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For The Love Of Open Source
Jim Madison writes: "Is the open source movement about the joy of hacking? The latest edition of FirstMonday has an interesting academic study that says "No!", it is only natural in our traditional political economy that software be developed with public funding in the safety of academia when the markets are immature. Have moved into a post-scarcity gift culture or is the report correct that open source uses and needs the subsidy of public investment to grow within traditional industrial capitalism?"
Mostly seem to be in central Europe, Canada, and Australia. Why is that? Is it that the more "leftist" governments are prone to "commie" software :-)? Quite an interesting thing.
Everything is mainstream now.
I counterspell that, and play a lightning. You lose.
Great, you can scring a bunch of poly-sci terms together. Congratulations. We all bow to your wisdom. Now, could you say something (preferably in english) that actually makes sense?
I've asked a lot of people and it seems to me that most people who evangelize and use OSS are using it because OSS projects are usually (but not always) free software (as in free beer not free-dom). Why did Loki fall into trouble? Because the million linux kids out there use linux because its free of cost and wouldn't spend a dime to keep a great company alive. As such, I think OSS is failing...
"Have moved into a post-scarcity gift culture or is the report correct that open source uses and needs the subsidy of public investment to grow within traditional industrial capitalism?"
It seems to me there are two factors in the creation of open source projects:
Many open source programmers (Linus, the guy who started PHP, and others) say they set out simply to "scratch an itch." This is the desire/need that underlies so much of what's been done...a small number of individuals who have a burning idea, and who start making it happen for their own reasons.
But not all programmers are free to spend endless time and money on their pet ideas. If you have a very tolerant and generous employer or a lot of free time (and no spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend), I guess that helps. But it also helps if you are working in an environment -- university, gov. agency, etc. -- where the prevailing values support your work.
I.e., in a for-profit company, you are unlikely to get official recognition/resources for your open source work. But in an academic or government setting, where profit is less important than the usefulness of the software, you may well be able to pursue your personal "itch" with the backing of the institution.
Just my $0.02...
you can't label it as being done purely for joy or purely for economic reasons.
some people do it for the love of the art.
some people do it to make a political statement about our economic system.
some people do it as pure research to benefit the body of knowledge in the software development field.
to try to say that all open source software is done for reason X is a little shortsighted.
It's precisely that type of linear thinking that makes other people say 'open source is communism' or 'open source can be taken seriously because it's done as a hobby'.
as with anything in life, the motivations for any one movement are so complex that pinning them down is something of an impossible task.
I love open source and sometimes contribute
a patch or so, but I can't afford spending a
major share of my time for something that doesn't
pay.
Very few programmers have the luck to be paid for
working on open source, simply because very few
companies have a business model that allows that.
But let's not talk about business models, let's
talk about the individual programmer:
what successful job/life/earning models do you
know that's about open source?
any (personal) success stories?
does it pay well? compared to closed-source job?
does pay the mortgage?
what solution can you propose to these everyday
life problem?
Interestingly, he picked GNOME and Linux as the projects to analyze -- had he used KDE instead of GNOME the numbers would have come out much more strongly in favor of his hypothesis.
I dunno, though -- I do it for fun, not because I expect any financial gain from it.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I only do it because it turns me on. The way those letters roll on the monitor while I'm typing, so sensual :) And how about that Shell? Simply gorgeous.
Personally, I release my simulation software in the hope that another researcher continuing my work won't have to waste six months writing his/her own software from scratch.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
This wouldn't be the first time they've carried articles that try to convince people there's "nothing capitalistic about Open Source" and nor should there be...
Well, if I had a job where I had to read articles like that I would most certainly pick up writing encryption algorithms as a diversion that I can understand.
I could be wrong, but I swear this article was "written" by the Postmodernism generator.
Blah.
Free software is no more "communism" than, say, commercial software (by which I mean the Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, etc. business model) is "fascism," or the academic (e.g. BSD) model is "theocracy." Using terms which invoke the suffering and death of millions of people to argue about software isn't just absurd; it insults the memory of those who suffered and died under the real thing. People who call Linux "commie software" ought to try living in Cuba or the PRC for a while to learn what real communism is like.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
"post-scarcity" = stuff isn't scarce
"gift culture" = people give stuf to each other
I know what all the words mean, just not what they mean when they're put together like that.
The article blurb sounded like some of Katz's crap, except shorter.
RMS says that 43% of Open Source programmers are paid for their work.
It seems to me that the hypothesis of the gift culture and the findings of this study are entirely compatible. This research does not show, as it author seems to be suggesting, that "scratching an itch" is not the primary motivation for free software development. Rather, it shows that this motivation does not trump traditional economics.
... if only they had a bit more time, or wouldn't be giving up tremendous potential income if they did...? How many times have you thought that yourself?
How many people do you know who would work on projects X, Y, and Z
Since many will post without actually reading the study, everyone should note that the raw data came only from the kernel and GNOME. I doubt that kernel+GNOME developers make up the majority of open source developers. And I wouldn't consider it an accurate sample set of developer's either. Kernel hackers are a special breed, to say the least. And GNOME developers certainly don't completely encompass the average application developer, such as command-line, internet, or just plain x-window.
I'm an open source application developer (in my personal time), and find this study does not at all include my perspective. Obviously I'm not the majority, but I think it's missing a lot.
Developers: We can use your help.
It is important to fully evolve to the correct paradigm when thinking outside of the box. How will we ever fully synthesize the correct model for stabilizing the algorithm for a disruptive system?
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
This discussion comes up on Slashdot every couple of months or so.
The article's assumptions might be true for some people, but there are still many, many people who still develop out of love for doing something useful. In fact, there are probably more today because the Internet has allowed people to contribute and connect that never could before. The network effect has been made possible by the Internet.
I develop open source software because, yes, I do love it and I want to do something useful. One of the primary reasons I got a PhD and live an academic life is so I can do this and still support my family. I have must students contribute to my projects as part of their assignments, as well. Many of them have gotten the open source bug and are contributing now as well.
I develop open source because:
1. I don't want to support it. Let people find usefulness in it. Let them contribute as well. But I don't want to spend 80 percent of my waking hours solving naive questions.
2. I don't want the risk that comes with marketing software for money. I don't want to risk my livelihood by starting a business to support my software, either. Really marketing something takes 3-5 good years of your life to do it right, and it involves risk.
3. Yes, I like to help people and I benefit from what they contribute. I'm not anal about having to have GNU software only, but I do support what they do. I feel like I am giving back to the common pool when I develop open source apps.
