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Tocqueville Blames U.S. IT Troubles On Free Software
twitter writes "The group that told us closed source was more secure than open source, now tells us that "Open source software, also described as free software, is the neutron bomb of IP" that will destroy 85% of the market value of US companies and drive companies who are currently outsourcing to "draconian measures even worse than outsourcing." So, there you have it, free software is responsible for bad laws, out sourcing and bad hair days." (Remember who funded the same group's report on open source security?)
> "The report warns governments
> against relying on open-source software
Since the government is busy sponsoring open source software, I think this warning falls (happily) on deaf ears.
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You can take their results on the economics and come to directly opposite conclusions, with a little thought.
The closed source software industry has promoted massive overemployment and inefficiency in the IT economy. As the open source software industry expands, it enables companies to remove these inefficiencies, resulting in smaller, more adaptable workforces, and a more flexible IT industry, better able to adapt to rapid changes in the global economy.
1+1 does equal 10.
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He doesn't cite anyone, using the 'people contacted at' crutch. He's also inconsistent in his opinion. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm, simply underwhelmed by the whole thing this guy is about and simply don't understand whether or not he's important, or if I should care.
Read Selling Free Software from GNU. As I said in my other post, noone ever seems to bother to actually read the things RMS and GNU puts out.
I'm not really karma whoring with this link; just trying to get more people to read this so we can actually see informed discussions instead of misunderstandings like this.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Wikipedia summarizes the allegory here.
It's application in this case is pretty simple: if a business need isn't met by free software, then proprietary software companies can still meet it and nothing has changed. If a business need is met by free software, then the value of any proprietary software companies who previously met that need hasn't been "destroyed", it has simply been transferred to their ex-customers, who now have more money to spend elsewhere.
This is something which will happen with or without free software, in fact. Economics 101 says that in equilibrium, marginal price will equal marginal cost, and even for closed source software marginal cost is under $1. It's possible to delay that price drop (by using monopoly power to deter competitors who might get into a price war with you, for example), but not to prevent it. Even if there was only one software company on the market, eventually they'd be outcompeted by the previous versions of their own products, which don't wear out and need to be replaced like tangible goods do.
> I always thought that the customer looking for, and receiving, the best value (or "bang for the buck") was one of the inherent features of capitalism.
You are correct. Of course, that's only true when referring to real capitalism (i.e. a free market), as opposed to the government-supplied corporate favoritism that today passes as capitalism.
Following the logic of Tocqueville, the government should have also banned Tractors, because of all the farm laborers put out of work; semiconductors, because of the tube manufacturers put out of business; the automobile, because of the buggy manufacturers put out of business; and so on.
In this case, Open Source means that a few companies like Microsoft -- companies that make their profit through lock-in -- will lose some billions of dollars.
But every other company will benefit by no longer having to pay extortion prices, and by the improvement in software flexibility, security, expandibility, and so on.
As in those earlier cases, the gain will be a hundred times larger than the loss.
BTW, in response to an above poster, John Maynard Keynes was an idiot. He convinced many governments that the way to create wealth was to print money (aka Keynesianism). In reality, the result -- as any intelligent person might expect, and as demonstrated many times -- is some increased spending, creating a false perception of growing demand, resulting in a burst of business expansions, followed by inflation, followed by business collapses, followed by high unemployment. Witness the depression, the 80s, and now.
Regardless of their evident funding sources, the group is obviously bankrolled by conservative corporate interests and publishes articles whose only purposes are to slander political oponents, promote conservative politicians and causes, and generally undermine anything that might threaten powerful monied interests (i.e. big corporations) in the U.S. or abroad.
A quick perusal of the articles on their site is enough to determine where their political bias lies, searching for the names of their officers and board members (found on their contact page) on google is simply a formality.
[...] "Open source software, also described as free software..." [...]
Whether we're talking about free speech or free lunch, "open source" does not necessarily mean "free" in either sense. Both the open source and free software movements have lengthy explanations for this.
Did you even read what I wrote?
First off, you're not a libertarian.
