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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 for national security."
Personally, I would recommend against using closed source software produced by any company that outsource their programming. It seems to me that is a security risk of incredible measure.
I would also like to suggest that Tocqueville create a report on how an illegally maintained monopolies can hurt the computer industry.
So, major U.S. corporations are heavily investing in developing a widely available 'free software inventory' that is open to anyone to use or customize at will. If customers only want to use free software, they will buy more hardware and services because there is no additional cost for software. Moreover, with no software costs, even hardware development, etc. becomes even cheaper.
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. Now that the business model for software firms is being turned on its head Ken Brown is crying foul. I didn't hear Brown whining when domestic garment manufacturers started moving all the sewing jobs overseas to sweatshops which put far more people out of work than the current IT outsourcing.
Of course, being a pieceworker in any industry isn't considered a "glamour job" on Wall Street.
Trolling is a art,
Nonsense Squared! This is really unreal. I'm not a linux zealot but open source is at the *VERY least* as secure as closed source and has the potential to totally surpass it through the ability to get such a large amount of peer review.
I don't see how companies saving money is going to lead to the end of the American way anyhow.
I just love it when people say open source is anti-capitalist and unamerican. I think quite the opposite. It embodies the spirit of America. Capitalism is about maximising profit. Open source achieves that by being free (as in beer) on the whole. American's also love freedom of speech. Open source is more than freedom of speech. It's freedom of information. Companies don't like this fredom because they can't control it. It is cancerous but this isn't a bad cancer.
If I put my blood and sweat into a piece of software and GPL it I sure as hell don't want a closed sourced vendor to take my hard work and make money from it - I don't see how that is unammerican. It's not Marxist, as some suggest, I still believe the code is mine and there's ownership to that code. It's just that i've made it freely available provided you follow some simple rules.
Another point. The business value of code is not tied to applications as such.. it's tied to the code that bridges those applications. That's where you pay money the money for programmers. Open source will generally have no effect on the value of this important intellectual property. It just means you may not have to reinvent the wheel to do a job that's partly been done before..
And besides, even if his logic was sane, if people are outsourcing jobs to india to save money then by the same token the open source neutron bomb should be able to take a chunk out of the market value of a few corporations. You can't have your cake and eat it.
Simon.
From the article... >>This feature makes selling GPL'ed software inane because anyone that agrees to the terms of the GPL can also have a copy of the same software with the code - for free. There are a lot of businesses making some fine money from selling that free software. Redhat, Gentoo, Mandrake, etc.
One just needs to look to IBM for a great counter-argument. A few months ago IBM announced that it was going to form special groups of IT people that would each concentrate on a different area(ex: manufacturing, retail, banking etc). They will get a base of FOSS then add custom software etc to that base to help the business be the most efficient it can be. Having worked in a manufacturing environment that made extensive use of Linux, I can tell you, it is a great help.
The offshoring thing is also laughable. A lot of what is being sent offshore is stuff like back office banking coding, not a whole lot of FOSS software for that. FOSS helps level the playing field between giant corporation and small business. Now a little guy can get into the game without having to sign over his first born for windows licences or have to have an army of lawyers on standby in case the BSA comes knocking on their door because someone forgot to activate their copy of XP.
Which brings me to a random aside, if you really want to avoid being offshored, SPECIALIZE! Learn something in addition to CS.
So, there you have it, free software is responsible for bad laws, out sourcing and bad hair days."
That is unfair, sure. But it is the same kind of generalizing bull shit Linux zealots have been pulling regarding Microsoft, that is is responsible for all the evils of the world.
Mod me down if you must, but it's the honest truth. Generalizing groups of people, companies, or ideas is always unfair biased bull shit.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
The simple version: I make money using open source software, because the marginal cost to learn or use just one more tool is zero. With closed source software, I have to pay somebody for everything that I use, which limits the number of tools that I have.
So, when I have all these free tools laying around with no restrictions, I'm better off because I am limited only by my imagination. My counterparts who are limited by the size of their wallets can't compete with me.
The end story is that if I'm an employee, I get bigger raises. If I'm a business, I have more money to hire people with.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
...since they started using open source software extensively, and selling products and services based on it. Other companies based entirely on open source software have made many people rich -- Redhat, for example.
Gee, I wonder if someone in the proprietary software business is backing these De Toqueville folks -- Microsoft, perhaps?
How does open source cause outsourcing? People are still needed to configure and support it, and since it's free, they can spend more to support it. Support (the kind found at enterprises) is very hard to outsource because it requires local people. Closed source can only be fixed by that company. Can someone explain their reasoning for me?
