On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 09:00:12PM -0700, Matthew Peterson wrote: > I've founded several projects myself, but not with out great investment > of my own time and money. In the end, however, (and I speak from > experience), grass-roots Open Source lacks the endurance to produce > long term results and job producing viability.
You, along with nearly every other software vendor in the past 20
years, are operating from the premise of the Fallacy of the Broken
Windows. That idea basically states that by breaking windows, you
create more jobs for window makers and window installers. Sure, this
creates jobs and makes money for one group of people, but society as a
whole is worse off for it.
Keeping source code proprietary is like breaking windows. It's
fundamentally destructive. A whole bunch of people everywhere are
implementing and re-implementing and re-implementing the exact same
software over and over and over again, because nobody has access to
anybody else's code. Everyone basically has to start from square one
and work up from there, designing, writing, and debugging their code
(more or less).
One could argue that this creates jobs for programmers. This is
true. However, it leads to a poorer economy, because it is wasteful.
Allow me to give an illustration. It is simplistic (and thus can be
nit-picked; please save the ``yes, but...'' arguments until you've
read the whole thing), but it should give you a general idea of the
crux of the problem.
Suppose that any given market has 4 intelligent people, Alice, Bob,
Carol, and Dave. Alice and Bob each have $2,500. Alice and Bob need
to balance their checkbooks in order to manage all this money. Alice
decides that she will pay Carol $1,000 to write software to help her
balance her checkbook. Carol writes C-Money(tm), copyrights it,
and hoards her source code. In the meantime, Bob decides that he too
must balance his checkbook. He gives Dave $1,000, and Dave writes
D-Money(tm), copyrights it, and hoards his source code.
Since both Carol and Dave hoarded their source code and got the
government to force people not to copy their binaries, they were able
to create jobs for themselves to write it all. However, the end
result is this:
- Alice: $1,500 + C-Money(tm)
- Bob: $1,500 + D-Money(tm)
- Carol: $1,000
- Dave: $1,000
Supposedly, C-Money(tm) and D-Money(tm) were each worth $1,000 to both
Alice and Bob, which makes the total worth of the economy $7,000
(Carol and Dave supposedly generated $2,000 worth of product from
their labor; Alice believes that C-Money(tm) is worth $1,000, so her
$1,500 in cash plus her copy of C-Money(tm) makes her have $2,500
worth of happiness and productivity).
C-Money(tm) and D-Money(tm) have equivalent value, since they do
basically the same thing. So, in reality, even though C-Money(tm) and
D-Money(tm) both cost $1,000 separately, they are really only worth
$1,000 collectively. Giving Bob C-Money(tm) in addition to
D-Money(tm) will increase his happiness by exactly $0. The production
of D-Money(tm) was a false indicator of gross domestic product, since
it mostly consists of repeated effort. Either Carol or Dave's work
was wasted. Either Carol or Dave could have used his time more
productively to increase the wealth even more.
Let us reconsider this scenario.
Suppose that Alice decides that she needs to balance her checkbook.
Alice gives Carol $1,000 to write C-Money(tm), and then asks Carol to
make her program Free Software. By doing this, Bob can just get the
software without having to pay for it. Dave decides to use his time
to teach a class on using C-Money(tm) to Bob instead, at a price of
$1,000. The end result is this:
- Alice: $1,500 + C-Money(tm)
- Bob: $1,500 + C-Money(tm) + Class
- Carol: $1,000
- Dave: $1,000
C-Money(tm) and a class on how to use C-Money(tm) are not substitute
goods for one another, but are rather complementary goods. Dave,
rather than wasting his time writing a functional equivalent to
C-Money(tm), has instead used his time and talents to create something
*new* for the economy. In fact, if we were to measure the worth of
C-Money(tm) for every member of the economy at $1,000, then everyone
would be that much richer just by copying a CD, increasing the total
worth of the market. Alice now has $2,500 worth of happiness, Bob has
$3,500 worth of happiness, and Carol and Dave each have $1,000 worth
of happiness, resulting in $8,000 worth of total value in the
economy.
Therein lies the generation of true wealth, because waste is
eliminated (in this utopian model).
Of course, in the real world, things are much more complicated, I
must admit. There is the problem of incentive, the Tragedy of the
Commons, and other free market factors that must be taken into
consideration. But I claim that none of those issues are a silver
bullet against the model I have just presented. You may argue that
people will not write software if they cannot monopolize on its
distribution and its source code, but empirical evidence simply says
otherwise. Just look at Freshmeat. As far as I am aware, everything
there managed to get written without being licensed as proprietary
software.
When it boils right down to it, Free Software generates true wealth by
freeing people to create something truly new and unique for the
economy. Proprietary software tricks everyone into believing that
they are contributing to the wealth of the market by busily plugging
away at re-writing the same code over and over again, hoarding it and
threatening everyone else who wants to copy it for their friends and
family.
Sure, it creates more jobs for programmers, but it does so at the
expense of the strength of the overall economy. The market, however,
is starting to wise up. It is starting to recognize that Free
Software is the way it should have been from the beginning.
Proprietary software schemes amount to nothing more than a fluke that
hit a largely disconnected and developing computer market. With the
advent of the Internet and the massive interconnectivity among
computers in the world, proprietary software's days have been
numbered. The harsh realization that we must come to is that
programming, as a profession, has been historically inflated. This
may mean fewer jobs for programmers (boooo, hissss) in the future, but
a richer economy, as those displaced programmers put their time and
talents to truly productive use.
Of course, we may find that Free Software actually *creates* more jobs
for programmers as this development model entrenches itself. It's
hard to tell at this point exactly what will happen (if you happen to
know, please clue me in, so I can buy some stock :-). Overall,
though, I believe it is safe to say that we will all be better off for
it.
Mike
(These opinions represent my own and only my own)
.___________________________________________________________________.
Michael A. Halcrow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Security Software Engineer, IBM Linux Technology Center
GnuPG Fingerprint: 05B5 08A8 713A 64C1 D35D 2371 2D3C FDDA 3EB6 601D
This statement is either false or a paradox.
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