Sure I am. I'm currently a minarchist libertarian, but learning towards anarchist, also known as anarcho-capitalist.
There's more than one kind of libertarian, you know. Those who, like me, disagree with intellectual property laws are still a minority within the movement, but we are a significant minority. Here's a good discussion of the issue. Here's some more perspective. Saying libertarians are all agreed on the issue and that I'm not a libertarian because of my position on this is a misrepresentation. As Eric Raymond says, the non-coercion principle is about the only thing all libertarians agree on.
Secondly, a basic government is needed to protect property rights (that's a tenent of Libertariansim)
You're dismissing an entire branch of libertarianism, there. Anarcho-libertarians do not believe a basic government is needed, at all, or believe that government itself should be demonopolized (allowing a choice between any number of independent governments in a geographic area, or starting your own). Now, most of the ones I hear from still seem to believe in intellectual property, but I'm at a loss as to how intellectual property law is to be enforced in anarchy.
Furthermore, as I said in my post (did you read it?), I do not believe "intellectual property" is a property right. Nowhere in our legal code is it acknowledged as a right; it is a gift from the public encoded in the Constitution NOT because people have an "inherent right" to their ideas, but in order to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. (Did you read the Constitution?)
Your assumption is that everybody wants to code for free, which is utter bullshit.
Where did I say that? Strawman, or else you're reading somebody else's post.
I don't code for free, but I don't produce proprietary software, either. Something like 70% or more of the coding industry is not jobs for software makers like Microsoft or your favorite game company but coding custom software that is only of interest to one particular company. This will never go away; intellectual property laws have zero bearing on whether this kind of work needs to be done or not. Furthermore, removing the government-monopoly grant of intellectual property would radically change the software industry but not destroy it. Free software is demonstrating that. We are slowly approaching the point where, even with the protection of the government grant of exclusive rights "for a time," proprietary software will be unable to compete on price, features, performance, or TCO with Free software. That's the point of the whole article from Tocqueville! They see Free software as a neutron bomb that will "kill" the industry. What it will do is not kill it, but change it forever. There will still be money to be made in Free software. And even if not, people still have the right to give their "intellectual property" away for free, so this change is going to happen anyway.
How do you propose protecting the rights of people who develop software and want to sell it?
I do not believe anyone has a right to a profit at any particular business model, nor do I believe anyone has an exclusive right to an idea they have originated, thus I do not propose protecting these alleged "rights." (I do, of course, believe in protecting all the same rights for everybody, so they'd have the same basic rights as you and me.)
Meanwhile, it's not impossible to make money selling Free software. Why don't you do some reading some time?
so all software development is in the hands of people who happen to have the time and mone
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
I cannot use the Apache code and re-brand it as "Joe's Web Server"
As a matter of fact, you could as long as you comply with the APL (more like BSD than GPL).
I agree that the government should ensure that any work done related to national security does not involve outsourcing. The experience and expertise with that software should be available domestically should a national emergency occur. However closed source is a different topic and is largely irrelevant. Your post suggests that the government does not have access to closed source, this suggestion earns a cough-cough-BS as well IMHO. The government is free to demand access to any source involved in national security. Look at everyone's favorite example of closed source, MS Windows. MS has made the Windows source code available to university researchers and their students after NDAs are signed. You think MS declines the US military? "Closed Source" is sometimes a misnomer. Source may be closed to the public at large but that does not mean that involved parties have no access.
This would be exactly what Apple did with Darwin (Open Source) and Aqua (closed source).
Anonymous Kev
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(Finally got a dang account in 2004)
If you had actually read my post, you would have discovered that I wrote those 300 lines because I specifically needed them for my own use. I certainly did personally gain from writing those 300 lines.
Once those 300 lines were written, the cost of donating them was exactly zero. With GPL software, there is not even any opportunity cost involved, since your only choices (literally) are to donate the software under the GPL, or not donate it at all to anyone under any terms.
It is therefore hard to see how any alternative action could possibly be logical under the circumstances. I wrote the code because I personally needed it, and I donated the code because I gained nothing from not donating it.