (now extinct)
over this one. And a lot of FOSS is reverse-engineered or copied from
commercial systems.
Its interesting that RMS's position on FOSS is based on utilitarianism
- which is very consequentialist. See point 3.
2. Producing FOSS is ok because people can always go on to buy the
better thing.
The problem is that the FOSS can be so good that people never buy the
better thing.Or the betterness of the better thing is not enough to
tempt people to shell out. In case of point I have an excellent free
cribbage program which means that I will never buy one. My friend
Willi using the free Bloodshed C++ dev environment and is perfectly
happy.
3. FOSS is great because it makes people's lives easier.
Quote
"As a poor student for most of my life, I have generally preferred the
free software model. "
Unquote
This is straight utilitarianism - greatest happiness of the greatest
number (particularly me). However one thing you've got to grasp about
utilitarianism - *it is completely inconsistent with the idea of
individual rights*. An individual has no rights because the welfare
of the majority must always prevail. For that reason RMS denies the
author of the software any rights over his own work.
Generally the most benign governments have adulterated utilitarianism
with
unalienable rights.
4. FOSS is OK because people have the right to do with their time as
they
please.
Quote
"Free software is released _by it's creator_ as such. The creator
makes a decision that that is what they want to do with their
creation, and they do it."
"As I see it, if I want to spend my own money and resources making
guitars and giving them away, it is my own business and there is
nothing wrong with it, even though some guitar companies might not
like it."
Unquote
This is a version of extreme social libertarianism; everybody should
be free
to do their own thing - whatever. But this doctrine leads to an
unacceptable
Hobbesian free-for-all which no sensible person could accept.
The doctrine that most people would accept is 'People have the right
to do with their time as they please so long as others are not hurt by
so doing'. The argument against FOSS is that people are hurt by so
doing.
5. OS does not mean 'free'. Think 'free' as in 'free speech', not as
in
'free beer' (RMS).
Quote
"you should perhaps concentrate on Free software, not "Open Source",
which are different things."
UnQuote
My argument is with 'free' not OS - but free is almost always OS too;
however ...
This is an RMS red-herring. There are two senses of 'X is free' - as
applied to commodities (sense 1: free = zero cost) and applied to
people (sense 2: free = free to act). 'Free speech' is just a turn of
phrase; it is not the speech that is free but the person who is free
to speak. There is no fundamental sense 2: application of 'free' to
non-sentient objects.
It is true that *conceptually* OS <> free. However in practice
selling OS is
often hard because there is nothing to stop the recipient making a
buck by
reselling at a lower cost. Thus the price asympotically tends to zero
and
so OS is often made free at the outset. The alternative is to try to
hedge
the OS by awkward and unpopular restrictions about what you can do
with it.
FOSS is not exactly a pleonasm, but it almost is.
6. If proprietory closed source cannot compete with FOSS - too bad
for them!
Quote
"The world does not owe software company shareholders a living. If
software
houses can't produce software that is sufficiently superior to free
software to justify the price they charge, then they don't really
deserve to succeed."
Unquote
Compare: if African farmers cannot compete against highly subsidised
EC food, too bad for them.
And thats it from me for now - nearly midnight here.
David B. Benson
Especially testing code for which the user interface is an important
component.
I don't just mean removing all the insects, but also whether the
software is actually easily usable by the intended user community.
The time honored tchnique is to throw it over the wall to a community
of so-called beta testers, or even custoners, who then actually do the
majority of the testing. So giving the software away, open source and
all that, is a technique for building software which works really
rather well most of the time.
The ethical engineer is to pay attention to product safety and
realiablity as well as fitness for a particular purpose. In software
engineering, usually safety is less of an issue than security, but the
responsibilies are much the same.
So when I finally 'finish' the beta release of the program editor and
also functional programming language I am working on, I feel I am
behaving in the most ethical manner by making it freely available as
open source software. I hope this will lead to more polished, more
usable versions, again freely available to a (hopefully wider)
community of those who find my software to enhance their performance
(primarily in teaching and learning).
Joost Diepenmaat
> In this case if a person produces FOSS using tax money and is
> indifferent to the consequences of bankruptcy of a small private
> company who is trying to operate without that support, is his intent
> that noble?
You seem to be objecting to FOSS when its being produced using tax
money, while quite a lot of it is being produces without any tax money
at all, and the concequenses are just the same.
> This is not an idle question because FOSS started
> (allegedly) as a feud between Richard Stallman and Symbolics w.r.t.
> sharing code. RMS was reverse-engineering Symbolics code and FOSSing
> it, making it difficult for his former buddies to make a buck.
> Personally I've been very much on the side of Symbolics (now extinct)
> over this one. And a lot of FOSS is reverse-engineered or copied from
> commercial systems.
So is a lot of for-profit/commercial/non-free software. So What?
> Its interesting that RMS's position on FOSS is based on utilitarianism
> - which is very consequentialist. See point 3.
RMS is an extremist. Personally, I think he's usually on the ball, but
he can can be wrong. In any case, he personally only accounts for a
minute fraction of all FOSS code out there (except for his
popularisation of the method).
> 2. Producing FOSS is ok because people can always go on to buy the
> better thing.
>
> The problem is that the FOSS can be so good that people never buy the
> better thing.Or the betterness of the better thing is not enough to
> tempt people to shell out. In case of point I have an excellent free
> cribbage program which means that I will never buy one. My friend
> Willi using the free Bloodshed C++ dev environment and is perfectly
> happy.
What's your point?
> 3. FOSS is great because it makes people's lives easier.
> Quote
> "As a poor student for most of my life, I have generally preferred the
> free software model. "
> Unquote
>
> This is straight utilitarianism - greatest happiness of the greatest
> number (particularly me). However one thing you've got to grasp about
> utilitarianism - *it is completely inconsistent with the idea of
> individual rights*. An individual has no rights because the welfare
> of the majority must always prevail. For that reason RMS denies the
> author of the software any rights over his own work.
No, that's just why some people like it. Nobody's forced to make people
happy here. Also, RMS *does not* deny the author any rights, he makes
the claim that some uses of those rights are immoral. He doesn't make
the law (and I guess I'm glad about that) . He's against copyright, but
at the same time he's found a pretty clever use for it.
> Generally the most benign governments have adulterated utilitarianism
> with
> unalienable rights.
Like copyright? I have the unalienable right to make software and give
it away. Wether it makes people happy or not is irrelevant.
> 4. FOSS is OK because people have the right to do with their time as
> they
> please.
>
> Quote
> "Free software is released _by it's creator_ as such. The creator
> makes a decision that that is what they want to do with their
> creation, and they do it."
>
> "As I see it, if I want to spend my own money and resources making
> guitars and giving them away, it is my own business and there is
> nothing wrong with it, even though some guitar companies might not
> like it."
> Unquote
>
> This is a version of extreme social libertarianism; everybody should
> be free
> to do their own thing - whatever. But this doctrine leads to an
> unacceptable
> Hobbesian free-for-all which no sensible person could accept.
>
> The doctrine that most people would accept is 'People have the right
> to do with their time as they please so long as others are not hurt by
> so doing'. The argument against FOSS is that people are hurt by so
> doing.
How is that any different from competition by for-profit companies,
except that FOSS is more efficient/cheaper? People don't have the right
to make a profit, they're just free to make a profit if they
can. Companies don't have a "right to live". People do.
So what?
> 6. If proprietory closed source cannot compete with FOSS - too bad
> for them!
>
> Quote
> "The world does not owe software company shareholders a living. If
> software
> houses can't produce software that is sufficiently superior to free
> software to justify the price they charge, then they don't really
> deserve to succeed."
> Unquote
>
> Compare: if African farmers cannot compete against highly subsidised
> EC food, too bad for them.
The EC is not starving poor african software producers with free
software. And if they were, those africans could just take the software
and build their own stuff on top of it.
--
Joost Diepenmaat | blog: http://joost.zeekat.nl/ | work: http://zeekat.nl/
Joost Diepenmaat
> In this case if a person produces FOSS using tax money and is
> indifferent to the consequences of bankruptcy of a small private
> company who is trying to operate without that support, is his intent
> that noble?