4. I am not a competitive person. In fact, I absolutely dislike it. I prefer to develop a useful app to the best of my abilities. I find joy in the fact that if someone else solves the same problem I do, we can e-mail each other and combine our efforts and be friendly to each other rather than compete and try to drive one another out of business. Everyone benefits when we work together.
Disclaimer: I am not socialist. I love free and open economies. IMHO, competitive business economies are the best thing we've come up with yet. They keep people honest. But in those economies, there is plenty of room for community-welfare ideas as well.
I've always seen parallels between people who contribute to open source projects and people who build their own airplanes, boats and cars. They get pleasure from creating something useful or beautiful. The pleasure is enhanced by sharing it with others, receiving positive feedback and belonging to a group.
Some manage to convert their hobby into a business, occasionally a thriving business. Sometimes they make an important contribution to the field. Mostly, they just enjoy creating and sharing.
This is not a topic for economic analysis. This is not a topic for any kind of analysis. It is something that is rewarding to its participants and that's enough for them.
Why do you think Linus is still plugging away at the Linux kernel? Not because he's absolutely needed, but because he likes to do it.
In other words, he finds it desirable. I would include that under "need/desire."
Would the person who wrote this 'news' item please learn a little communications skills before trying to express him or himself again? I found that posting to be barely intelligible. Oh, and by the way, I'm an open source programmer and I've never received "public funding". Who has?
(Blanket assertion about the inherent superiority of free/open-source software)
[Optional rant about how author personally will stick with free/open-source software come what may]
(Cheap, yet not undeserved shot at a large, famous software company (guess who!))
(Angry rant about unfair biz practices of aforementioned company)
(Random mispelling due to unusable nature of free/open-source spell checker)
[Optional signature that you've seen before]
21. Critics of KDE focused in particular on its reliance on the QT library, which was not wholly free at the time of initial Gnome development, although it has since been released into the public domain. It seems reasonable to speculate that Gnome development influenced the decision of QT developers to release their software under a general public license.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Is the open source movement about the joy of hacking? The latest edition of FirstMonday has an interesting academic study that says "No!"
.com company [probably] but there is economic incentive in that people with winmodems wouldn't have to purchase regular modems if they could get their winmodems to work.
If this is the question the statisticians had in mind when composing the study, then they started from a logically flawed position. This study supposes an either-or dichotomy, which is not atypical of this type of study. A good deal of open-source work, according to those who work it, is done for altruistic reasons, even if there are [potential] commercial benefits. For instance, getting Winmodems to work in Linux isn't going to spawn another
Moral of story, open source development done for the reasons of economic benefit or open source development done for reasons of pleasure are not necessarily mutually-exclusive entities. There is more often than not a middle road, wherein it seems the majority of developer's intentions lie.
For the most part, if I'm interested in substance and functionality over glitz, OpenSource projects have what I want -- with the added benefit that if it isn't precisely what I want, I can fix that. If there's a problem, it usually gets noticed and fixed sooner. Authors take pride in their work, as their very name and reputation is attached. And amazingly enough, all this comes at a very low price tag.
That doesn't say that OpenSource comes at no cost. The economics are slightly different. To be a consumer in this market, I have to have about the same amount of knowledge in my head about how my computer worked when I was running DOS back in the '80s. I recognize my computer is not a do-all appliance with pre-canned solutions I have to accept or not use. I can mold it to my will... and surprisingly with relatively little effort. OpenSource lets me venture into the realm of the unexplored if I so choose, or I can stay well within my comfort zone.
On the flip side, to be a contributor, I recognize I may never get rich directly from my contributions. However, I can get noticed. I can get famous. I can get appreciated. I can be worth more to my employer, whether from experience or name recognition.
It's personally rewarding, providing personal growth, a sense of community, and is fun to boot. I've yet to get this experience out off a sealed package off the shelf.
If you're the type of person who find yourself doing a View Source when you visit an interesting website, then you've got enough of a streak of curiosity to survive consuming OpenSource.
With familiarity and tmie, it's easy to contribute. Contributions don't have to be just code. They can be suggesting ideas, reporting bugs, play testing, or even proof reading.
Anyway, the author is making the following points (see the last part of the essay):
1. Hackers who write open source software seem to do so where there is no mature market for that software (i.e., they do it for free because no one will pay them to do it, not because they are motivated more by ego gratification than by money, as ESR suggests).
2. Funding by government and academic bodies has significantly contributed to the development of open source software, and to that extent government intervention in the software market (i.e., by directly or indirectly subsidizing the writing of open source software) may be desirable. (Contra ESR?)
3. To the extent that software companies try to co-opt open source developers by hiring them, they undermine themselves by encouraging more people to become open source developers (i.e., so they can get hired).
4. Programmers in countries such as Canada and Scandinavia contribute more per capita to free software than programmers in the USA, perhaps because there isn't a ready market for their skills in their home countries, which suggests that wealthier countries won't necessarily move toward developing more open source software. The breakdown of labor market barriers in a united Europe may therefore affect the rate of development of open source software (i.e., by encouraging those programmers to go where there are jobs rather than stay in grad school hacking kernels or whatever).
5. It might be a useful strategy for some software companies to permit some level of piracy rather than crack down on all piracy and thereby encourage development of open source alternatives.
I write open source software for my own uses and then make it free for others. If people want to tweat my code for the better, I give them credit. If that hurts heartless downsize-crazy narcissistic capitalists, all the better! They're hollow selfish bastards to begin with. (Sweaping generalization alert!)
And I might add that of the academic projects purporting to be open source, I've found they're mainly junk written by kids who are just trying to fill their resumes. Project like those don't last beyond the courses they were written for.
If one examines the neocapitalist paradigm of reality, one is faced with a choice: either reject postdeconstructivist Marxism or conclude that the media is meaningless, given that Baudrillard's critique of the neocapitalist paradigm of reality is invalid. Therefore, Lyotard uses the term 'precapitalist deappropriation' to denote not narrative, but subnarrative. The characteristic theme of McElwaine's analysis of the neocapitalist paradigm of reality is a self-sufficient reality.
Basically the best model for being able to contibute effectively to open source projects (other than being paid directly by a RedHat or similar) is probably to be an Academian. Professors, and their grad students can contribute to open source projects as part of their required research work.
In the future, I suspect
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I once read that 70% of software developed in america never sees the light of day becuase of scope creep, politics, bad marketing, etc. The way I see it most OSS developers just want to see something cool they developed recognized by their peers rather than languashing in code limbo.
Even those of us who develop high profile software rarely ever get to show off a particularly masterfull bit of code to our friends and family.