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
It's obvious that Free software will cause the business in proprietary software fall sooner or later. It's just not news.
The question is: is it a BAD thing?
Of course, there will be bleating about lost jobs. In the long term, though, it will be only a tiny number which will be absorbed elsewhere as companies have more money to spend on making software what they really need, thanks to the ability to customize. They will have to employ programmers to do this for them or other companies to provide this service. Open source will be bad news for some developers and some customers, but it's very good news for many more companies. Business models sometimes go out of date. People have to deal with it.
I believe in the long run, OSS will be good for employment and the IT industry; it will take away artificial scarcity. It's funny how we as a human race clamour for instant and inexhaustable supply of everything, but as soon as we make something that's easy to make an instant an inexhaustable supply of (a copy of a program), we suddenly have to make it artificially scarce!
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Open Source software...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."
The market value of a few software companies is irrelevent compared to the massive increases in productivity and standards of living that result from free software. Even though the world is awash in free software, creating systems and solutions using it is still very lucrative. Ask IBM.
an ill wind that blows no good
This has been going on for a long time. I personally remember the original SCO losing sales to MS as developers began to port products over to DOS and Windows. This meant that qualfied admins were being replaced with college kids who knew Windows.
Then it was the visual languages. A person no longer needed to have a basis in best coding practices and best GUI practices. Just whip some widgets on the screen, and look Ma, I got me a program thingy.
Then it was Frontpage. Who needs W3C compliance. Who needs to employ web browser developers. MS gives away IE and kills the browser industry. Who needs to hire qualified developers. Just put some Flash on the screen, say it is IE only, and the public will think it is a proffesional job.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Since you don't think we should have IP laws, surely you won't mind if I swipe your post and claim I wrote it.
So here's my own opinion on the matter: Call me naive if you must, but am I the only one who doesn't really care about IP laws? Wouldn't it be more innovative if we got rid of the ip laws and let it be free reign on creation and development? Then, the market truely would be customer driven.
Without IP laws, companies would be forced to do as good of a job designing and implementing the product for fear of a competitor coming along and doing it better than they.
Why the hell *do* we have these laws?
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
It's really sad that they are using the name of a great man to push this kind of bullshit on people. I'm sure an individual like him would actually be quite impressed with Open Source.
Still, doesn't seem to be worth getting excessively upset over crap like this unless the government starts making laws based on it.
I think its important to realize that the author of the story *is not missing the point* of Open/Free software. He clearly sees it for what it is (at least partially,) an attack on corporate models along the lines of Microsoft (and Sun and IBM before they started to come around.)
GNU/Linux is that! It is true that GNU/Linux advocates want proprietary, closed-source models to fail. The author gets this. In his opinion that is a really bad idea because a huge chunk of US GNP is based on that closed model.
Now whether or not you agee with the conclusion drawn is one thing, but you should not be accusing them of being unaware of the realities.
Article summary:
85% of market value of US companies == intangible
intangible value == IP
F/OSS software == anti-IP (& in fact will destroy it, somehow)
Therefore, F/OSS == the destruction of 85% of the value of US companies
I don't know where to begin, this article is so full of holes.
Probably the most glaring error is equating "intangible value" with "IP," and claiming that F/OSS will destroy the former by avoiding the latter. First of all, F/OSS is not anti-IP. If anything, it is merely anti exploiting-IP-till-it-squeaks, but the GPL (etc.) are all about copyright, not against it. Second, what the hell does any of that have to do with trademarks? Last, but certainly not least, where are this guy's numbers? If 85% of "market value" of companies is intangible, and open source and outsourcing are going to destroy that value, wouldn't there be some measurable impact since 1998 (when the 85% number came from) with the increase of Linux market share and outsourcing the last several years? There ought to be some evidence for his position if it is at all defensible.
Well, that's enough rant for now. I've probably made even less sense then this bozo, but idiotic, scare-mongering, groundless spin like this makes my blood boil. (Which is why I avoid TV even more in an election year.)
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
I just love it when people say open source is anti-capitalist and unamerican. I think quite the opposite. It embodies the spirit of America. Capitalism is about maximising profit. Open source achieves that by being free (as in beer) on the whole.
After hearing at least this argument and the opposite argument (that it's communist) 1,000 times, I've got a neat theory: Open source combines the best aspects of both systems. You get the cheapness, efficiency, and transparency of a free market and you also get the equality and sharing of a communist model.