I forgot to mention: as far as I can see, in your argument it *doesn't
matter* if the software is released as FOSS or sold for a closed
gazillion bucks as closed software. Your argument is against publicly
funded software competing with privately owned software.
In other words, you're putting up a straw man.
Mark Tarver
I came upon this great quote by Kent Pitman who is obviously playing
black too.
"On the side of budget, I have to say that the open source marketplace
is I think the single greatest threat to forward advance in computer
science. By giving technology away, programmers drive down the price
of things. A consequence of this is that it's hard to command a decent
price for programming products, and that means fewer dollars to pay
for jobs for programmers, if indeed programming can be done as a job
at all. Free market business will squeeze every dollar out of
something that it can, and if it finds that people will program for
free, it will make sure that no one ever gets paid for programming.
Further, I think it's mostly younger and more vulnerable programmers
who are idealists who subscribe to the open source rhetoric, while
they are in school and at the peak of their game, thinking that
earning a few extra dollars is immoral. Later in life, when one may
want some leisure time for family, or one may get ill, or one may want
to contribute the fruits of one's labor to charity, the true price of
having given away so much of value for free early in one's life is
most likely to be felt, when one can't really take it back.
It seems there is an endless supply of youth, and so the free software
movement continues, for now, to plod along. As it does, though, I
think it slowly and quietly strangles the lifeblood of dollars from a
community that could be using extra dollars to invest in its future.
Instead, since its own dogma suggests that programmers be paid like
peasants, compensated for a day's work but not for any value beyond
that, there is no slack to plan for future growth, for
experimentation, nor even for human error, for medical sickness, nor
any other kind of non-task-oriented thing. Programmers are seen as
replaceable cogs, and are undervalued because management values only
what it pays dearly for, and it is not forced to pay dearly for this.
This is not to say I've never given away a free program in my life.
Just that I don't believe the doing of such a deed should be a way of
life."
Mark
Joost Diepenmaat
> On 4 Mar, 23:51, Mark Tarver <dr.mtar...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
> I came upon this great quote by Kent Pitman who is obviously playing
> black too.
Yeah he tends to do that. On the other hand, he still releases some OSS.
> "On the side of budget, I have to say that the open source marketplace
> is I think the single greatest threat to forward advance in computer
> science. By giving technology away, programmers drive down the price
> of things. A consequence of this is that it's hard to command a decent
> price for programming products, and that means fewer dollars to pay
> for jobs for programmers, if indeed programming can be done as a job
> at all. Free market business will squeeze every dollar out of
> something that it can, and if it finds that people will program for
> free, it will make sure that no one ever gets paid for programming.
[etc etc etc]
None of that is unethical.
Joost Diepenmaat
> Yeah he tends to do that. On the other hand, he still releases some OSS.
Oh wait, I always get confused with Ken Tilton. Never mind.
CBFalconer
>
... snip ...
>
> In the defence of open source software, Richard Stallman was
> willing to condemn closed source software as unethical. Now here
> is a thought. Is it rather *free software which is unethical*
> because the supplier is dumping a free product from the position
> of having a subsidy?
No, because the seller doesn't have to publish his code (assuming
he is not appropriating some GPL or similarly licensed code). If
his implementation is appreciably better, he will sell to those who
want the better performance, etc. But he should not be protected
by patents, only by trade secrets.
--
[mail]: Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
[page]: <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>
Try the download section.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Mikel Bancroft
> Ultimately, the choice is up to the customer. It's the customer's
> behavior that they want the cheapest thing. They buy it knowing that
> they are undermining competition, which will reduce their choice in
> the future. The undercutting company will wipe out the others and then
> jack up prices. Since the consumers are willing to live with that, let
> them live with it.
The presumption that consumers behave in any sort of unified way, and
bear the responsibility/consequences of their (unified) actions, is a
generalization in the extreme.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority for why the
attitude espoused above is such a dangerous one.
-M
Ron Garret
<303cba1b-b991-4b9f...@s13g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
mike3 <mike...@yahoo.com> wrote:
But even Free Software (in the sense that Richard Stallman uses the
term) isn't written out of altruism, it's written out of a desire for
personal freedom. And indeed using Free Software (in the RMS sense)
comes with a significant cost, to wit, the requirement that any
derivative works also be Free Software. So even Free Software is a
market exchange, and its authors are compensated. The only difference
is that the compensation comes in a form other than cash because the
authors of Free Software don't want cash, they want freedom. But there
is no altruism involved.
rg
vish...@gmail.com
And some scientists will tell you that the earth is 4000 years old.
> Ideally, in a free market, everybody charges the minimum price needed to
> provide some goods or services, optimally allocating resources in the
> process.
Not necessarily. The consumer does not care what the cost of
production is. He only cares about the marginal utility of the product
to him.
> dumping vendor remains the last on his market. After that, he can raise
> the prices above the true market price, as long as he keeps it low
> enough that the usual market entry barriers keep new competition from
> arriving.
In other words, he is able to sell the product for a lower cost than
the competition will be able to. Sounds like a good deal to the
consumer.
> free market. It didn't matter much though, transportation was so
> expensive that no real free market existed anyway.)
A free market is just people voluntarily exchanging goods and
services. Whether this is silk traders from 500BC, oil traders in 2008
or intergalactic gold traders in 3000, they all follow the same
principle - that division of work and specialization enabled by trade
raises productivity and hence wealth.
Andrew Reilly
> This practice, called 'dumping', is generally condemned, and can often
> be prosecuted under law. It has been used and criticised as such on
> several occasions e.g. w.r.t. the dumping of subsidised EC surplus
> produce on poor African nations, on Rockeller's ruthless expansion of
> Standard Oil by undercutting.
>
> In the defence of open source software, Richard Stallman was willing to
> condemn closed source software as unethical. Now here is a thought. Is
> it rather *free software which is unethical* because the supplier is
> dumping a free product from the position of having a subsidy?
Is blogging (or posting to usenet) unethical because it is dumping a free
product where other suppliers (publishers of newspapers, journals,
magazines) have traditionally been able to charge a toll?
To what extent is programming and publishing free software different from
blogging or posting to usenet?
Different only in degree, or different in kind?
Is publishing a small modification or patch to an already freely
published source code something different, or more of the same?
I suspect that the correct answer depends on the specific details in any
case.
Cheers,
--
Andrew
Ken Tilton
Joost Diepenmaat wrote:
> Joost Diepenmaat <jo...@zeekat.nl> writes:
>
>
>>Yeah he tends to do that. On the other hand, he still releases some OSS.
>
>
> Oh wait, I always get confused with Ken Tilton. Never mind.
>
Understandable. My client-selected username on one contract was "kent"
(I'll let you guess their algorithm) so one of the other contractors
liked to address me as Clark. I always addressed him as "Lois". He
seemed to enjoy that.
hth, kenny
--
http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
"In the morning, hear the Way;
in the evening, die content!"
-- Confucius
vish...@gmail.com
> not the depth of their pockets. If a company makes really great
> gadgets, and they become rich selling those gadgets, this is deserved.
> But if they decide that they also want to corner the market on widgets,
> but they don't make very good widgets, it doesn't seem right that they
> should use all their gadget profits to undercut the other widget vendors
> and drive them out of business.
Would you complain if the company was able to undercut its competitors
due to a manufacturing/technological breakthrough (i.e., increased
productivity)?
Of course not.
So why complain about a company that is able to undercut its
competitors by giving away money? Money is just a store of
productivity. Why does it matter that the productivity gain was not
made in the same industry/in the same time period/by the same
company?
> You say this is the consumers' fault -- they knowingly bought the
> inferior widgets. But they make a reasonable economic choice at the
> time, buying something 90% as good for 85% the price. The problem is
> that once the competitors are gone, GadgetCo can raise the prices of
> their widgets, while not improving on their quality.
No company can sell a product for more than what it is worth.
