Nando wrote:
The point i'm trying to make is that the moral ideal around "free open
source" isn't tenable. If a private company isn't paying all those open
source developers for all that time, then someone or something else is
supporting them. And i can't think of any other means, on a broad scale to
pay for the development of a large piece of software, than welfare. You
can't be a working developer with a computer and live in a makeshift hut on
nuts and berries. "Free" simply isn't possible. Somebody's got to pay. For
the developer's food and housing, insurance, car, computer, internet
connection, electricity, everything.
It seems to be a misconception we've absorbed from somewhere, that "free
open source" is virtuous. But it can't be free. It's not. Somebody's always
had to pay.
Err, well some people spend their evenings researching and building
their family trees, some build personal Web sites, some spend hours
down at the gym, others write code and check it into open-source CVS
repositories... I don't see what's so hard to understand about the
process?
Sure, a significant amount of open-source code is no doubt written
on company time (just like portions of the early Internet
infrastructure), a far less significant amount is (I'm willing to
bet) is written by programmers on "welfare" (how many Linux kernel
hackers would for one thing need to be on welfare, for another be
happy with the pay deal?). This whole "unemployed Swedish hacker"
thing is starting to sound like an expedient urban-myth rolled out
by the Steve Ballmers of this world to excuse charging sky high
prices for bundles of code routines that in *some* case are now
globally-shared, intellectual commodities.
If you want to find a more convincing reason why people are prepared
to devote so much of their (or whoever's) spare time writing
software, you might look to a certain software monopolist based in
the North West of the USA who did for open-source what invading Iraq
has done for militant Islam.
As for Sweden possessing that long list of social and economic
virtues, it's worth bearing in mind that the country is virtually a
mono-culture with a high degree of shared-aspirations and values. If
Sweden had the cultural and ethnic mix of the London Borough of
Lambeth (where I live and where the local authorities have 132 (sic)
different linguistic communities to serve), I doubt if that list of
virtues would remain intact for long!
Sorry this is all so off-topic...
Roger
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