Ideal communism (as opposed to Soviet and Chinese communism) doesn't allow for copyrights (it would fly straight in the face of the communal model of sharing), and while the GPL relies on copyright for keeping the source open, under communism you would have to share source code you write, since it belongs to the state for everyone's use, so both achieve the same noble end.
Free-market capitalism (as opposed to our crony capitalism and corporatism) maximizes efficiency by setting marginal cost to marginal price, which in the case of software, movies, music, etc., is very close to zero. If you supply the resources, like with P2P, it would be free.
Open source also avoids the pitfalls of both systems. It gets around the state censorship problem by distributing control - anyone can fork off a project is she/he feels like it. It also avoids the problems of monopolists, rent-seekers, corporate censors, and other dirtbags that you find in capitalism.
I stopped reading when I read the term "IP Theft".
Do these people have a clue?
You can't steal Intellectual Property. Why? Because it is not property. It is not governed by property laws. Sure, someone who violates copyright is breaking the law, but no court in the US or UK will convict them of theft.
These people seriously need to get a clue before publishing uninformed rants.
The months are just too short. I can count the number of days on one hand.
"I have become Linus, destroyer of Windows."
actually they will make it an approachable commodity for all people, not just the rich and large corporations in the same way that has happened with cars, electricty, telephones, textiles, etc. The net effect of this is that everyone gets richer as they can devote more resources to new and better competitive advantages. The other side effect is that research and development will improve as well as quality. study a little econ man..
The open source and free software is a natural response to draconian measures by proprietary software companies.
It is a response to over priced buggy software.
It is a response by developers that are tired of monopolistic control artificially imposed by vendors of propriatary software.
Open software wrenches the control back to the individual and individual developer.
It may shift control and the current business model but it will hardly mean the end to the software business. Open source software has already changed the software business and it is going to overtake it in my opinion. The only question is are the software development shops going to adapt or die?
Got Code?
Without IP laws, companies would be forced to do as good of a job designing and implementing the product for fear of a competitor coming along and doing it better than they.
Actually, the whole POINT of IP lawsuits in business is to slow down a potential competitor. Why do I know this? Because there was a time when I had to look over patents (aww, who am I kidding, I still do) to see if we are, in fact, really infringing.
Most of these Cease and Desist are pure bullshit. The only relevance they had to the projects I worked on is a) they had a microprocessor in them (the projects, not the C&D) and b) the pointy haired types don't understand the technology they're in charge of (which is why I had to look make this determination).
So what did it gain anyone? Nothing. The projects rolled out and I wasted valuable time and money.
If business spent MORE time on making BETTER products and LESS time on trying to figure out how to get something for nothing, perhaps we would ALL be better off.
Except for the lawyers.
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
The ratio changes from tangible to intangible assets doesn't surprise me in the least. For some srtange reason, accounting and stock market analysts have used the ever-inflating intangible asset valuations to drive corporate valuations into the stratosphere, forming the nucleus of every bubble market that eventualy pops. It isn't the technology or people of these companies that fail - its the valuations. Here in Ottawa, I see great technology from Nortel destroyed due to market bubble related carnage. We need last mile / high speed technology and the people that can imagine it and then make in real. The scary thing is that a lot of these people are flipping burgers, while the stock market analysts and accountants are busy trying to create the next bubble from intangible assets. Christ, it pisses me off!
Where's the outcry from ADTI about the effects of the automobile industry on horse whip manufacturers?
First, most free software such as Linux, (the most popular because of its operating system capability), comes with a license that dictates that any all development of the product (which would have been valuable intellectual property) becomes community property and must subsequently become free as well.
Incorrect. No organization that utilizes free software is obligated to distribute the modifications to the code they created. (Of course, if that orgaznization distributes the program tehy develop, then they have to distribute the code.
In a widely quoted study, Baruch Lev of the Brookings Institution reported that in 1982, 62% of the market value of companies in the S & P 500 Index could be attributed to tangible assets, and only 38% to intangibles. By 1992, Lev noted, the ratio had essentially reversed: 32% of the assets for S & P companies were tangible, while 68% were intangible. A follow-up study by Brookings in 1998 reported that the asset ratio had shifted even more, with 85% of assets intangible, and only 15% tangible.
When people say "widely quoted" and don't even bother to cite a source, their credibility takes a beating.
Second, Linux initiatives have enabled foreign-based information technology firms with zero IP costs and cheap labor to easily compete with U.S. software companies.