If they try to sell it for more, they will draw competitors. And the
competition need not be in the same industry.
The lesson here is that the marginal utility of the product is what
determines prices. Nothing else.
Ken Tilton
Mark Tarver wrote:
> To put some flesh on the bare bones of this proposition. Imagine if
> someone were to use their comfortably paid university position to
> produce, (e.g), a free GPL algebra tutor...
Imagine this*: http://www.geogebra.org/cms/
Bartenders school, here I come...
:)
kenny
* Not sure about that name, tho. k
Bob Felts
[... trimmed followups to just c.l.l. Not sure why ...]
>
> Like my old man said about people who wanted to censor nudity on TV.
> If you don't like it - change channel and be upset somewhere else.
>
If I have to choice to pay for that channel or not then I agree with
you. But public broadcast is a different matter. If I want public
nudity I'll go to a nude beach (and have the devil of a time explaining
it to my wife and daughter). I don't want it on Main St.
Desperately trying to tie this back into Lisp, are off-topic postings
ethical? Are you asking me to leave c.l.l. if I don't like
non-Lisp-related discussions?
Bob Felts
[...]
>
> self interest is inseperable from being human
Well then, so much for love (which is the true opposite of
self-interest).
Ken Tilton
Ken Tilton wrote:
>
>
> Mark Tarver wrote:
>
>> To put some flesh on the bare bones of this proposition. Imagine if
>> someone were to use their comfortably paid university position to
>> produce, (e.g), a free GPL algebra tutor...
>
>
> Imagine this*: http://www.geogebra.org/cms/
>
> Bartenders school, here I come...
Hang on... they use Java... Game on!
:)
kenny
Joachim Durchholz
Am Dienstag, den 04.03.2008, 18:47 -0800 schrieb vish...@gmail.com:
> > We would prefer that vendors compete on the merits of their products,
> > not the depth of their pockets. If a company makes really great
> > gadgets, and they become rich selling those gadgets, this is deserved.
> > But if they decide that they also want to corner the market on widgets,
> > but they don't make very good widgets, it doesn't seem right that they
> > should use all their gadget profits to undercut the other widget vendors
> > and drive them out of business.
>
> Would you complain if the company was able to undercut its competitors
> due to a manufacturing/technological breakthrough (i.e., increased
> productivity)?
>
> Of course not.
>
> So why complain about a company that is able to undercut its
> competitors by giving away money? Money is just a store of
> productivity. Why does it matter that the productivity gain was not
> made in the same industry/in the same time period/by the same
> company?
In the former case, it's a long-term net win for the customers.
In the latter case, it's a long-term net loss for the customers.
And since I'm a customer most of the time, I opt for the latter, as
would be expected for a rational individual.
> > You say this is the consumers' fault -- they knowingly bought the
> > inferior widgets. But they make a reasonable economic choice at the
> > time, buying something 90% as good for 85% the price. The problem is
> > that once the competitors are gone, GadgetCo can raise the prices of
> > their widgets, while not improving on their quality.
>
> No company can sell a product for more than what it is worth.
>
> If they try to sell it for more, they will draw competitors. And the
> competition need not be in the same industry.
>
> The lesson here is that the marginal utility of the product is what
> determines prices. Nothing else.
You're ignoring the effects from market entry barriers here.
If entering a market costs $1,000,000 for advertising, hiring people,
buying equipment and such, then anybody trying to compete with the
monopolist is wagering this amount of money on his ability to outsmart
the monopolist.
The problem is that the monopolist will immediately react to
competition, by lowering his prices again. As long as the monopolist is
able to dump, attacking one of his monopolies is pointless and will earn
the competitor just a loss of his investments.
So in this situation, the price isn't determined by marginal utility,
it's determined by who has the deeper pockets.
Regards,
Jo
Barry Margolin
<fe562cfa-f51e-4512...@13g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>,
vish...@gmail.com wrote:
> > We would prefer that vendors compete on the merits of their products,
> > not the depth of their pockets. If a company makes really great
> > gadgets, and they become rich selling those gadgets, this is deserved.
> > But if they decide that they also want to corner the market on widgets,
> > but they don't make very good widgets, it doesn't seem right that they
> > should use all their gadget profits to undercut the other widget vendors
> > and drive them out of business.
>
> Would you complain if the company was able to undercut its competitors
> due to a manufacturing/technological breakthrough (i.e., increased
> productivity)?
No, but in this case the product is comparable to the competitors, only
the price is lower. My hypothetical was about INFERIOR products.
>
> Of course not.
>
> So why complain about a company that is able to undercut its
> competitors by giving away money? Money is just a store of
> productivity. Why does it matter that the productivity gain was not
> made in the same industry/in the same time period/by the same
> company?
My complaint wasn't about the difference in industries, it was about the
fact that they're dumping CRAP. And they're getting people to buy the
crap by selling it really cheaply compared to the good stuff.
>
> > You say this is the consumers' fault -- they knowingly bought the
> > inferior widgets. But they make a reasonable economic choice at the
> > time, buying something 90% as good for 85% the price. The problem is
> > that once the competitors are gone, GadgetCo can raise the prices of
> > their widgets, while not improving on their quality.
>
> No company can sell a product for more than what it is worth.
That's true in a free market. If there's a monopoly, customers have
little choice -- pay what the company asks, or do without.
> If they try to sell it for more, they will draw competitors. And the
> competition need not be in the same industry.
But the advantage of having killed off all the competition is that it
will take time for new competitors to get up to speed. When they do,
you go back into dumping mode, and kill them off again.
Richard Heathfield
> Well, I'm playing black here.
>
> 1. Producing FOSS is OK (unlike dumping) because it is done with good
> intentions.
>
> Quote
> "What you call "dumping" was a medium term strategy for profit
> maximisation. Open Source is generally a "goodness of their hearts"
> phenomenon."
> Unquote
>
> This comes up most often as a defence of FOSS. It is based on anti-
> consequentialism which states that it is the goodness of the intention
> that determines whether the action is right and not the goodness of
> the consequences (consequentialism).
Correct. An action can be "good" (well-intentioned) and yet unwise
("stupid"). Here, we're talking about ethics, which is to do with intent,
not consequences.
<snip>
> In this case if a person produces FOSS using tax money and is
> indifferent to the consequences of bankruptcy of a small private
> company who is trying to operate without that support, is his intent
> that noble?
Stop Right There. If a person produces *closed-source* software using tax
money, what changes?
<snip>
> The problem is that the FOSS can be so good that people never buy the
> better thing.Or the betterness of the better thing is not enough to
> tempt people to shell out. In case of point I have an excellent free
> cribbage program which means that I will never buy one.
And why should you? And why should anyone bother to waste their time
writing one, if what already exists is excellent? Let them write something
innovative instead.
> However one thing you've got to grasp about
> utilitarianism - *it is completely inconsistent with the idea of
> individual rights*. An individual has no rights because the welfare
> of the majority must always prevail. For that reason RMS denies the
> author of the software any rights over his own work.
If the author truly has rights over his own work, RMS (who, last time I
checked, wasn't world dictator) is not in a position to deny him those
rights. If someone *chooses* to GPL the fruit of their programming labour,
that is their choice. If I write some really spiffy software and then
choose *not* to share it with the world, that's allowed, even if a greater
good would be served by my sharing it.
> The doctrine that most people would accept is 'People have the right
> to do with their time as they please so long as others are not hurt by
> so doing'. The argument against FOSS is that people are hurt by so
> doing.
Let's just assume for a moment that you're right, and that you're hurting
me economically by writing free software because you might conceivably be
depriving me of customers (in the same way that if you write expensive
closed-source software, you might also be depriving me of customers). But
if you drive a car, you hurt me *directly* by poisoning the atmosphere
which I must breathe to live. The second hurt is far greater than the
first.
The existence of one evil is not a reason not to oppose the existence of
another, but it makes sense to favour using resources on tackling the
greater evil. So - are you about to give up your car so that I can breathe
freely? No? I thought not.
<snip>
> My argument is with 'free' not OS - but free is almost always OS too;
> however ...
