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Perens Discredits Mundie's Attack On GPL
SaxMan101 writes "CNET has an editorial from Bruce Perens that quite handily dismantles Mundies attack on the GPL and the Liberty Alliance. He takes the time to make YA strong argument for free software which he backs up with real numbers. Well said, worth the read."
I'm not sure how the numbers balance out, but these concerns far outweigh the price of buying the software. If Mr. Perens is going to dip his toe in TCO waters, he'd be better be sure he can jump all the way in and not get himself drowned.
What's a sig?
Who is the GPL bad for ?
I'd add at least the following to your list:
3. Those who would like to use code, are entirely willing to give credit where credit is due, but haven't decided yet if they want to (or, legally, are allowed to) release their own code.
4. Anyone who wants to see open standards. It was only the existance of free-for-any-use code which lead to the global use of TCP/IP -- back when every company had their own proprietary network protocols, the only reason they added TCP/IP support in was because they could do so (almost) for free.
5. Anyone who wants commercial software companies to release their source code. Companies which operate by selling software are never going to GPL their code; they might, on the other hand, release it under a less restrictive license which would allow them to incorporate improvements back into their own codebase.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
The most paradoxical comment within this letter is this:
In other words, he think that the way to protect his intellectual property is to ask that it be illegal for others to give away their intellectual property. And this isn't too much to ask. Scary thought.He also seems to give the RIAA implicit control over all music, but that's another flame war.
What Mundie doesn't understand (or chooses to ignore) is how wealth is created. Simply passing wealth back and forth between companies doesn't create wealth. Paying taxes doesn't create wealth. Government spending doesn't create wealth.
:-)
Wealth is created by increasing efficiency. If I pay you $10/hour to build widgets worth $3 a piece, and you can build 4 widgets per hour, then I make $2/hour profit. If you figure out how to increase you efficiency and make 6 widgets per hour instead of 4, my profit has now increased to $8/hour. This can then be reflected in increased wages for you, fewer work hours, or a cheaper product. Regardless, net wealth of the economy has been increased, since more output is produced from the same input.
Where does the GPL work into this? Because one GPL application has effectively infinite supply, it drastically reduces input costs of production and therefore leads to a very high net increase in the entire economy's wealth. Commercial software necessarily leads to less wealth increase, because it has an artificial cost added to increase the producer's personal wealth at the cost of the whole economy's net wealth.
Mundie's argument is that the artificial cost is necessary for software to get produced, because there will otherwise be no incentive for the producers to produce software. The thing he ignores, though, is that obviously the software does get produced. If OS software gets produced, then it is out there. It has increased the net wealth of the economy. That increase will never go away (unlike the commercial company, which could go out of business). If OS is not enough incentive for the software to get produced, or OS doesn't lead to a solution that is sufficient, then the demand for a commercial version will be high enough that commercial development will be supportable. There is room for both.
Microsoft, of course, is just beginning to realize that the software they make is quite compatible with OS development, and there is no way they can compete with the efficiency of an OS product. Therefore, Mundie is arguing that we will all be better off if the economy's net wealth is held down in favor of MS's personal wealth gain. I just don't buy it
On the other hand, he's absolutely right that there may not be as high a demand for software developers in the future. So what. So, a few programmers may have to change careers. They're smart people (and yes, I am one), and shouldn't have too much of a problem finding work. Yes, it sucks for a few, but where would we be today if we always held back progress in favor of old, established industries. Not to be cliche, but I'm sure the development of the automobile sucked for the buggy whip manufacturers, too. Personally, I'll risk my long term personal stability for the chance of great wealth increases for both myself and the economy as a whole.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
I write code, I can do whatever I want with that code,
If I choose I can sell it, (Its value is lessened if any tom, dick, or harry can, and legally, get it elsewhere) I can do so.
I can open source it, in doing so I am granting others the right to use it, Under whatever liscence I deem appropriate(remeber its my code)
Or I can let it sit on my hard drive and rot. not much use there.
But If I write the code, its my choice ho I make it available, If I am gracious enough to give it to the world, why should they dictate the terms under which they would like to use it ? That greed, and being ungrateful.
I have MANY time seen things I needed similar solutions too and said damm be nice to use that in my project, but I couldnt, mine was proprietary theirs was GPL, so what, I wrote my own. No bitching no moaning, just an understanding its not my code who am I to tell someone else how to make the code their blood and sweat into available to me under my terms, I wouldnt do it and I dont expect anyone would do it to me.
I am a capatilist, simple period. If I can make more money using open source I will, but if it interests dont meet mine, I will write my own code to fill that need.
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
Yes, I've made this explicit many times. It takes a pound of flour to "copy" a loaf of bread. In contrast, once you have amortized the cost of creating a piece of software, there is essentially no marginal cost associated with creating another copy. The result of this is that the current proprietary model drastically overvalues software. You complain of IBM and HP computers being overvalued with respect to the raw material cost. As we drive the market toward commodotized software, it becomes more competitive for hardware manufacturers. If they have high margins, isn't it because of anti-competitive factors like customer lock-in?
Can we amortise the creation cost of software without a direct revenue capture per unit sold? The answer seems to be yes for a lot of people. And why would this be important? Because decoupling the money from the process makes the mechanics of collaboration a lot simpler. Collaboration works to distribute cost, making it tolerable, and improves efficiency by avoiding redundant development. That redundancy happens all too much for "in house" software, and businesses have recently realized that they can collaborate with their competitors on non-differentiating software. This is not to discount the entire "freedom" agenda, I simply need not argue in those terms this time.
This smacks of the old guild system which operated to support costs rather than allow the free market to set them. It seems anticompetitive. But yes, if you want to consider me as selling out the software development profession, I'm doing it for the customer. People seem to forget that capitalism is supposed to operate for the ultimate interest of the customer, by keeping the costs that the customer pays as low as possible.
Regarding your argument about software developers providing and everyone else consuming, most people are able to participate in a free exchange of information. In this same topic we've been carrying out a thread about how an illustrator can help.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.