Oh? Competition isn't good? Oops. Our bad. But in one instance,a backboe built out of lots of free software played a role in saving US government organizations $3-10 billion. Where's the outcry over the loos in business revenue for the existing phone companies?
Open Source activists that want to see Linux succeed argue that eventually, they want all intellectual property protection to end, including patents and trademarks. The bottom line is this: a non-IP future means that all companies in the Baruch Lev study go to from 85% to 0% in intangible asset value.
No we don't! Trademarks are very important, and I can't think of anyone in the OSS community who wants trademarks to go away. (i know, people will prove me wrong on this assertion).
As for patents, onClick.do() shouldn't be patentable. X=X+1; repeat; shouldn't be patentable. Business models suck and should not be patentable.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Last I checked, The American Way (TM) involved competitive markets ensuring that the group that could produce a product for the lowest price won. Open source software produces their product for an extremely low price (donations to the FSF, etc) and creates competitive markets of distributing, supporting, and modifying F/OSS. Plus the shift to services means that the jobs F/OSS creates have to stay in the US instead of moving to India.
So, yes, the shrink-wrapped-box software industry executives may end up screwed. But programmers and other computer professionals will still have jobs, the smart executives will change their business around, and generally land on their feet. This was simple a model of creating software getting competed out of the market.
I am officially gone from
because people can read and learn stuff for free, like at libraries. wait, libraries are evil too then.
none of these sorry bastards ever understands the gpl. it's a right to distribute, not to use. you can make all the changes you want and add all the code you want, and not share it with anybody, as long as you don't distribute it to others. that can only hurt software companies that want to sell software, not anybody else. any other company can benefit from the work of others, and not share any stuff they come up with, if they so choose. stupid asses writing about law based on assumptions that flow from an idea that is incorrect.
will the a/c
He's assuming that the direction the US IT industry was headed was a good a direction, with a small minority of people owning everything. I agree, free software does strike a major blow to US corporations, and this is a good thing. Of course we can expect him to whine about how it's hurting them, but that's exactly what the point is, it's to loosen the grip of major corporations on IP, at all costs. It doesn't make sense to give corporations complete control over IP, if, in the long run, they'll simply lock it up and throw away the key, keeping a small team of programmers around for maintenance activities after the majority of work is done, but still charging the same price.
As far as free trade goes, let's try not be naive. He's implying that corporations are really nice guys who wouldn't offshore if only we could get rid of free software. This is an old trick. What he's doing, is he's taking two groups that are a threat to the IT industry, and these groups are:
1. IT workers who have recently been laid off and are upset at the industry for offshoring.
2. Open Source programmers who are creating software for free.
Now he is setting them up to fight amongst themselves so that they'll ignore what the industryis doing. The company I work for is doing the same thing. We have a Union here that is set to strike any day now. They keep bringing up the Union member's wages and saying,"See, look how much they get paid for what they do." Nevermind that they get paid a fraction of what I get paid. The assumption that they are implying is that the Union, by asking for higher wages, is causing my salary to drop and leeching off the company. That's pure nonsense. When low-level workers make more, then that causes everyone else wages to go up as well. This kind of wage inflation might be seen as a bad thing, until you realize where the money is coming from. It's coming from the top 1%. That top 1% owns about 43% of the wealth in the US, and they've managed to acquire 15% of that 43% in the last 20 years. When one knows that single fact, it's easy to see who the leeches are. They've stolen a huge chunk from Americans through scams such as free trade, credit cards, IRA's, Enron, Haliburton, etc., and getting some of is back to the people who actually work for it is a good thing in my opinion.
It was also true that inventing electric lights spelled the end for candle makers. No one cared about crossing the Atlantic with a sail when they could use an engine. Gasoline would not be used as much if someone invented a cheaper way to get a car from here to there. Basically, software companies sell something that you cannot really touch and that can be copied infinitely. Free software can proliferate on its merits alone without worry of cost. On a long enough timescale, of course most commerical software is irrelevant. But there will always be those niches which OSS cannot fill, and commercial software vendors will turn to finding a niche and doing it best. I can't really see a future without OSS though, once you switch to it and it suits your needs, would you really ever switch back to software you have to pay for? I bet most shops that go open rarely go back 100% proprietary.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
Value for whom - software makers or software users?
...
... the entire U.S. economy."
If you are a shoemaker, then someone else giving away free shoes is a detriment to your business, but a benefit to the shoe-wearing population. If you are a software make
However, software makers are also software users: In order to write the business apps that I am paid to write, I need an operating system, a compiler, a database, etc. So I benefit if the software up the chain is cheaper (or if we broke the windows habit), but I might lose my job if the company's clients can get the same business app that I write for free. That's far less likely, as it's rather a specialised application.