If you don't like the idea of free software, don't produce any and don't
use any. That's your right. I don't like the idea of expensive tat, so I
reserve the right not to use any, and I try not to produce any!
> Quote
> "The world does not owe software company shareholders a living. If
> software
> houses can't produce software that is sufficiently superior to free
> software to justify the price they charge, then they don't really
> deserve to succeed."
> Unquote
>
> Compare: if African farmers cannot compete against highly subsidised
> EC food, too bad for them.
That's a lousy example for several reasons:
1) If they can't sell their food to us, at least they can usefully eat it
themselves;
2) In fact they /can/ sell their food to us, because they sell the kind of
food we don't grow in Europe and yet are prepared to pay for;
1) The African economy was immorally plundered for booty and slaves over
hundreds of years - it's hard to compete when someone keeps bashing you
over the head and grabbing your wallet.
If that's the best you can do for the Dark Side, it's clear that your heart
isn't in it. You might want to grab an X-Wing and help us out here - we
could use a good pilot.
--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Richard Heathfield
> So even Free Software is a
> market exchange, and its authors are compensated. The only difference
> is that the compensation comes in a form other than cash because the
> authors of Free Software don't want cash, they want freedom. But there
> is no altruism involved.
Similarly, mothers don't /really/ love their children. It's all to do with
DNA. And when people risk their lives diving into rivers to save complete
strangers, what they're really after is the Hero Badge.
Yeah, right.
Joachim Durchholz
Am Dienstag, den 04.03.2008, 15:51 -0800 schrieb Mark Tarver:
> 1. Producing FOSS is OK (unlike dumping) because it is done with good
> intentions.
> This comes up most often as a defence of FOSS. It is based on anti-
> consequentialism which states that it is the goodness of the intention
> that determines whether the action is right and not the goodness of
> the consequences (consequentialism). See
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism
This may come up often, but it is a misconception, I think.
The real pro-FOSS argument here is that since the marginal cost of
distributing software is almost negligible compared to software
creation, the usual market laws don't apply anyway.
> In this case if a person produces FOSS using tax money and is
> indifferent to the consequences of bankruptcy of a small private
> company who is trying to operate without that support, is his intent
> that noble? This is not an idle question because FOSS started
> (allegedly) as a feud between Richard Stallman and Symbolics w.r.t.
> sharing code. RMS was reverse-engineering Symbolics code and FOSSing
> it, making it difficult for his former buddies to make a buck.
> Personally I've been very much on the side of Symbolics (now extinct)
> over this one.
Not noble with that one, though I think RMS accepting having to drive
his former buddies to achieve a higher goal.
Personally, I don't particularly like this kind of thinking. Not because
the reasoning is invalid (damaging a small fraction of society for a
greater whole is OK by my book), but because it is so easy to delude
oneself about the short-term damage and the long-term benefits.
> And a lot of FOSS is reverse-engineered or copied from
> commercial systems.
That's just wrong.
"Reverse-engineered" is wrong because reverse engineering is OK. If
somebody invents a better way to do something, it's usually better if
others can use that invention, too. (That's why patents expire, on a
loosely-related tangent.)
"Copied" is wrong because the facts are different. Any FOSS project that
copies code is infringing on copyright and will be sued out of existence
as soon as it starts distributing code. FOSS authors know that and don't
copy (at least the successful ones).
The only case would be submarine copying - a contributor smuggles copied
code into a FOSS project as a form of sabotage, or people use some code
that they believe is free which isn't.
For the largets FOSS project around (the Linux kernel), we can be pretty
sure that neither is the case, SCO didn't find a single line despite
having months with full source access and strong incentives to find
something.
> 2. Producing FOSS is ok because people can always go on to buy the
> better thing.
>
> The problem is that the FOSS can be so good that people never buy the
> better thing.Or the betterness of the better thing is not enough to
> tempt people to shell out.
Correct. FOSS is destroying the market where people sell software
itself.
The justification is that there is no fair pricing possible for
software, because investment is far more expensive than copying (by
several orders of magnitude today). So market laws don't work anyway,
and society isn't losing anything valuable here.
> 3. FOSS is great because it makes people's lives easier.
> Quote
> "As a poor student for most of my life, I have generally preferred the
> free software model. "
> Unquote
>
> This is straight utilitarianism - greatest happiness of the greatest
> number (particularly me). However one thing you've got to grasp about
> utilitarianism - *it is completely inconsistent with the idea of
> individual rights*. An individual has no rights because the welfare
> of the majority must always prevail.
No, there are limits. You still have your individual rights (such as
freedom of speech).
> For that reason RMS denies the
> author of the software any rights over his own work.
This is incorrect.
In fact he asserts full copyright rights.
He just argues that it's a good idea to give them up, maintaining
copyright just as a legal vehicle to make sure that the software isn't
being abused. (I don't think this would have been necessary, but one can
reasonably disagree about that.)
The "good idea" argument actually goes in two directions:
* It is good for society because free software helps others.
* It is good for the individual because he can still make a lot of money
with it.
The latter argument is a bit weak, though it can work. It certainly
worked for Red Hat and MySQL as a business model. It also worked for
Innotek: Open-sourcing their Virtualbox product was a great marketing
move, they are now making more money with services around Virtualbox
than they ever made with selling it.
> Generally the most benign governments have adulterated utilitarianism
> with
> unalienable rights.
Copyright isn't unalienable.
> 4. FOSS is OK because people have the right to do with their time as
> they
> please.
>
> Quote
> "Free software is released _by it's creator_ as such. The creator
> makes a decision that that is what they want to do with their
> creation, and they do it."
>
> "As I see it, if I want to spend my own money and resources making
> guitars and giving them away, it is my own business and there is
> nothing wrong with it, even though some guitar companies might not
> like it."
> Unquote
>
> This is a version of extreme social libertarianism; everybody should
> be free
> to do their own thing - whatever. But this doctrine leads to an
> unacceptable
> Hobbesian free-for-all which no sensible person could accept.
By this argument, cornering a market should be banned, too.
Who's going to sue Microsoft tomorrow? (Well, the EU already did
that...)
> 5. OS does not mean 'free'. Think 'free' as in 'free speech', not as
> in
> 'free beer' (RMS).
> This is an RMS red-herring.
I agree with that one.
Slogans like "software wants to be free" are ridiculous if taken as
arguments.
(They are rhethorically useful, which is probably why he is using them.)
> 6. If proprietory closed source cannot compete with FOSS - too bad
> for them!
>
> Quote
> "The world does not owe software company shareholders a living. If
> software
> houses can't produce software that is sufficiently superior to free
> software to justify the price they charge, then they don't really
> deserve to succeed."
> Unquote
>
> Compare: if African farmers cannot compete against highly subsidised
> EC food, too bad for them.
There's an essential difference between African farmers and Western
software companies: an African farmer who cannot sell is likely to
starve; a Western software company dissolves, its employees finding work
elsewhere.
>From another perspective: this argument is just what market liberalists
say. They shouldn't be using this argument against FOSS.
Regards,
Jo
Joachim Durchholz
Am Mittwoch, den 05.03.2008, 00:31 -0500 schrieb Barry Margolin:
> My complaint wasn't about the difference in industries, it was about the
> fact that they're dumping CRAP. And they're getting people to buy the
> crap by selling it really cheaply compared to the good stuff.
This wouldn't be a problem except for the network effects.
E.g. if Word is crap, and Word's closed formats force everybody into
using Word because you get Word files by email and can't use other
software to open it, then you're forced into buying and using crap. (For
many people, the having to use crap is the worst aspect of it all.)
It's the network effects (plus the extremely high market entry barriers)
that make some types of software what theorists call a "natural
monopoly".
Regards,
Jo
Phlip
> To put some flesh on the bare bones of this proposition. Imagine if
> someone were to use their comfortably paid university position to
> produce, (e.g), a free GPL algebra tutor, thus putting out of business a
> struggling company trying to sell their own version. Would this be
> ethical? Is it not the ethical equivalent of dumping?
