Hi, There's an article in The Times of India (page 23, "No Free lunches for me") by Charles Assisi, who describes himself as "A socialist turned capitalist". He makes an argument about why Free Software will not work in the mainstream market.
His argument is that if he writes something and gives it away to a community, the community is free to improve it and distribute it. But at the same time, he stands to lose his livelihood as he becomes a disposable commodity in the face of the hundreds in the community. He also cites an example made by RMS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman , just in case ;) ), wherein he had stated that if one doesn't buy a car when he can't open its hood, the same should apply for software too. If one buys software but is not allowed to modify it, improve it then it's simply not enough. Charles says that while that is true in principle, the comparison cannot be made between the two very different industries. The difference here is that while car mechanics may tinker around with cars to repair/enhance them, they simply cannot build one themselves. The same is not true for software as a collective can modify the software beyond recognition. Also, it doesn't increase cost to replicate the software as it does in case of cars, hence in the car industry there is no case for "stealing livelihood" if one could call it that. Regards, -- Siddhesh Poyarekar http://siddhesh.tk http://siddhesh.phpnet.us -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