A few large, and largely American, companies that exist to make software near the top of the chain will be the losers if free software takes over. The world's population in general will be the winners - they will pay less and get more, counteracting the tendency for the rich to get richer by further impoverishing the poor.
I asert without proof that it's not a zero-sum gain. That is, the total gains to many from freeing IP will always match or more likely far exceed the losses to a few rich people by not gettting IP-rent any more.
Thus I don't think it true that "downward pressure on intellectual property is having a serious impact upon
I'm very happy with that, but then I'm not one of the very rich few, and I don't own a large software company. The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution isn't happy with it, so take it from whence it comes.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
This sounds more like accounting fraud than anything caused by open source software.
Does anybody remember a couple of companies named Arthur Anderson and Enron?
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
Trademark, patent, and copyright laws exist to protect the "property" of those who create them. Without these laws there is little in the way of incentive for developing new products, since competitors can merely take your program, re-label it, and release it. A good example is Biotech patents: biotech companies spend millions of dollars every day in R&D. This R&D results in many useful and life-saving devices and drugs. If a competitor can easily take this device/drug and reverse-engineer and re-release/re-package, there is no incentive for the Biotech companies to continue making these drugs/devices.
Here's another example: You're a engineering student who works in his freetime trying to design a great new widget. You spend thousands of dollars and put in every moment of free time on this product. Finally you get it to work and release it to the world. The next day every widget producer has your design and begins creating their own. DO you have any incentive to ever work on a widget ever again?
Don't get me wrong, i'm a big fan of F/OSS. But your view of IP law is completly wrong. If you're interested in the basis for IP law or just want to learn more about it, Harvard Law School has a great page with primers for copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret law.
I'm a law student studying in IP so the subject is near and dear to me. I believe in the necessity of IP laws but what is really needed is a balance between IP protection laws and consumer rights. Right now the law is being bent heavily towards strong IP protection and against consumer rights. I'd like to make it a little more fair, but arguments like this make myself and others like the EFF look bad and are just provide more ammo for the content and software industry.
It's really funny how a community, which embraces (Free Software|Open Source), and values freedom and cooperation, is against something that is a good thing for people with a generally lower standard of living than us.
It just seems so egoistic. "Let's make some draconian laws to prevent outsourcing (or make it hard), but really, we ARE for freedom and against government control".
Please, grow up.
(Of course, some might say that I misrepresent their views - "we are not really for freedom, you see" - this is just even more sad)
Just a derivative work of the Linux kernel? I doubt it. If MS really wanted to make a proprietary Linux distribution, they'd probably bundle it with a bunch of closed source user space software. You'd still be free to resell the kernel they gave you (and any modifications they made to it) for $14.95, but you wouldn't be able to redistribute other MS programs just because they came on the same CD-ROM.
Given that many of the Linux programmers who contributed to the core code aren't Americans, it is a bit disingenuous to say that Linux promotes the transfer of American intellectual property to parasitic non-American companies.
We need to drive home that the idea of open source or free software destroying economic value is based on a false economy. Customers that don't have to pay for software licences can spend their money elsewhere. Companies can afford to expand, lower the cost of their products, and perhaps hire additional staff with the money they save. And as a software/hardware developer I don't believe closed source equates to job security. You can still be outsourced, and there is little incentive to improve software products if the customer is locked in, so arguably they would be hiring fewer, not more developers.
What they propose is analogous to shutting off the town water supply and throwing arsenic into the local river, in order to support the bottled water industry. This is the message that needs to get out.
My rights don't need management.
> That article fails to address the point that their
> costs associated with developing and maintaining
> IP (Intellectual Property for the uninitiated)
> will also drop to near $0.
Think of how the stock market will see this: your company just lost 85% of its assets, but has also cut spending on IT infrastructure. Considering that the maintenance of proprietary software is probably much less than 85% of the total value of all assets, the result is still a very large drop in company value. And you know that means that this company's stock will crash, and it will crash hard. When that happens, I don't want to be in your shoes when you try to console your boss about not having to pay for those copies of Windows any more.
. . . eventually they'd be outcompeted by the previous versions of their own products, which don't wear out and need to be replaced . . .
In a monopoly position, that shortcoming of capitalism is fixed simply by either going to a rental model, or by causing the old software to expire, and refuse to work (which is effectively the same as the rental model).