The closer to the metal, the more Free Software makes sense. It's Free as
in "Speech", not as in "Beer". Closed-source tools harm that struggling
company.
The closer to the user, the more a payware system makes sense. My
daughter just birthday-demanded an iTouch. (These things are far superior
to iPhones, because the lack of a phone is a positive feature...)
It was doubtless compiled with a gcc. Someone correct me there, but the
tools were probably open, and the actual UIkit is very closed. And we
indeed paid for it, so at least Apple ain't struggling!
--
Phlip
C Y
> Well, I'm playing black here.
Indeed. Rather than respond in detail to what is clearly at root a
philosophical difference, I pose four questions:
1. Do those who object to free software also object to free web
email, free online stories, volunteer (free) home builders who help
the poor, and free public education? Certainly all of these
activities could be argued to be killing commercial markets for goods
and services.
2. Is there any hard, concrete data (polls, sales figures, etc.) that
can show economic impact on both software businesses and the wider
economy? Without such information it is very difficult to have a
debate that has a hope of termination.
3. What types of innovations do we not want to lose that commercial
software uniquely supplies, and are those unique innovations (if any)
more important than the practical benefits of free software?
4. Assuming free software were decided to be a bad thing by enough
people to begin legislative action, what course of action could be
taken that would have a plausible chance of net positive results? In
other words, what is the counter proposal to the way things currently
work, why is it better, and how could it be realized?
Mark Tarver
> A long time ago, sometime in the 70s I believe, a friend of mine used
> to work for RCA. Right at that time Japan was expanding its
> electronics market in the Pacific and the Japanese were capturing the
> market from RCA by selling below cost. My friend bitterly condemned
> these practices as unethical.
>
> This practice, called 'dumping', is generally condemned, and can often
> be prosecuted under law. It has been used and criticised as such on
> several occasions e.g. w.r.t. the dumping of subsidised EC surplus
> produce on poor African nations, on Rockeller's ruthless expansion of
> Standard Oil by undercutting.
>
> In the defence of open source software, Richard Stallman was willing
> to condemn closed source software as unethical. Now here is a
> thought. Is it rather *free software which is unethical* because the
> supplier is dumping a free product from the position of having a
> subsidy?
>
> someone were to use their comfortably paid university position to
> produce, (e.g), a free GPL algebra tutor, thus putting out of business
> a struggling company trying to sell their own version. Would this be
> ethical? Is it not the ethical equivalent of dumping?
>
> the cross post). You should not assume that I'm against free/open
> source from my posing this question, although I'm willing to 'play
> black' (attack OS/free) in this thread if the responses are too one
> sided.
>
> Mark Tarverwww.lambdassociates.org
Briefly;
1. The argument is about tax-subsidised software.
No. The argument against FOSS as presented does not essentially depend
on whether your dollars come from Uncle Sam or Uncle Ebenezer. The
argument is that by releasing software whose price (= zero) does not
reflect the costs of development, you price competitors out of the
market whose pockets cannot afford to compete at this level. The
question is 'Is this ethical?' Has nothing at all to do with where
your money comes from.
2. Rightness is judged by intention; not by consequences.
Fine; your primary intention is good (free software and smiling faces)
- *but*
if it can be shown that the secondary effects of your action are evil
('Small
Faces Software' goes bust) and if it can be shown that these effects
were
forseeable then you might be held responsible for these evil
consequences.
The central point being that once you become aware of this connection,
it becomes part of your moral judgement to ignore the adverse affects
('It'll kill Small Faces but I don't care').
3. Do those who object to free software also object to free web email,
free online stories, volunteer (free) home builders who help the poor,
and free public education?
No; but the difference is that many of these things are targeted at
people who are poor. Free services to those who cannot pay may be
fine; but FOSS makes no discrimination about who it affects. It is a
fuel-air bomb in relation
to the market.
4. Is there any hard, concrete data (polls, sales figures, etc.) that
can show economic impact on both software businesses and the wider
economy?
Anecdotal evidence; the main apriori argument is that people will
rather choose to grab what is free rather than pay money for an
equivalent product;
and this seems fairly obvious. The damage is long term and diffuse -
much as
Kent describes. I've seen the effects on student enrollment in 2002;
people
walking away from CS because its not perceived as a good career move.
One
student told me so right to my face. I didn't argue with him either.
Ron Garret
Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
> Ron Garret said:
>
> > So even Free Software is a
> > market exchange, and its authors are compensated. The only difference
> > is that the compensation comes in a form other than cash because the
> > authors of Free Software don't want cash, they want freedom. But there
> > is no altruism involved.
>
> Similarly, mothers don't /really/ love their children. It's all to do with
> DNA. And when people risk their lives diving into rivers to save complete
> strangers, what they're really after is the Hero Badge.
>
> Yeah, right.
You're not nearly as far off the mark as you are trying to be.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene
rg
Ron Garret
wr...@stablecross.com (Bob Felts) wrote:
No, you just don't have the right concept of "self". See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene
rg
Richard Heathfield
<snip>
> The argument against FOSS as presented does not essentially depend
> on whether your dollars come from Uncle Sam or Uncle Ebenezer. The
> argument is that by releasing software whose price (= zero) does not
> reflect the costs of development, you price competitors out of the
> market whose pockets cannot afford to compete at this level. The
> question is 'Is this ethical?' Has nothing at all to do with where
> your money comes from.
If some friends come around to my house and I offer them coffee (without
charging them), is that ethical? After all, I'm undercutting the cafe.
> 2. Rightness is judged by intention; not by consequences.
>
> Fine; your primary intention is good (free software and smiling faces)
> - *but* if it can be shown that the secondary effects of your action
> are evil ('Small Faces Software' goes bust) and if it can be shown
> that these effects were forseeable then you might be held responsible
> for these evil consequences.
Silly argument. Everything we do has "evil" consequences. People eat, so
cows die (or carrots die). People drive cars, so the atmosphere gets
polluted. People eat chocolate, so slavery flourishes in the Third World.
If you want to set the world to rights, I suggest you put the energy into
anti-slavery campaigns such as http://www.stopthetraffik.org instead.
<snip>
> FOSS makes no discrimination about who it affects. It is a
> fuel-air bomb in relation to the market.
If you want to make money, produce a good or service that people *want* to
buy. Nobody is obliged to buy that good or service. If you choose to
bottle and sell air, you can - but nobody's going to buy it (even though
it's vital to survival) because they can already get it for free. To sell
it, you're going to have to add some value. (People *do* manage to sell
water, even though it falls out of the sky and people can catch as much as
they like for free.)
> Anecdotal evidence; the main apriori argument is that people will
> rather choose to grab what is free rather than pay money for an
> equivalent product;
> and this seems fairly obvious.
Actually, businesses do tend to go for Big Blue (or nowadays, Big Grey),
despite the existence of free alternatives. I'm not sure why. (They
normally say it's for support reasons, but I'm not convinced.)
> I've seen the effects on student enrollment in 2002;
> people walking away from CS because its not perceived
> as a good career move.
Fine by me. There are too many programmers anyway - and a goodly number of
them aren't really terribly good. A little Darwinism will benefit the
industry.
> One student told me so right to my face. I didn't argue with him either.
Those who choose programming as a career choice rather than because they
love to write programs are unlikely to make particularly good programmers.
Many of them don't even know how to delimit sig blocks in Usenet articles
(hint hint).
Richard Heathfield
Oh, I can't agree with that! :-)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene
I read that book about 15 years ago (assuming that the wiki article does
indeed describe "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins - you can never tell
with wiki). I thought it was nonsense then, and I think it's nonsense now.
(It was, in fact, that book that persuaded me, much to my astonishment,
that my stance on the whole Evolution vs Creation debate thing was
completely wrong.)
But whether you agree with me or not on that issue, the denial of altruism
is merely a consequence of inappropriate reductionism. Whether people are
altruistic because "God made them that way" or because it's an emergent
species survival trait in a universe sans point, the fact remains that
people /do/ (on occasion) behave altruistically. To pretend otherwise is
just silly.