Most of what this guy has written could have been hacked together by any literate Slashdot reader.
And he needs to provide a color key for his maps.
It's no surprise that free/open source software thrives in the academic community, and is treated with suspicion by the business community.
Software companies make their money by selling copies of software. Obviously, for a software company to make money, it can't give away its primary product. Otherwise, it won't make money! Duh!
Academic institutions, on the other hand, make their money not by selling products, but by selling access to their prestigious programs/courses/professors/faculty in the form of tuition. A university can give away computer source code written by its faculty and staff, because they make their money not by selling software, but by attracting students, and creating incentives for those students to spend ever increasing amounts of tuition money to attend the institution.
The way that professors build their reputation and prestige is by having their work published openly in peer-reviewed journals. This leads to tenure, job security, and, in the long run, career satisfaction. Gift Culture, Schmift Culture. The correct term is "publish or perish", and university scientists don't make their money on sales of their research papers.
So why is it so mysterious and incomprehensible (to Eric Raymond, at least) that young computer programmers, fresh out of four years of immersion in the university "publication = prestige" culture, would be interested in openly publishing their programming work for peer review? No mysterious "gift culture" convolutions are necessary to explain things. Just the understanding that some business ventures produce software as a primary product for sale. Others produce software as a by-product, and actually benefit in giving it away by increased sales of their primary product.
Boring old capitalism.
- "The 'utility function' Linux hackers are maximizing is not classically economic, but is the intangible [product] of their own ego satisfaction and reputation among other hackers."
and then saysIn other words, if Linus Torvalds says he does it just for fun, he must be lying because fun is hard for an economist to quantify. Likewise if Eric Raymond says he does it for ego, he must be lying, based on the same reasoning. Personally, I write open-source textbooks because I hated all the choices from the big publishers -- my motivation is my own professional satisfaction and maximizing the enjoyment of the work I do as a teacher. But don't believe me. I must be lying, because professional satisfaction and enjoyment are hard for economists to measure.
If we don't want to admit that fun is an economic motivator, then why do people go to Las Vegas to gamble? They lose money on the average, but the point is that it's fun.
The author doesn't make his point very clearly, but he seems to be saying that there is more open-source development per capita outside the US because programmers in the US can make loads of money, so they want to do that instead of relaxing with a nice free software project. OK, so there are differences in the amounts of money lost by doing free software, but what do these people gain by doing free software? The author only seems to want to talk about the loss, because the gain is cultural and personal, and hard to measure. But if he believes the gain doesn't exist, then why doesn't open-source software development cease immediately?
Find free books.
The notion of "gift culture" isn't the author's, it's ESR's [tuxedo.org] (at least as applied to the open source movement).
Too bad ESR didn't really define it very clearly. Not that I have anything against amateur anthropologists, but I don't really think he was qualified to come up with grand cultural theories like that.
Typical academic economist. Always saying what everyone else already knows. Let's get a real working stiff economist in there and we'll get some real analysis.
Why do people work on Open Source projects?
Because they are self-interested individuals. They do it because it's fun, they need the program/fix/feature and no one has written it yet, they figured out a way to sucker folks out of their money with free-beer software, they get paid to do so, or someone has duped them into thinking they can get paid to do so. And a million other reasons besides. But it all boils down to: if there is no perceived benefit to the coder, they won't work on the project. Period.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
i don't know the answer but it sure is an impressive question
In the future I suspect I'll finish what I'm typing before I post :). Anyhow, as open source becomes a more valid part of corporate software infrastructure there will be a greater incentive for companies to contribute to open source development. Then you can expect that stodgy things like banks, insurance companies, etc, will have some people on staff who spend time developing additions to open source software that meet specific needs they have,
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I have always felt GPL's place was in education stead of the business world. It seems natural that the communication of software or its role is easier to take in a non-competitive environment...
In a competitive environment one is looking for the edge over his competitor not his equal. GPL assumes equality in all instances. This is not the case in the business world. You have to beat the competitor with what new advances and abilities. This is the nature of a capitialist society.
I do not see a pratical application that has been sucessful in today's market. If someone can mention a pratical sucess business that uses GPL to promote its business then let me know.
There's too much of a rush to justify Open Source. Just looking through the responses here shows that. Most of the justifications are self-serving and romantic. It's great and all to talk about scratching itches, millions of eyes, and survival of the fittest, but those are not what make or break programs. Think about it: Is some middling coding-job from a bored 17 year old with no software engineering experience whatsoever going to be more significant just because the source is available? That's overly cynical, but there's truth in there.
Also remember that very few people give a damn about open source. People who *use* programs sure don't (read: "the 99.9% of Windows users and the 99% of Linux users that are not programmers"). I'm a programmer who works on large (usually commercial) projects. I only looked at the gcc source once, just to see what it was like, and besides being repulsed at the verbosity of the code, it made no difference to me. I'm not going to hack up hundreds of thousands of lines of code without understanding the architecture.
Open source is a small issue, but it's still the path of least resistance. If 99% or more people don't give a hoot about the source, you might as well ship it because it's easier than being paranoid about trade secrets. But there's no reason to endlessly rant about the new economy and sticking it to the man and all that. How boring can you get?
"1. I don't want to support it. Let people find usefulness in it. Let them contribute as well. But I don't want to spend 80 percent of my waking hours solving naive questions. "
I do support my software, in the sense that every week, one or two people have a comment or have noticed something that needs tweaking. I try to fix things, because I take pride in my work and I welcome the chance to have strangers test my programs for free.
"2. I don't want the risk that comes with marketing software for money. I don't want to risk my livelihood by starting a business to support my software, either. Really marketing something takes 3-5 good years of your life to do it right, and it involves risk. "
I've seen people try to sell their software, and it seems to me that it's a hellish experience. I don't want to experience their hell, even if it would buy me a fancy car (which I don't want anyway, since I'm not a superficial person). Anyway, the marketing channels are mostly closed, or they require huge sums of money to enter. Not worth it.
"3. Yes, I like to help people and I benefit from what they contribute. I'm not anal about having to have GNU software only, but I do support what they do. I feel like I am giving back to the common pool when I develop open source apps. "
I see this as a part of the social contract. If I saw a person getting mugged, I would feel compelled to help them. By the same token, when I see a consumer getting ripped off my Microsoft or any other nasty company, I feel compelled to help provide an alternative.
"4. I am not a competitive person. In fact, I absolutely dislike it. I prefer to develop a useful app to the best of my abilities. ..."