Please note the heavy push by Microsoft in recent years to migrate current customers to a rental model. I believe this is evidence that they are already feeling competition from their old software.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Frederic Bastiat in 1848 wrote a nice essay called "That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen" dealing with this topic handily. A good portable copy is at Memoware.
However, then as now many lawmakers were persuaded by this lie and protected the established players from competition. Because of bullshit analyses like Tocqueville's we can look forward to many more years of a sluggish economy. As soon as we stop shielding big players vis-a-vis "intellectual property" we'll see a nice upturn.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
The Rickshaw Operators Union has funded a study calling for the closure of sidewalks. An R.O.U. spokesman said "At the moment, people can get to where they want to go for free, by walking, thus endangering the livelihood of our members. We expect this study will show that wages for American rickshaw operators to grow by 85%, and job creation by even more".
The Cabbies Union is also funding a study calling for the banning of private cars and public transport.
"If some punks run around town breaking windows, it will actually help the local economy (eg. the local shoe maker, etc.). This is because the home owners with broken windows will purchase new windows from the local Hardware store, and hence the hardware store owner will buy his children new shoes."
This fallacy is as old as time itself. It is provably false, trivially. (Breaking the windows increases entropy, reducing the total value in the system). The money going to buy the replacement windows would have been used on something else (eg. the shoes). The only winner is the company producing the windows. The loser is the community.
Microsoft is the maker of Windows, supplying all the local Hardware stores (the businesses producing software) with replacement Windows. Somehow, not being forced to buy new Windows every year or two will "hurt" industry. (Oddly enough, Microsoft gets to go around breaking its own Windows, and forcing you to upgrade...) The only loser will be those producers of proprietary software, who choose not to cooperate with, and take advantage of, those who produce FOSS . For example, Microsoft will lose, if I chose to use Debian for my next Enterprise project. Does that money vanish? No, it goes to my company's shareholders (via. Capital Gains or Dividends), or to my clients (due to lower prices), or to me (due to increased profits). It just doesn't go to Bill. Who loses? Bill. No one else. (Well, Tocqueville also loses, because Bill doesn't pay them to write stoopid articles any more, either...)
Take Apache, for example. Presumably, Apache hurts producers of Closed Source web servers. I cannot use the Apache code and re-brand it as "Joe's Web Server" (I think -- I haven't read the license, but I assume it is more like the GPL than the OpenBSD "free for any and all uses" license). However, this only hurts me if I (Joe) decide not to arrange my affairs to take advantage of Apache!
If I choose to fight Apache, then I am (probably) reducing the overall value in the system. If I have some non-trivial value to add, then I should quit wasting my time re-writing the same code that the Apache team is writing, I should encapsulate my super-duper value in some kind of an add-on to Apache, and I'll start marketing my company as "Joe's Super-Duper Valuable Enterprise Support For Apache, That You Just Gotta Buy, If You're A CTO!"
There! I (Joe) win, Apache wins, my client's win. Microsoft (IIS) loses. Who cares?
-- -pjk Perry Kundert perry@kundert.ca http://kundert.2y.net
I find it amazing that so many people here both make their livelihood from creating software, and advicate that it should be free. Actually, Open Source is very very good for the vast majority of big business, obviously because it's free. And yes, they'll clearly have to pay sysadmins etc. to look after the kit, as they do now.
But, what about the coders? Despite what posters here seem to think, the vast majority of companies (and not only small ones) do not employ coders, and would not (especially with all the related tasks such as risk management, quality control etc.) so, rather than buy proprietary software that takes care of these issues, as they do now, they will get it free and benefit.
As for all you coders, please do continue donating software free to business. How are you going to pay the bills?
Civilization has reach this point because we builded based on previous works, and advanced on them. Wonder in what kind of caves we are living today if today IP laws were from the begining. You just need to patent a brick (or something equally basic) and the entire civilization must live in caves again.
With software things can be worse, and what open source does is giving ways to build things up, to legally base in the works of others to reach new heighs, and without worrying about big corporations, needed money and things like that. Individuals not behind big corporations could make big differences for all, think i.e. in the relativity theory.
The "American way" is not about capitalism, per se. It's about liberty. Sure, capitalism is a part of this, since it's the economic system that gives people the most freedom... but the founding documents of this country show no special devotion to capitalism. The Framers' attitude toward economics is best described as "As long as you pay your taxes and play fair, do whatever the hell you want."
Free software is indeed anti-capitalistic, sort of. Capitalism is based on the notion that the value of all goods can be measured monetarily; the idea that someone would be willing to code for free (or for some non-monetary benefit, like prestige) causes a division-by-zero error in the system.