Glyn Millington
And certainly nowhere near as wide of the mark as Dawkins! Altrusim is a
major problem for the socio-biologists.
atb
Glyn
Christophe
> Ron Garret <rNOSPA...@flownet.com> writes:
> > In article <XfOdnW0X0NjfqVPanZ2dnUVZ8tPin...@bt.com>,
>
> - Afficher le texte des messages précédents -
Hi all,
I read with attention this topic, and I think the regressions in
computer sciences are in the "good" way.
Why : Free or Open source = just free of charge with two
possibility :
1° software relatively good : create by major community of IBM, SUN,
Novell (thanks Microsoft to save Novell !) salary !!! it's a pure
dumping approach against Microsoft but in fact against a lot of small
Editors and profit directly to offshore.
2° software comes from "real" community and generally quality is not
very good, bad documentation, etc...
Just compare Lispworks or Allegro to SBCL.
Before make the "gloria of Open Source, just ask yourself about
innovation brings by SBCL for LISP in terms of technology. It's
simple : ZERO !
SBCL is certainly a good job, but I prefer pay for Lispworks or
Allegro CL to substain innovation same as AllegroCache.
And to finish if "Altruism" is just a word to justify a dumping
approach : OK But Chinese or Indian Compagny are not in the "Altruism"
way. But thanks to Free, offshore compagny can recover technology,
break the cost and in final IBM recruits more in India than USA.
But : OK : you are free ... to work in China for 100$ per month
Best Regards,
Christophe
Christophe
> Ron Garret said:
>
>
>
>
>
>
> - Afficher le texte des messages précédents -
Hi all,
"God made them that way" : It's certainly a good argument for boudhist
or indouist :)
All the world is not catholic or believe in Protestantism.
And clearly , Chinese and most other country in Asia does not share
this point of view.
Best Regards
Nicolas Neuss
> The difference is that the GPLed algebra tutor can be taken up by anyone
> (including the struggling company), and used, modified, updated,
> resold. You can't do that with material goods.
I only want to emphasize that the GPL (i.e. free software in the RMS sense)
is the decisive factor here. Most commercial companies live and thrive
very much due to public domain and BSD software floating around provided to
all of us mostly by government funding.
In contrast, it is difficult for companies to use GPL software in the way
you describe above, because they might have to put all their sources
connected with the GPL piece under GPL. At least, some business models of
making money easily do not work anymore. (Some years ago, an internal
report of two Microsoft engineers about OSS leaked out, with more or less
this content: BSD - wonderful for us, GPL - evil).
Nicolas
P.S.: There is at least one newsgroup specifically dedicated to discussing
these issues, namely gnu.misc.discuss.
Ulf Wiger
>
> Why : Free or Open source = just free of charge with two
> possibility :
> 1° software relatively good : create by major community of IBM, SUN,
> Novell (thanks Microsoft to save Novell !) salary !!! it's a pure
> dumping approach against Microsoft but in fact against a lot of small
> Editors and profit directly to offshore.
> 2° software comes from "real" community and generally quality is not
> very good, bad documentation, etc...
>
> Just compare Lispworks or Allegro to SBCL.
> Before make the "gloria of Open Source, just ask yourself about
> innovation brings by SBCL for LISP in terms of technology. It's
> simple : ZERO !
There's a third possibility:
Company C released Programming language P as Open Source, and I
do believe it's fair to say that it brought some innovation to
the market. The reason was not to compete with vendors of
programming languages or tools, but rather the opposite. C is
not in the business of selling programming languages, but rather
to use them. But it turns out that C couldn't buy anything remotely
like P on the open market. This leaves C with the choice of either
(a) settling for an inferior tool, which they can pay for
(b) continuing with their own tool, carrying all the cost themselves
(c) releasing it for free, hoping that others will use it and
give feedback, perhaps bug fixes, and even forming a user
community that could act as a recruitment base.
There is never a guarantee that (c) will work, but the alternative most
likely would have been to simply discard the innovative tool, hoping
that commercial programming language vendors will eventually come
up with something equally good.
This is essentially the Gilette principle: "give away the razor
and sell the blades". C makes money selling products built using
P - not on P itself. Increasing the spread of P by giving it
away makes perfect business sense, as long as it works. If it
doesn't, (c) degrades to (b) or (a).
There is actually a (d) too: Give or sell P to a tool vendor
interested in selling it for profit. Many large companies are
likely to try this before trying (c). I don't know how often it
works out, but I guess it's been known to happen.
(Any similarities between C and Ericsson, and P and Erlang are
purely coincidental).
BR,
Ulf W
Christophe
Hi all,
Ok, it's a point of view, but as a customer I have the choice to use
Erlang with European or USA developers but also with China
developers ... And for the same price I have significatively more
resources.
China can say "thanks Ericsson" too, I am agree with you.
Best Regards
Joachim Durchholz
Am Mittwoch, den 05.03.2008, 02:48 -0800 schrieb Christophe:
> Ok, it's a point of view, but as a customer I have the choice to use
> Erlang with European or USA developers but also with China
> developers ... And for the same price I have significatively more
> resources.
>
> China can say "thanks Ericsson" too, I am agree with you.
Uh... the Chinese will get pay raises eventually?
Cf. India, which is already on the decline after all - they do have a
cost advantage, but a lot of it is eaten up by cultural differences and
misunderstandings. Some of the business has stayed in India, of course,
but a lot has moved back.
Besides, just wait until the Chinese start to build their first OS
projects. It will take a while because they are still too busy making
money for their daily meal, but wait a decade or so and they'll be fully
up to speed.
Regards,
Jo
Alan Crowe
> Oh, wait, they don't sell the CD -- that's a violation of GPL
> -- they sell a service contract.
No, you've got this completely wrong. I don't understand
why, it is easy to find official position on the GNU website
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
Other people, with no interest in copyright or technology
manage to grasp this point. See
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/faq.html#gnu
They have their own, different, position
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bullitt/bfaq.html#freebooks
which I quote:
But there is another, deeper reason to think twice about
selling Dhamma books. Since the Buddha's time, the
teachings have traditionally been given away free of
charge, passing freely from teacher to student, from
friend to friend. The teachings are regarded as
priceless, and have been conveyed to us across the
centuries by an unbroken stream of generosity --- the
very foundation of all the Buddha's teachings. That
tradition continues with the production of free Dhamma
books. From the author, the stream flows onwards through
those who give their time to editing, typesetting, and
printing the book; through the donors who sponsor the
printing; and through those who take care of
distribution and mailing. If you are fortunate enough to
receive a book borne on this stream of generosity, you
learn an important lesson of Dhamma long before you even
open the cover. The instant someone puts a price tag on
a Dhamma book, you not only have to pay money for it,
but you get a little bit less in return: you get a book
that is merely about Dhamma, instead of one that is
itself an example of Dhamma in action. Which one do you
think has greater value?
They do not place their translations under a GPL style
licence because they are philosophically opposed to their
sale. Now that you have seen a real life example of people
with a philosophical commitment to free=gratis rejecting GPL
licencing of their own work, because it permits sale, you
are in a better position to understand the GPL.
GPL forbids unbundling the rights. Sell all or none, the
choice is yours, but don't try to divide society into
Digital Lords, with the full bundle of rights, and Digital
Peasants, with only usage rights.
Alan Crowe
Edinburgh
Scotland
nob...@nowhere.nonet
> On Mar 4, 10:34 am, Mark Tarver <dr.mtar...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
> If the univerity is funded by government money, well, that is theft.
>
> Once we can can assign an unethical attribute the root node of an
> economic tree, there is no point in evaluating the ethics of the child
> nodes; the unethical property flows out from that root toward the
> leaves. Stolen money taints all derived transactions.
Interesting theory, but why limit it to money and other resources that
were stolen recently? For example, if a government (or an independant
conqueror) steals a vast quantity of land, gold, oil, and other valuable
natural resources through warfare (as various European countries did all
over the world starting with Columbus, and as the USA did in the 19th
Century and continues to do today), and then gives it to certain members
of its population, then isn't all the profit made from that theft, and the
profit made by reinvesting those profits, and the profits made by those
who inherited those profits in following generations, isn't all of it
ultimately derived from theft? That would place your root node in a place
that marks virtually all wealth in the "first world" countries as
stolen.