I don't fear competition, it's a fact of life. I certainly don't see competition as a cure-all, as economic liberals do. Just look at the mess with cell phones in the US. That's competition for you. I am simply competing with schlock software that comes out of corporations, to the extent that I bother to notice the "competition".
"Disclaimer: I am not socialist. I love free and open economies. IMHO, competitive business economies are the best thing we've come up with yet. They keep people honest."
:)
There's nothing honest about capitalism here.
They bribe politicians, destroy small companies,
propagandize until the public doesn't know
anything about anything.
I oppose capitalism gladly. I consider it
a point of pride, just as I take pride in
opposing the lowly
thugs who mug people in dark alleys.
Apparently you haven't been to America
DazMe
Hasn't it been obvious? Open-source developers are Marxists, working towards a common good, trying to move software development along to benefit everyone.
If Carl Marx were alive today, he would probably be astounded. His ideas have lead to failed societies, and much suffering. Yet his ideas prevail among a group of geeks working in capitalists societies, collaborating all over the world.
I think that it's only possible to be a partial Marxist. I develop open-source software because other people are developing software that I use for free. They use mine for free in return. However every other aspect of my life is capitalist, and I am cool with that.
One thing that will be interesting is to see how open-source affects the software industry over the long term. States are proposing that Microsoft spill out the source code for some of their products, and also Micrsoft has the lame shared source thing going on. These are baby steps towards a big revolution, IMHO.
Funding by government and academic bodies has significantly contributed to the development of open source software
It's not necessarily true that government is more open than industry. Microsoft made the decision to document the BIOS of the IBM PC so that any application developer could write apps for it. The first general-purpose electronic computer, ENIAC, was a top-secret war project during World War II.
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The ego boost you get from people telling you how much they like your software ain't bad either.
People used to ask me why I built lots of electronic gizmos and then never used them for anything, although they were pretty to look at. I always assumed that it was the creative expression of Art. The same can be true for software. For example an FDTD program that makes beautiful pictures of electric fields, but can't compete with some commercial endeavor.
However, you can note that in one country, 60% of the work is being done for pleasure, 20% for scratching an itch, and 20% for other reasons, while in another country, those same distributions are 30%, 50%, and 20%. And then you can make observations about the amount of development done in those countries and the different factors behind them. Oh, that's what the writer did, isn't it?
...throws doubt on the Schumpeterian assumption...
(fscking lameness filter.)
This study is not about the motivations or economic implications of open source.
Neither is it about our "having moved into a post-scarcity gift culture".
Face it. I bet you 20$ that the author just really wanted to use the word "Schumpeterian" in a research document. (and maybe to have it posted to slashdot.)
(Seriosuly, can you imagine someone beign named Mr. Schumpet? Sounds like a promo character for a cookie company.)
Maybe before the economy crashed. I can't think of any open-source companies that are still doing well enough to release free software.
I said this a couple of weeks ago. OSS programmers develop because OSS programmers want the recognition and the prestige of having written something 'kewl'. This is meaningless prestige in the real world, but to the academic halls and places where they live, it means something.
It's like doing things for 'school spirit' in high school - means nothing after you graduate, but it's the world you're in at the time.
I don't think there's anything wrong with this, if that's what you choose, but don't think that one hierarchical structure is inherently better than another. Linus or RMS are at the top of the OSS totem pole, just like the captain of the football team was at the top of the high school totem pole.
Humans are followers and tend to latch onto leaders and examples, it's as simple as that. I do it, you do it, your mom and dad do it.
Thinking about this should give one great confidence in OSS's ability to weather Microsoft's attacks, since in order to win they need to destroy all of the contributing factors.
This becomes a really hard thing to do when many motivating factors turn out to contradict (e.g. some people contribute for fun, others because they have to (work not fun) in order to make something that they need work; some people use it 'coz it's free, others couldn't care less about the price; some like it for its disregard of borders, others like it because of significant local content; sometimes being on the bleeding edge attracts, sometimes stability is the drawcard).
Pinning down your own reasons isn't that hard, cataloging them all might be a different story. I like OS for a wide variety of reasons, but mostly for the ability to tinker with it.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
If you go read the Anarchist Faq, the development of Linux and GNU based software in general follows an anarchist model closest above all.
:-)
Communism would require the government or a directing body to ultimately own or control the software and it's direction, while with Anarchy the workers/developers determine the path which it ultimately follows.
Plus, GNU software projects can branch at anytime, and co-exist w/ other branches. But no one actually can control the development of the software. In a Communist model, copyright would be used to prevent branching and ensure the development stays with the main project. The copyright owners ultimately being the government. Which someone in 'Authority' would ultimately determine what happens.
A group of developers could ditch Linus' development path, take the kernel code and do their own tree. And no one can ultimately stop them. True, they might not be able to call it Linux because Linus owns the trademark, but they can call is Loonix or anything else. Everyone will still know it's the Linux kernel, but gone down a different development path.
True anarchy allows for this to happen, and the GPL uses current law to enforce this. So yah, not communism -- but anarchy.
Commercial software companies are an inefficient means to avoid the tragedy of the commons for a good that otherwise costs essentially nothing for the public to enjoy. But with software, as opposed to many other goods, it turns out that development costs are so low that the benefit you derive from non-programming users, who still contribute bug reports and suggestions for enhancements out of self-interest, usually more than makes up for the development costs. And open source software as a marketing tool, as a tool to establish standards, and for establishing reputations is also very valuable.
Then we in the US can say "why don't we all get free software like they do" and the retort will be "why don't we want to raise taxes 3%".
Then we can say "the poor in the US have no software" and the retort will be "yes, but all the real innovations take place here".
In other word, it'll be just like the health care debate, only a lot less important. I just hope Al Gore doesn't get into office and get persuaded by Tipper to attempt nationalizing the software industry and giving everybody a "Free Software Card". I'll never forget that... I swear, seeing Bill Clinton hold up that card on national TV was one of the scariest things I've witnessed as an American--much scarier than being attacked by a terrorist because when your own government starts attacking you with that much SOCIALISM you can kiss the Republic good-bye.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Doesn't this response assume that Free software is all about the lack of a pecuniary interest?
It looks fine to me; all you have to is read the abstract. This isn't a grand attempt to describe the history of the open source movement, it's a questioning of an assumption that ESR made and most other scholars accepted uncritically (which is why ESR's work is so prominent in the article). He's simply saying that classical economic theory might hold true where ESR and the rest of the OS proponents claim it fails.