But it's certainly not non-American, since it fits with the *real* American ideal of liberty: do what you want, as long as you don't hurt anyone. Free Software coders aren't hurting anyone other than by out-competing them (which is legal). They're helping a great many people: those who get neat software for free.
(If I start handing out free cookies in the street in front of a bakery, I'm not breaking the law. In fact I'm a major benefit to society, because people get free cookies. Whether the bakery goes out of business isn't my problem.)
Disclaimer: the *ideal* American Way involves liberty and governmental non-interference. It doesn't exactly work that way any more...
Home brewing is destroying the liquor industry, shade tree mechanics are destroying the auto industry.. bla bla bla..
I suppose they have to blame someone, and since we dont have the funds to defend ourselves in the mainstream media, we are the first target.
The danger is that the congeress believes this crap and starts legislating a 'fix'. Much as they did with the DMCA.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Alexis Do Tocqueville used to be a reputable firm. Now, I don't believe a word they say. It amazes me how they are trying to focus hatred on Free Software over the current outsourcing trend.
The plain and simple truth of the matter is that the market was too fat to begin with. To many companies were charging to much for products or services and they're feeling it now.
To many contractors were charging $400/hr instead of reasonable rates. It would have happened *anyway*, anyone who says differently is blowing smoke or selling something.
They're idiots, no one else pays attention to them, why should you.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Not that I'm entirely disagreeing, mind you. But one of the main things software helps you make is more software... which (DeToqueville types claim) will go to zero value as a result of the complete unprotection of IP. Talented people may be able to develop and refine operating systems as a hobby these days, but they have to earn a living before they put effort into their hobbies. And increases in productivity mean nothing if what you produce becomes worthless.
The patent and copyright system in the US was created to try to balance the need to give creative types some rewards for their efforts (to encourage progress and new thought) while enabling society to reap the benfits at limited cost and encouraging sucessive development. Recent legislation has begun badly imbalancing this towards benefiting creators-- or worse, their descendants. Weak examiniations by the patent office exacerbate the problem.
Bill Gates' basic point from 1976 was that, if you do good work, you should be able to get paid for it. And, from an economics standpoint, more people tend to be inclined to do that work if they get rewarded.
Of course, at the time writing software was a highly arcane and rare skill. These days, Microsoft's business is becoming more and more like prostitution in a college town: hard to make a living at because so many talented amateurs are giving a comparable product away for free.
Software to do a job appears to pass through three stages: where nobody knows how to do it, where an oligarchy knows how to do it, and where nearly every shmuck knows how to do it. As time progresses, and computer skills have spread, more and more things move from the first category to the second, and then the second to the third.
But you can only make a boodle of cash if what you're doing is in the middle category. What scares Bill is that almost all of Microsofts gigabucks of revenue come from Operating Systems and Office Suites... and Linux and Open Office have started moving (via the GPL) both of those from the hands of the oligarchy to the hands of the masses.
The DeToqueville people are whining about this trickle down trend as the third part of their "three edged sword". In this, they are unfortunately like King Canute and the tide. The solution, obviously, is to be move more things from what nobody can do into the hands of the oligarchy. Of course, this means that those (like Microsoft) cannot rest on their Intellectual laurel Property, but must keep working hard with no assurance they will be the oligarchs who get the next amazing idea... as Google seems to have demonstrated. It may well be that operating systems and office suites will not be where the smart people make their money in the future, but on organizing these tools to make work go smoother (like IBM does). Of course, to make money this way (for long), your CLIENT has to be making money producing something-- which, if IP becomes worthless, won't be an information economy product?
The DeToqueville institute may have some point with the first edge of their sword (as bad as that metaphor becomes), in that the GPL may be TOO STRONG a protection to encourage inventors properly... which I will suggest as a student term paper topic, rather than blather on about here. =)
Their second edge I consider contemptible. Yes, giving away Linux is providing jump starts to lower-income countries. As a fat, lazy American, I find the disparity in the global distribution of wealth digusting, and if adjusting that can be done by giving the poor oportunities to become richer, I can accept that it means that the rich have to work harder to stay that way.
A more interesting point that they raise is the shortsightedness of outsourcing in the effect that it has on redistribution of intellectual power. I think this will be the biggest long-term threat of outsourcing-- the gutting of the American skill set by failing to train replacements for the baby boomers.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Your problem is that you are narrow-mindedly assuming all reimbursement must be in the form of financial payment.