--
Microsoft Windows. Flaky and built to stay that way.
Joachim Durchholz
Am Dienstag, den 04.03.2008, 23:34 -0800 schrieb Mark Tarver:
> 3. Do those who object to free software also object to free web email,
> free online stories, volunteer (free) home builders who help the poor,
> and free public education?
>
> No; but the difference is that many of these things are targeted at
> people who are poor.
This is not correct for free webmail or free online stories, which are
available to anybody regardless of monetary status.
> 4. Is there any hard, concrete data (polls, sales figures, etc.) that
> can show economic impact on both software businesses and the wider
> economy?
There are several estimates what the value of Linux would be if it were
sold. The results vary (and of course there's the question of what value
do we mean, production cost or potential sales value), but all end at a
low billion-dollar figure.
The economic impact being, of course, that businesses that use Linux did
not have to pay for it.
The secondary impact being that the Unix vendors have been drifting out
of business - though these businesses were not very successful and had
been crumbling under the Windows pressure anyway, so it's unlikely that
their demise can be attributed to Linux only. (Mostly, Unix vendors died
because they didn't cooperate and stayed too incompatible. Customers
want choice and interoperability, not being locked in. I'd attribute at
least 50% of the responsibility to the Unix vendors themselves...)
Regards,
Jo
Mark Tarver
> charging them), is that ethical? After all, I'm undercutting the cafe.
Not a good analogy. A better one would be where you stood outside a
cafe and offered free coffee to everybody.
> > 2. Rightness is judged by intention; not by consequences.
> Silly argument. Everything we do has "evil" consequences.
Does it - my walk in the park for example? I suppose that some
convoluted and strained moral story might be from my walk in the
park. But if anything seems silly or overstated this is it.
People eat, so
> cows die (or carrots die). People drive cars, so the atmosphere gets
> polluted. People eat chocolate, so slavery flourishes in the Third World.
> If you want to set the world to rights, I suggest you put the energy into
> anti-slavery campaigns such ashttp://www.stopthetraffik.orginstead.
And the point is ....? Is it that because everything has evil
consequences we shouldn't weigh the consequences of what we do or we
shouldn't think of this FOSS issue but another issue for some reason.
It's be a guess here to figure out what the point is.
> Fine by me. There are too many programmers anyway - and a goodly
> number of them aren't really terribly good. A little Darwinism will benefit the
> industry.
Poor old Darwin; he does get pressed into some dubious causes. And the
survival property being selected for here is what? Being dumb or
devoted enough to run up large levels of debt to enter a profession
with poor prospects? The guy who walked away from CS was an A
student. Do we want to select for fatalistic devotion?
I've heard the same Darwinist argument used to justify low pay for
nurses Those who do the job must be really devoted to work for
peanuts so lets pay peanuts and get devoted nurses.
Mark
Sohail Somani
>> I've seen the effects on student enrollment in 2002; people walking
>> away from CS because its not perceived as a good career move.
>
> Fine by me. There are too many programmers anyway - and a goodly number
> of them aren't really terribly good. A little Darwinism will benefit the
> industry.
A large majority of the goodly number are "good enough" which causes a
problem. The outsourcing-to-lower-cost-countries phenomenon bears that
out, in my opinion. At the same time, there are still high-paying jobs
available for people who are very good, they just seem to be a bit harder
to find.
--
Sohail Somani
http://uint32t.blogspot.com
Christophe
Hi all,
"Chinese start to build their first OS" : Red Hat uops Red Flag !
Best Regards
Walter Banks
A very good question. My comments are no so much about ethics which
have been argued endlessly on this topic.
Free software has done a lot to change the dynamics of software innovation
in several important ways.
Silicon increases in performance has out paced software innovation. Part of
the cost of innovation is potential failure. Free software takes away the easy
sales making it necessary for innovative software to become either very expensive
or very risky.
Software innovation has dramatically slowed down. Much of the software
development in educational institutions depends on free software platforms
often based on 20 year old technology. We are still for the most part declaring
variables that depend on the implementation environment and not based on
application requirements. (Recent thread on variable information typing
covered a lot of the issues in this regard)
There are literally dozens of topics that haven't been touched that should be
as we move forward.
The final comment has to do with what is learned from customer feedback.
Free software generally speculates on applications requirements and does not in
the organized way that most commercial packages do to seriously address
feedback from customers real needs.
The counter is of course everyone contributes to free software. When was the
last time an application developer added 24 bit data types to GCC because
their application needed it?
My rant for the morning, I think the coffee is ready
Walter Banks
--
Byte Craft Limited
(519) 888-6911
http://www.bytecraft.com
wal...@bytecraft.com
Richard Heathfield
>> If some friends come around to my house and I offer them coffee (without
>> charging them), is that ethical? After all, I'm undercutting the cafe.
>
> Not a good analogy. A better one would be where you stood outside a
> cafe and offered free coffee to everybody.
(a) Nonsense. If I offer free software to people, I do so either on my Web
site or via email or in person. Geography is irrelevant to the Web and
email, and if I give my software to personal friends, in person, it hardly
matters where we're standing at the time. Even if we were standing outside
PC World at the time, what would that matter? PC World *doesn't sell the
software I write*.
>> > 2. Rightness is judged by intention; not by consequences.
>
>> Silly argument. Everything we do has "evil" consequences.
>
> Does it - my walk in the park for example? I suppose that some
> convoluted and strained moral story might be from my walk in the
> park. But if anything seems silly or overstated this is it.
Yes, you're right - it's silly to ascribe evil consequences to an innocuous
action (such as giving away free software or going for a walk in the
park). Well done.
>> Fine by me. There are too many programmers anyway - and a goodly
>> number of them aren't really terribly good. A little Darwinism will
>> benefit the industry.
>
> Poor old Darwin; he does get pressed into some dubious causes. And the
> survival property being selected for here is what?
People who aren't really all that fussed about programming don't tend to
make very good programmers. So if they're only in it for the money, the
industry is better off without them - and of course their absence from the
programming job market will *remove* a downward pressure on programmer
wages.
> I've heard the same Darwinist argument used to justify low pay for
> nurses Those who do the job must be really devoted to work for
> peanuts so lets pay peanuts and get devoted nurses.
If you can get *enough* devoted nurses that way, it's a workable strategy.
(Of course, you can't. Nowadays, apparently it's quite a struggle to find
nurses who *know* about all that boring hygiene stuff, let alone care.)
Patrick May
>> Many other economists will tell you that's ideological drivel.
>
> And some scientists will tell you that the earth is 4000 years old.
They might, but they won't be making that statement as
scientists. All the available evidence points to the age of the Earth
being around 4.5 billion years.
> A free market is just people voluntarily exchanging goods and
> services. Whether this is silk traders from 500BC, oil traders in
> 2008 or intergalactic gold traders in 3000, they all follow the same
> principle - that division of work and specialization enabled by
> trade raises productivity and hence wealth.
Now that makes sense.
Regards,
Patrick
------------------------------------------------------------------------
S P Engineering, Inc. | Large scale, mission-critical, distributed OO
| systems design and implementation.
p...@spe.com | (C++, Java, Common Lisp, Jini, middleware, SOA)
Robert Uhl
>
> In the defence of open source software, Richard Stallman was willing
> to condemn closed source software as unethical. Now here is a
> thought. Is it rather *free software which is unethical* because the
> supplier is dumping a free product from the position of having a
> subsidy?
The thing is, software is not about programmers--it's about users.
Certainly, it's irksome to have another producer undercut one's pricing,
whether in widgets or software. But, to borrow a line, it's not about
you. Or me. It's about the users.
And Free Software is best for users. Because it is best for users, it
is the most ethical for programmers.
--
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
Economists are still trying to figure out why the girls with the least
principle draw the most interest.