The claim that, "GNU/Linux may challenge Microsoft's monopoly over the consumer desktop, but few other projects are likely to have as telling an effect on commercial software providers, and thereby represent truly alternate forms of industrial organization." I feel he is a bit off scope here. The GNU/Linux project, or even that of the GNU project alone, touches an extremely wide range of applications. At the moment the project is focusing on developers tools, and creating a system primarily for the developer and for service providers. However, the movement is growing, and as the GNU/Linux project grows to be larger, so will the development base. For instance, as governements begin to use the GNU/Linux system there will need to be a large amount of money invested into the development of applications for office use--these will hopefully be released under the GPL. It won't be long until there is Free Software to rival Microsoft Office, and Power Point (Not including Star Office.), etc etc. I feel in general his statement is looking at the short term future of GNU/Linux--the Operating system and the package of software it comes with must first spread, before there will be large scale investment into free applications. There will be a drive for this software, because once the idea of Free Software is accepted, then the idea of paying for the development of free software will be more generally accepted.
One of my biggest reasons for working on open source projects is that the software world is driven by network effects. If my employer had decided to go with ActiveDirectory for everything instead of developing Ganymede (if ActiveDirectory had even existed when we needed a solution), we would have tied ourselves to the wheel of Microsoft fees and upgrades, in perpetuity, forever. I personally didn't want to see that happen, for ego reasons and for the sake of my l33t UNIX job skills. My employer didn't want to see that happen, because it might have given far too much power to Microsoft over our operations. No sense being too dependent on any one vendor when you can do something about it.
It's the exact same reason why AOL is supporting the Mozilla project.. if AOL had to depend on Microsoft's good will to provide Internet services to its customers, it might at any time have its customers taken away from it, assuming a compliant DOJ.
So, yes, there's economic rationality there, there's also cultural issues, there's also ego, and pride of work, all of it.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
The only difference between now, movable press, and a room full of monks is the cost involved. Lower costs made comercial publishing for entertainment possible. Now it's making it a difficult proposition again.
Oh well. Lately, it's the publishers that have enjoyed the proffits at the expense of the artist. Once upon a time someone like Poe could open up a magazine of his own and almost make a living at it. Hemingway, Thompson and others managed to get by. These days, forget it. Warner Brothers vrs. the author of Harry Potter, who's got the profits? When then the comercial rewards have become so poor, why not just give your work away? I've always enjoyed the works of love better anyhow. Hesiod, Homer, Virgil, Dante, RMS.
The danger comes from those who would keep you from sharing to protect their interests. This has happened before, but never on such a wide scale as popular culture. In the west, the church has fought specific puclications on natural philosophy and governments have fought political tracts. Today, however, many people can only hum tunes sold to them by five music publishers, have images placed into their heads by four different media giants, and so their very hopes and dreams forged by a small number of corporate interests. As these attack all forms of knowledge trasmision, including Public Libraries, private devices even private thoughts, and we might do best to avoid helping those who would tax us. Why not preferentially use free works?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I think the GNU GPL people fall more into the anarchist realm while the BSD style license developers fall under Marxism more..
... a lot of people seem to associate anarchy w/ complete disorder and chaos. Just read his website, and then go to a site like The Independent Media Centre, which many anarchist's read on a regular basis for unbiased news.
GPL doesn't provide much benefit to the economy, and keeps the code in the hands of the programmers.
No one can take control w/ the GPL. Richard Stallman is an Anarchist
but it seems like he doesn't want to say it.
I don't blame him for not saying if he is or not though
Plus, knowing the slashdot crowd, there would be more anti-Stallman flames if he admitted he was an anarchist.
His song is
'For the Love of God'
Why not discuss another interesting article, this time about The benefits of Object Oriented Programming Languages
Sheesh.
Kakemann
Example: Four people live in my house. One person in my house is a Gnome developer. In my house there is .25 Gnome developers per capita. Foo divided by heads gives us foo per capita. Really simple.
Now to the figures and tables in the paper. Sweden has 10 Gnome developers. Sweden is dark read in "Figure 4: Absolute Gnome Developers in Europe". Germany has 5 Gnome Developers. Germany is medium red in Figure 4. Everything checks out.
Over to "Figure 8: Gnome Developers per capita in Europe". Keep in mind that the population of Germany is about ten times the population of Sweden. Germany is dark red. Sweden has a sissy pink colour. What am I missing?
I go to the tables to check out the number.
- Sweden: 10 developers, ~8M population.
- Germany: 5 developers, ~80M population.
Let's see...- Sweden: Gnome developers per capita: 1.25E-6
- Germany: Gnome developers per capita: 6.25E-8
The table has it listed as ~800K for sweden, ~16M for Germany. That explains the colours in Figure 8, but the math is still backwards.So, is this some backwards conventional use of per capita I simply haven't heard of, or could someone explain to me again what per capita means?
Oh well, Americans and geography don't mix apparently!
No, open source doesn't need subsidising. If it can't survive on its own then it doesn't deserve to survive.
To understand open source, you half to understand that copyrights ard patents are not free market, but government monopolies that artificially manipulate the market. In order to get arround the damage this causes, an established and well founded University system is required to get information and knowledge out into the open. Now the GPL and internet are changing this and making it so that people can actually learn, share, and apply knowledge in the free market way it was always intended to be.
In short, the author is a moron. He is completely uncredible. He bases his theories on false data. The article is a complete waste of time.
The author presents essentially two pieces of evidence:
:-) growth in economic opportunities for programmers.
the historical migration of free software development from US to worldwide, and
the fact that being a programmer in the US has become a good gig lately
then jumps to the conclusion that this means that US programmers weren't altruistic, merely opportunistic (worked for universities before, corps now).
But he doesn't examine other areas:
the US/Europe ratio may be declining over time, but the US hacker/US population ratio has likely been increasing -- overall free software activity in the US has certainly not been overrun by the lure of proprietary software's lucre.
the appearance of free software predated widespread online use in US -- maybe the story will be the same elsewhere. That is, is the situation in Hungary today similar to US in 1984 -- only the hackers are online, so the hacker/online ratio is very high?
But I think the main flaw in his argument is inflating ESR's gift-economy rationale (which I suppose he does so purposely to puff up the importance of his conclusion). Even ESR isn't so much saying that free software hacking is completely without regard to economic conditions, but that it's an unexpected response to these conditions (hence post-industrial).
I'd claim, and I think ESR might agree, that free software is an efficient means of production (shared resources), niche penetration (scratching itches), and market penetration (network effect) made possible by BOTH the economic (free time + university grants + young single contributors) AND cultural (want props + want to contribute + crave technical knowledge) situations of hackers.
