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?"

Comments

I Hope All OSS Dev. Moves To Europe

[istartedi]

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.