Robert Uhl
>
> Just compare Lispworks or Allegro to SBCL.
> Before make the "gloria of Open Source, just ask yourself about
> innovation brings by SBCL for LISP in terms of technology. It's
> simple : ZERO !
If you want SBCL to be innovative, then (drumroll please) innovate, and
add it to SBCL. There's no reason for free software not to be
innovative, save that most people don't want to innovate.
--
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
When you need a helpline for breakfast cereals, it's time to start
thinking about tearing down civilisation and giving the ants a go.
--Chris King
Christophe
Hi all,
Software is a piece of engineering same as car for example. And that's
all.
If the car is good with good services I buy it, if not, I dont buy it;
it's very simple.
Best Regards
Christophe
Hi all,
Certainly not, SBCL is not my project, all the time I spend to improve
it, it's lost of time and, in final, money.
If the software is good I buy it, if is not, the free of charge is not
for me an argument.
For me Allegro CL = Lexus, SBCL = Traban or Lada. Even if SBCL is
free, I am not interested.
My garage is not large enough, and especially, I am not a collector of
old Russian car :)
There are a lot reasons that explain free software is not innovative,
the cost it's first.
I am not a beggar who makes seeks a gift same as lot of free project
with donation link ... it's shame !
Best Regards
Ron Garret
Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
> Ron Garret said:
>
> > In article <XfOdnW0X0NjfqVPa...@bt.com>,
> > Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
> >
> >> Ron Garret said:
> >>
> >> > So even Free Software is a
> >> > market exchange, and its authors are compensated. The only difference
> >> > is that the compensation comes in a form other than cash because the
> >> > authors of Free Software don't want cash, they want freedom. But
> >> > there is no altruism involved.
> >>
> >> Similarly, mothers don't /really/ love their children. It's all to do
> >> with DNA. And when people risk their lives diving into rivers to save
> >> complete strangers, what they're really after is the Hero Badge.
> >>
> >> Yeah, right.
> >
> > You're not nearly as far off the mark as you are trying to be.
>
> Oh, I can't agree with that! :-)
>
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene
>
> I read that book about 15 years ago (assuming that the wiki article does
> indeed describe "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins - you can never tell
> with wiki).
There's an easy way to find out you know.
> I thought it was nonsense then, and I think it's nonsense now.
> (It was, in fact, that book that persuaded me, much to my astonishment,
> that my stance on the whole Evolution vs Creation debate thing was
> completely wrong.)
Ah, and here I was thinking I was engaging in a debate with a rational
person. Silly me.
> But whether you agree with me or not on that issue, the denial of altruism
> is merely a consequence of inappropriate reductionism. Whether people are
> altruistic because "God made them that way" or because it's an emergent
> species survival trait in a universe sans point, the fact remains that
> people /do/ (on occasion) behave altruistically. To pretend otherwise is
> just silly.
No. Just because they *appear* to act altruistically does not mean that
they actually do. Just as the fact that the sun *appears* to revolve
around the earth does not mean that it actually does.
rg
Slobodan Blazeski
> To put some flesh on the bare bones of this proposition. Imagine if
> someone were to use their comfortably paid university position to
> produce, (e.g), a free GPL algebra tutor, thus putting out of business
> a struggling company trying to sell their own version. Would this be
> ethical?
Everybody is free to do whatever he wants with his own belongings.
If hobbyst writes a great sf novel and offers it for free in the
internet thus
putting out hefty dow professional writer would that be ethical?
Nobody complains that church offering free meals is putting out of
business local restoraunts.
Your comparation with dumping doesn't makes sense with software,
because software doesn't have
production costs , as soon as it's created everybody could copy itr
almost for free.
Beside there is too much politics in deciding is something dumping.
Like one French manager said :
You're prices are lower than the competition - that's dumping
if they are higher - you're abusing your leading market position
and if they're are the same as the competitors prices - you've fixed
them, don't you ?
So don't worry much about opensource, price is only one thing in
buyers mind, if you're selling corn,
I'll probably buy from Argentina if it's cheaper than English corn,
since the quality is more or less the same,
but buying software comes with a lot of other things. Linux is free
but it's market share is less than 1%.
Apache is free but still many spend money on different web servers.
If some prof could make a better product with all those drums and
bells than a company.
Well that certainly speaks of the quality of that company.
Slobodan
Christophe
wrote:
Hi all,
Just a precision : "software doesn't have production costs" yes but
software have design and development costs.
To create the thing ubuntu that cost a lot of money, many millions of
dollar.
Thanks the gift of one man ...
For information, ubuntu hope to be profitable in 2010 :) it is a
super case of total dumping.
Best Regards
Richard Heathfield
> In article <0JidnepcXNYxxVPa...@bt.com>,
> Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Ron Garret said:
>>
>> > In article <XfOdnW0X0NjfqVPa...@bt.com>,
>> > Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Ron Garret said:
>> >>
>> >> > So even Free Software is a
>> >> > market exchange, and its authors are compensated. The only
>> >> > difference is that the compensation comes in a form other than cash
>> >> > because the
>> >> > authors of Free Software don't want cash, they want freedom. But
>> >> > there is no altruism involved.
>> >>
>> >> Similarly, mothers don't /really/ love their children. It's all to do
>> >> with DNA. And when people risk their lives diving into rivers to save
>> >> complete strangers, what they're really after is the Hero Badge.
>> >>
>> >> Yeah, right.
>> >
>> > You're not nearly as far off the mark as you are trying to be.
>>
>> Oh, I can't agree with that! :-)
>>
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene
>>
>> I read that book about 15 years ago (assuming that the wiki article does
>> indeed describe "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins - you can never
>> tell with wiki).
>
> There's an easy way to find out you know.
Yeah, I *could* go look at the page. There is, after all, a non-zero
probability that nobody has edited it between its being posted here and my
visiting it. (Translation: I consider Wiki an untrustworthy source,
perhaps useful for a heads-up but not much more.)
>> I thought it was nonsense then, and I think it's nonsense now.
>> (It was, in fact, that book that persuaded me, much to my astonishment,
>> that my stance on the whole Evolution vs Creation debate thing was
>> completely wrong.)
>
> Ah, and here I was thinking I was engaging in a debate with a rational
> person. Silly me.
Ah, so an *irrational* person is someone who holds a view different to
yours? Or perhaps an irrational person is someone who reads a book on
science written by a widely respected scientist and, as a result of
reading that book, reassesses their opinion about some aspect of the
world? Curious - I thought that was the whole point of non-fiction books.
>> But whether you agree with me or not on that issue, the denial of
>> altruism is merely a consequence of inappropriate reductionism. Whether
>> people are altruistic because "God made them that way" or because it's
>> an emergent species survival trait in a universe sans point, the fact
>> remains that people /do/ (on occasion) behave altruistically. To pretend
>> otherwise is just silly.
>
> No. Just because they *appear* to act altruistically does not mean that
> they actually do. Just as the fact that the sun *appears* to revolve
> around the earth does not mean that it actually does.
Of course the Sun revolves around the Earth - to someone who is actually
standing on the earth. And to someone who is standing (or vaporising) on
the Sun, the Earth goes round the Sun. And to someone hanging around
somewhere off to stage left, the Earth and Sun are both revolving about
their centre of mass. And the thing is that all three of them are right.
To deny the existence of altruism may be an attempt to justify one's own
selfishness, or it may be a genuine but misguided view of reality, or it
may simply be a consequence of over-indulging in reductionist philosophy.
Whatever one's reason for denying altruism, one simply cuts oneself off
from a really important part of being a human.
Some people really do write software for other people without any thought
of gain.
A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine asked me to help out with a
computer problem she was having. I took a laptop with me, and ended up
fixing her problem by writing about 300 lines of C on my laptop, copying
the resulting binary over to her machine, and executing it there. That
program was written purely in my friend's interest (and in fact I didn't
even bother to keep a copy). And there's nothing particularly special
about me. Lots of people write programs in the interests of other people.
To pretend otherwise seems a bit silly to me.