In other words, the fact that hackers could do some coding for free without starving, and that they were wont to do so, ran into the happy accident that doing so could produce some really good shit.
This would explain the experience of the 1990's -- unbelievable growth in free software and simultaneous insane (literally
The author's argument might lead one to believe that open source would wither and die if the corporate world paid programmers well enough. The simultaneity of the dot-com boom and the Linux boom deny that.
I'll grant to the author that the European countries present an economic situation more favorable to free software. In fact, I'd amplify the fact by saying that European government support for free software has largely economic motivations -- they don't want to lose to MS/Sun/Oracle/IBM any longer.
But this fact may support a post-industrial thesis as well -- workers in northern European countries enjoy more free time and have a better safety net than US workers -- so they have less to lose from partaking in a little free coding.
This is the crucial distinction: a post-industrial explanation for free software contributions doesn't put them outside of the economic situation -- it relies on the coders having the opportunity to engage in non-economic activity.
That still leaves intact two "revolutionary" conclusions from the history of free software -- that significant production can occur outside of the wealth motive (if the survival motive has been taken care of and the infrastructure exists), and that that production can (in the case of software) be more efficient in creating use value than a wealth-driven model.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
- Some people want to make public some idea, but:
- There is not a viable commercial market for the idea.
- The person can't find someone to look after the comercial market
- altristic and ethical reasons: one or more of
- "ideas should be free"
- "commercialisation is evil"
- "should not charge for god-given ideas"
- "giving" culture
- tactical reasons
- By giving the stuff away, you deny others the right to sell [eg MS giving away IE to kill Netscape: but they have the resources to not have to open source it.]
- fear of the legal quagmire
There are lots of different reasons, just as there are lots of reasons to be at different places. Open source is an outcome, not an input. That is, it is something that one does, not a reasonOS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Don't forget that it isn't necessarily the case that the economic factor (develop portfolio to get well-paying job) is a -conscious- factor. The author expressely stated this. It makes sense that what we like to do may at some level be dictated by what will make us successful. There's no reason to doubt the sincerity of the enjoyment of the task, but that doesn't mean there aren't underlying socio-economic factors.
:)
After all, I made a free Quake mod (Archmage) that I loved making and would never have turned commercial. But I couldn't help but be aware at some level that the mod might attract the attention of a game maker and land me a job. I didn't get a job (I'm in hardware now anyway), but isn't it plausible that part of the reason I enjoyed it was knowing what I was doing could make me desireable in the market?
Though, on the other hand, I didn't actually know you could make a good living as a programmer until I'd already declared my major in college. so I guess it goes both ways
The enemies of Democracy are
Using the number of people connected to the internet as a measure of the population that each country is able to contribute to OSS projects is just plain nonsense.
The USA has a much higher proportion of 'programing illiterate' on the internet than any other country in the world.
Of course it would then appear that the USA isn't keeping up with the rest of Europe.
The underlying statistics he uses are meaningless and as we all know you can create any conclusion you want from false data.
- AndrewN
IMO, the open source community is a pure environment /real/ tangible
where one may be measured by her actions -- nothing
more. Not skin color, eye color, national origin, nothing; nothing more than your
contribution to the society. A great lack of
prejudice. No social-fostering of pretense. Pure.
What f*ing box!?!?
Only an idiot would confuse capitalism with commerce.
Therefore, users are free but programmers must be lured and kept. Without users a project can continue -- for a while, at least, or if the goals of the programmers don't require users -- but without programmers, the project will die.
Many people make the mistake of assuming that if the software is free for users then everything about it is free. Nothing could be further from the truth.
There are two things I dislike about this analyis:
1) Economists in general seem to think everyone is motivated by money. To explain things that are very difficult to attribute to money, they come up with this roundabout theory (which is both commonsensical and not particulary illuminating) that people's need to make money shapes the society they live in. In the end, all I see demonstrated is that economists are interested in money and they extend this analogy to everyone else. Keep your money-grubbing paws of my motivations thank you very much.
2) Quantifications of people's lives most often reduce interesting observations of patterns to statistically provable but uninteresting conclusions. By the time you've numbered enough variability out of something to prove your point, you've squeezed out the very juice (the subtlety) you wanted to drink in the first place. Here this guy makes the interesting observation that more and more OSS development is happening in Europe. Even more insightful is his assertion that software capital may have hired up people who would otherwise work on OSS for free. Brilliant. Once he translates all that into the crap about maximizing tangible gains and opportunity costs, he crushes the flower he's grown.
In a Communist model, copyright would be used to prevent branching and ensure the development stays with the main project. The copyright owners ultimately being the government.
In a capitalist Proprietary Corporate Oligopoly model, on the other hand, copyright would be used to prevent branching and ensure the development stays with the main project. The copyright owners ultimately effectively becoming the government. See also the Bono Act and the DMCA.
Will I retire or break 10K?
where was this when i was in college?
It is bad enough when someone like Eric Raymond pontificates on the open source movement. At least he is one of us, and has some clue about what he is talking about. But I really can't stand it when some over-educated pinhead trys to cram thousands of people across the entire planet into one neat little pigeon-hole, and then acts like it's our fault that we don't fit. They use big words to ask stupid questions like "do hackers write software because it is useful, because it is fun, or because it will make them popular?" as if it can't be all three at the same time. Duh!
We are not an abstract theory. We exist whether or not you will ever understand us. Closing your eyes and muttering big words will not make us disappear, or transform us into something less confusing. Get over it!
While it's refreshing to learn that Open Source has matured enough to garner some interest in the academic Economics community, the author's admitted lack of familiarity with the subject of his thesis--that exotic and enigmatic creature, the Open Source Developer, comes through. Less pretentious jargon in the vein of "the gift-economy" (is this some economist appropriation of Claude Levi-Strauss that I missed in the sixties?) and more pragmatic observation would have been welcome.
:)
1)The importance of the English language. Completely underestimated in this study. Why else would France, a very Socialist economy with a 35-hour work week have such a low level of Open Source activity? Compared to Sweden and Germany, the English language proficiency in France is extremely low.
2)Personal fulfilment. Most dedicated Open Source developers share a joy in creation. Ego is involved, but not so much as related to recognition from others, but a desire to prove something to themselves.
3)Desire for a community of peers. Once you create something you want to be able to share it with people capable of appreciating it. If your expertise is pretty obscure or high level, you're going to have to go to an online virtual community to find people with the same interest or proficiency.
