I've been trying to think if this could be solved in a Zion community. We all know that it just wouldn't be Zion without computers so we can conclude that software will exist in Zion. What if the central government sponsered software development? They pay the programmers to write ZionOS and ZionOffice and ZionCraft (gotta have games). All the software is open source so all of us that aren't employees of ZionSoft can see what's going on. Say ZionSoft doesn't produce a particular bit of software for which there's a need. Well, I can take what ZionSoft has professionally engineered and written and learn from it and extend it (since its Zion the software is well commented). Some of the stuff written by us non-employees just stays out there as it is at ZionForge while some gets adopted and run by ZionSoft. Any of it could be integrated into ZionSoft's software since the open source deal goes both ways. The employees still get paid and with that great wealth of knowledge out there even I could perhaps write something useful. Everybody wins and the wealth of society is much greater overall.
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.
Of course if the US government tried to implement this we'd be hosed but its nice to dream.
Devin
____________________
BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________
List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