I have personally contributed about 300 lines of code to Debian, for free. In return, I have received all 15 million lines of code contained in Debian, available to use for free. If that doesn't count as reimbursement, I don't know what does.
Free software makes no logical sense, because people do it out of altruism and stupidity.
Let's logically analyze how stupid and altruistic my above mentioned contribution really is. I contributed 300 lines of useful code and got back 15 million lines.
- Is this stupid? No. The 300 lines I contributed only took a few hours to write. The 15 million lines I got back takes a lifetime.
- Is this altruistic? Not in my case. I wrote those 300 lines of code out of pure self interest. The only reason I wrote the code was because I needed it for my own use.
- Does it make logical sense? It sure does. Each of the thousands of contributors receives far more value than he alone contributes.
- How can this work while Communism failed? Because software is infinitely copiable. Communism tries to apply the sharing philosophy to material goods, which unlike software are not infinitely copiable.
- What about the freeloader problem? Freeloaders are irrelevant for infinitely copiable goods. As long as the contributors themselves are adequately reimbursed, freeloaders do no harm.
The moral is, do not blindly assume that the economics of material goods apply to software. And please, for the love of god, do not attack all free software as having "no logical sense". If you're not gonna participate yourself (as is your right), at least don't interfere with other people who wish to participate out of their own free will (as is their right).Information may wish to be free.... but use of that information does not want to be free.
Consider the argument that software code should all be free. Why? The arguments usually stand that anyone can write code, and, for the most part, the code isn't going to be all that different, so why I should I hide my code? Simple reason. Not because the code for a particular algorithm is all that different from someone else's, or how you implemented a GUI is particularly such a huge trade secret. The real "trade secret" is how it's all assembled and implemented.
Sure, the design to a combustion engine is "open source", but I can bet the implementations of a particular engine is patented. Why? Because someone spent resources (money, time, energy) on developing a particular implementation of various "open source" information. Those resources need to come from somewhere, so, thusly the engine price reflects that research and design cost (in addition to materials), and someone from a competing company can't just swipe your hard-worked implementation for free and sell it themselves.
Applied to software, and information in general, there's no difference. The english language contains some tens of thousands of words. Everyone has access to them, however, the author who writes a best-selling book is allowed to charge (and people are willing to pay) for that book because of the implementation of those words. If anyone could just copy his implementation, resell or give it away for free, where's his incentive to write more books? Good will towards others? No. He needs to eat, and he also may want to buy a new car one day. Free information can go screw, I want to give my kids shoes to wear.
I write software for commercial use. I usually open-source various components of a piece of software. If someone wants to copy what I've done, they're still going to have to devote resources to pulling all those various "free" pieces together. Just like I did. So is my software free (in both cases)? No, absolutely not. I spent time and energy (up front, as an investment) and now I want to have that investment pay off, so that I too can eat.
As to the model of "giving software away" and charging for service and support. To me, that's just about as close to extortion as you can get. Frankly, when I evaluate software, I want software that works as close to out of the box as possible. If it needs customization, fine. But, after that, go away. I don't want a whole room of IT folk (and their salary, and their associated overheads) to maintain my equipment and software. I am more than happy to pay for a piece of software that doesn't require a legion of IT people to "support" it.
Get with the real human nature. Competition and scarcity of information, and goods and services to create wealth is a underpinning of our entire way of life back to the caves. Understand people and their attitudes and how they operate. Perhaps you would only "eat what you need" when it comes to using free goods and services, thusly not abusing the system. But, for every one of you, there are probably 5 others who won't, generally "stealing" free ideas and using them to advance themselves, regardless of licenses and what slashdot has to say. This is why copywrite and patents exist to protect the original creators of implementations and ideas. It's a dog eat dog world out there. Really, it is. And few will easily just put aside their own needs and desires just because the EULA says GPL. If there's money to be made, someone's going to take that shot.
>Second, Linux initiatives have enabled foreign-based information
>technology firms with zero IP costs and cheap labor to easily compete with U.S.
>software companies
Isn't he forgetting that these "zero IP costs" are effectively being imported to the US too?
A lot of free software originates from outside the US, <cough>Linux</cough>, and its existance surely provides many technological benefits to US companies.
The idea that all the smart work is done by Americans and then gobbled up by a punch of pesky foreigners (which I feel was being alluded to) is ridiculous.
Access to the source is nothing. Can the government fix the bugs in it, compile their own versions, and deploy it on government computers? Nope. So the source doesn't get them much, if anything.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?