4)The Corporate IT world is a cubicle wasteland. From a personal point of view, this is hardly a validating world for engineers. Even at so-called "technology" companies, it's rare to see engineers promoted to any positions of true importance. It's all about marketing sales and MBAs. Engineers tend to see something in scientific terms, things either work or they don't. This makes most of them poor players in corporate politics. Even if they are any good, they are likely to be pretty turned off by the process. How many technology decisions are dictated by top-down partnerships, which make absolutely zero sense from a technological point of view? Far too many.
If I were to profile the Open Source developer, the person most susceptible to the phenomenon would be an individual with something to prove, someone not experiencing any (or much) fulfilment in their day job, where they feel isolated, not in contact with their true professional peers, someone who is given insufficient control over and ownership of their work.
Abstract economic theory is well and good, but it very often fails to credibly explain human behavior.
As for de-bunking myths about Open Source, a far more interesting story was Slashdot's post a week ago on Marc Fleury, leader of the JBoss project. http://www.jboss.org/vision.jsp. JBoss delivers Enterprise class software. You'll have to get past the J2EE jargon and the ego, but Marc makes some interesting points: he and his developers are mostly not students, they have worked in the corporate IT world, they do care making money, and thus have a vested interest in delivering solutions that meet the needs of the corporate IT community.
While I feel basic psychology as opposed to economics has far more to do with the source of Open Source contribution, economics has everything to do with Open Source success--but that's another thread
You don't understand. Open source means I can compile the software if I need to. I may or may not have the desire to look at the code, but I am not stuck with a binary application that runs on a very limited hardware/software base.
I use debian. If there is a piece of software that is available, licensed appropriately, someone will make it work on my system, whether that is a sparc, alpha or intel. That is the value of source code availability.
Communism? ... Copyright?!!! You don't even have to look to some imagined communist utopia to see a society without copyright. Just look to the Soviet Union. Even in the nasty brutal realisations of the communist ideal, copyright was eliminated!
Yah, I look back at my original post and I see the flaw I mentioned in the portion about copyright. There would be no copyright because ultimately the workers/people would own all intellectual property as a whole.
Oh well, thank you for the non-flaming reply.
The reason people work on OSS is really quite simple: It's the only place where you can escape Microsoft's dominance. OSS is primarily a non-Microsoft phenomenon; there are few major (emphasis on "major") OSS apps that originated and are primarily Windows-centric, usually because Microsoft typically already has solutions for such things.
One of the effects of a monopoly is that innovation in that particular industry ceases. Microsoft has no real drive to do true innovation. As a result, people who want to do things that are interesting flock to OSS.
It's simply about wanting to do cool things. You can't do them and make money as long as Microsoft has a monopoly; thus, OSS flourishes.
I'm willing to wager that the end of the Microsoft monopoly (inevitable, IMHO, but that's another topic) will also bring about the end of the OSS development explosion we see right now. Because people will HAVE an alternative where they can do innovative things AND make money.
But right now, you can't really do both on the desktop. You're either pushing the envelope, XOR making money.
Considering the title of the paper: The Fading Altruism of Open Source Development
I think it's safe to say that this is just another of those anti-oss works designed to discourage OSS.
But the thing is, OSS evolution has many variables that each contributor only needs enought to inspire them to do it. Which may be a very small number compaired to the list of reasons total.
But the fact of the matter is that OSS is a natural evolution in software development. And as such it will not be addhearent to the wishes, desires and attempts to control it by those who find it threatening. For if that could be done then MS would have been able to do something to indicate this to all those in opposition to OSS.
The natural place for OSS is that of establishing the common base of software development. For without such an OSS baseline the actual potential as to how far we can really take software would be a great deal less. The Baseline of OSS will advance and as such the proprietary industry will have to continue to move forward themselves. It's called competition in an industry where the proprietary holders thoiught they cornered the industry with control over it. Only people, developer, students, users can't be so easily cornered in mass. For you'd have to get them all in the same mass first.
It should not be supprising to see stuff like this article and there will be more, until the hard reality of nature is finally accepted by those who want to deny nature of humans to not be constrained by false limits.
I use open source software almost exclusively, and I'm a very strong proponent of OSS and Linux in particular, but I have to say that it's time for this "community" to get their heads out of their asses and concentrate on reaching out to more users. Navel staring isn't a productive use of anyone's time, unless you want MS to remain in control of the desktop OS market for the next 20 years.
ROFLMAO!!!!
:-(
We have a worse bunch of reactionary luddites (can you say "Richard Alston"?) in control of us at federal level than even the US.
And they just got voted in for another three years
Although Marx was pretty pathetic if judged in modern scientific terms, he did have at least one good insight, which is that historical development determines what kind of economy you can have. You can quibble with his classification of feudal/capitalist/socialist, but it's certainly true that your average peasant of millenia past could never have conceived of going to the library and reading Consumer Reports to decide what kind of refrigerator to buy. Capitalism isn't a natural phenomenon -- it had to be invented, and someday it may become obsolete. Maybe the free information movement is a sign of something like this, although I don't think I'll really see it in historical perspective in my own lifetime.
Another important thing to realize is that even after the advent of capitalism, there have always been pockets of noncapitalism. No, hippies didn't invent the concept of a commune in the 60's -- it goes back at least to 1920's-era anarcho-syndicalism. Then you have the shakers, the amish, the amanas, etc. So even if the talk of "the new economy" is overblown, that doesn't mean the whole world and everyone in it is behaving like some kind of textbook idealization of capitalist economics.
BTW, on the off chance that the parent post was really meant seriously...sorry, nope. Marx conceived of a dictatorship of the proletariat, not a let-it-all-hang-out, find-your-own-bliss nonconformist hippie-hacker paradise. He also theorized that capitalism would be destroyed by its own internal contradictions: as the poor got poorer and the rich got richer, increasing class antagonism would result in revolution, led by the factory workers, who are the most politically advanced part of the proletariat. Even if you want to argue that his prediction came true in some cases, I hardly think kernel hackers fit the profile.
Find free books.
An interesting read but I think Mr Lancashire has postulated a crap argument. I think it goes something like this. The US is the worlds richest culture - it should have the biggest "post-scarcity gift culture" (whatever that is)- it does not contribute the most per-capita Linux contributors - ergo they do it for the money. Well, maybe they do it for other cultural reasons and Eric Raymond got it wrong. Maybe "post-scarcity gift culture" (whatever that is) does not have anything to do with it. Is it possible that in a post-whatever culture we have the luxury of doing things that are "interesting" and not related to economic survival? IMHO the whole argument was based on shakey premises which I won't painfully list. It looked too much like an argument to prove that Open Source contributors do it for the money even if they don't know it, because they have to or economic theory is wrong. Maybe there are other motivations besides economic. Maybe people do things because they want to, or feel like it. Do painters paint only for the money? No doubt economists say yes and painters say no, not always, maybe sometimes or yes - depending on who the artist is.
I've had days like that... reload reload reload.... but just because you didn't get replies to your comment is no reason to go Columbine.
"Post-scarcity" means "economic bubble" or "surprised by wealth".
Something to keep in mind is that nothing is free. And by free, I'm not speaking in terms of cash. Everything has a specific cost associated with it, a cost in time and resources. There is a lot of talk about money, greed, and capitalism here, but those are just buzzwords to tired rhetoric on both sides of the coin (pure leftist everything-should-be-free to right-leaning Microsoftian nothing-should-ever-be-free).
While OSS (and related licenses) software is free, it provides an infrastructure for other commerce to exist. People use these applications in their businesses; it has gone beyond the realm of the hobbyist many years ago.
Academia and enterprise, while often diametrically opposed, are inextricably linked. I'm sure both sides would take exception and even insult to that claim, but it's nonetheless true. Without one, the other would not exist. For academia, think about the people that clean your toilets, sweep the floors, and all the other dirty tasks you don't want to do. For the enterprise, without academia you'd still be selling rocks in a dirt-filled market place (B2B?).
Probably a lousy example, the point being is that extremist views on both sides are ridiculous. Reality always exists in a gray area, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that. I love OSS software and use it quite a bit, but I see nothing wrong with people trying to earn a living writing such software. Not everyone has the luxury to write software for the sake of writing software. Especially when a family is involved, things such as health care, diapers, education become important (and costly).
Wanna make money from writing Open Source software? Do OSS consulting and provide people with complete hardware/software solutions for all their needs. If something doesn't exist, develop it yourself and somehow tack that onto their bill, even if it's just labeled as a raw labor cost. Guaranteed, they'll still be saving boatloads of money in comparison to proprietary solutions which must be replaced every couple years. And if enough OSS geeks start doing this, it'll become easier for everyone since less of the needed software will be missing when starting out on a job. Granted, there will always be in-house programming customizations to do, but they too will become smaller.
If you truly believe in Open Source, become a master programmer make it your livelihood. Word will spread quickly if you do a much better job than all those MSCE certified dolts and help businesses reduce their fixed costs in the process. And if you find yourself earning too much money, you can always take a year off for leisure, personal education, and coding on pet projects. Sounds like a dream, but its not. However, first you must move beyond the mental box that says the only "stable job" is working 9-5 making somebody else rich. Small, flexible business are the key to the further expansion of already successful OSS. I'll let y'all know when I finish my book. (-:
I really don't understand how someone gets +3 interesting for reading the title of the article and then replying to it, and naturally coming to completely the wrong conclusions about what it says.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Marx is responding to the scaremongering, common at the time, that Communists wanted to force women into communal marriages. He is pointing out that the veneer of respectability at the time, i.e. bourgeois marriage, in fact hid prostitution, the organised rape of working-class women.
In contrast to this, Marx wanted to abolish the subjection of women, whether in or out of marriage. An 'openly legalised community of women' is, more or less, what we at least ideally have now: women are free to have sex, or not, as they choose, in or out of marriage. What's wrong with that?
The marginal cost of reproducing software is zero. So one should expect that the cost of software will come down to zero. It is just a basic economic law.
The only way that software companies can prevent this is by constant improvements (=new versions). The moment they stop innovating they are roadkill.
The reasons why people make opensource software actually don't matter very much. IBM does it because it is cheaper in the long run than buying Microsoft software. Some companies give their software as open source because that makes it cheaper to maintain. For some individuals (systemadministrators and programmers) it is part of their job. Some people do it just for the fun. And if you look at complicated software that runs in the background (as the researchers do) you may find many academics.
Or then this free community software development thing is a Western thing, maybe they have another ways to contribute to the general community in the Oriental lands. Perhaps by going to work or something...
But there's many practical factors... maybe many third-world places really lack important resources, like software engineering skills, training opportunities, etc.
Varis
First, let's dispense with the anthropification inherent in using the word "wants" -- "information", being an abstract, cannot of course have any real desires -- by realizing that it's a metaphor or simplification like "the immune system 'wants' to get rid of the bacteria" or "water 'wants' to flow downhill". OK, we all on the same page now? Good!
Then what is "want" a metaphor for, or a simplification of, in this case? Well, in the case of the immune system and the bacteria, it was the biological integrity of the creature; in the case of the water flowing downhill, it was the equalization of energies, the reduction of total potential energy, in the location (and graviity field) where the water is. In both cases, it seems to be a matter of equilibrium in the system of which something (bacteria, water, "information") is part.
So what "systems" is "information" part of? Well, since the discussion began in terms of economic impacts of more or less free dissemination of information, it's clearly part of the economy, and thus that is the system whose equilibrium or equilibria (many systems, including as a prime example the economy, can have many points of equilibrium) we are concerned with here.
But then, given the above, which equilibrium is it that we should see as "desirable" or as the "goal"? Well, since the economy doesn't have any "God-given" or Natural laws that clearly describe which states it tends towards (like biology - survival and water - minimize potential energy), we have to go outside the system to examine that:
The economy being just the theory of how we, as a society, organize our activities so as to achieve the maximum possible benefit, one obvious "goal" would be "maximum benefit to society as a whole". Note that this is not advocating any particular "societally beneficial" model of economy, like Socialism or Communism -- on the contrary, the classical defense of the "Capitalist" (=Market-based) model is that it is the most efficient at achieving this goal.
So why not just apply Adam Smith's classical "Invisible Hand" model, you ask? Well, because "information" considered as goods-for-sale has one property that doesn't appear in canonical examples of the Classical model (at least not many from the era of its birth): The cost of reproduction is zero. This is where "information" differs from tangible goods, where producing pins and needles has an "opportunity cost" that means, in the end, producing more of them means the economy as a whole has to rpoduce less of something else.
Thus, as long as there is any benefit (as percieved by the recipient in spe) of producing an additional copy, the total benefit to society would increase from that copy being produced. Another way of looking at it is that it does follow the classical model exactly: Smith and his followers deduced that the "correct" price for any commodity would be equal to the marginal cost, the cost of producing one more unit -- it's just that they probably didn't consider "information" as a commodity, or any other example where that cost was zero.
So yes, in an economy tending to equilibrium, the cost of information "ought", even in Classical market-economy terms, to be zero -- and that can very well be colloquially expressed as "Information wants to be free".
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here