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Free Can Mean Big Money - The Open Source Economy
Gentu writes "People are always accusing Open Source proponents of being communists, but an editorial by the OSNews publisher, ex-Red Hat employee David Adams, takes a critical look at whether Free and Open Source Software is really anti-capitalistic or is, in fact, only a product of the free market at work. Does wide availability of high quality, low cost software harm or help the world's economy?"
That whole thing assumes communism is in any way bad... It's biased to begin with.
it may be good for world economy but may not be good for US corporations which control US govt. US govt, in turn uses its sole superpower status to control other states and so on. Effectively, "if it ain't good for US Corp., it isn't good".
This of course assumes that OSS = high quality. That is definitely NOT always the case. OSS is just software, and can be good or bad quality. That being said, talk amongst yourselves...
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Does it even matter if it hurts the economy? That's what capitalism is all about. Screw the other guys; if the consumer wants my cheaper product over theirs, then I win.
There's a BusinessWeek article today advising the Linux community and those in product development to drop GPL and release under BSDesque licenses in order to stay more business-friendly.
...that you can still sell services based around that free software.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
... how much of the money companies make trickles down to the volunteer coders of OSS?
For those of us who won't RFA, the synopsis might be:
"OSS is good for the economy because it raises the opportunity cost of using free software over paid for software. Never again will you have to pay for an Outlook-type program for Windows over it's free version. As a consequence the quality of output from the software industry is raised, thus promoting competition over monopolistic practices"
Was I right? Should I read it now?
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
Think about all the money educational institutes, medical centres and so forth are saving by moving towards open source. They are able to invest these funds in various other departments such as research, human resources and so forth.
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
There are different types of "free". There's "free" as in "free speech" and "free" as in "free beer". Some free projects adhere to one or the other, not all to both.
You can read about the GNU Free Software philosophy for more information on the former.
Open Source defiantly means free money to some of the "Capitalist Pigs" that fold parts of it into proprietary commercial packages or bundle apps with proprietary commercial packages. There are without question commercial companies abusing the GPL / BSD licenses. Of course, while one might suspect, it can be difficult to prove.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
OSS can help small businesses get the foot in the door when trying to enter into a competative market. When every penny counts, OSS is a big way to save money needed for startup costs.
Linux is not Just One Big Thing.
Just because you go into a linux service business does not mean you have to support ALL linux systems and run into spirals of madness therein.
Make your own. Make it specifically yours. Make it free to the world if you like, but also make it so you only do paid support for the system from people who have your exact defined distro.
You're in a service business, not a software business then. It doesn't matter if people copy your software, or improve on it, or spread it worldwide. You still provide services to your customers. They still pay you to maintain.
That';s the bit most of the big boys don't get. "The software is free! Free for anyone else to use! Free for all! Free and they can copy it!". True. But you the service company knows that your services are not free. Your time is not free, and you spend your time keeping your customers running smoothly and you earn from that.
What's better about a Linux service economy than a Win one - a service business based on proprietary software may come up against roadblocks. limitations in the software that their proprietary vendor does not address. Limitations that may make your clients go elsewhere, "switch" as it were.
With linux, you can implement that change. You can make the product you give away perform as they need, and keep supplying service from then on.
Linux - It's a service economy now guys. The only money to be made is in serving free software and in being the service provider known to be the best for a situation. Implement functions your clients need first, get paid first. TRUE market driven innovation.
(thank you this marketing rant was brought to you by 3 straight days awake and sixty coffees)
Does wide availability of high quality, low cost software harm or help the world's economy?
High quality? Have you looked on Freshmeat lately?
You could make confusing software and then charge people to help them understand it...
I think this once was a buzzword used in IBM advertising.
....
International Business
I have recently heard they are strongly connected to OSS. Somehow, they still do what they once advertised.
So at least, one can infer that OSS is good for IBM.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
It's as simple as this, if people save money by going with OSS then they have more money to spend elsewhere. One industry shrinks, another grows.
I install Linux, Microsoft loses. Because I installed Linux I now have more money in my pocket, Brewing industry gains.
As long as such changes are gradual, the impact on the economy is nil.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
Think about it. Where once a whole slew of programmers might have been hired to work on an inventory or billing system, for example, now a fraction can be hired to tweak what the rest have been producing for free.
One could hardly call this anything other than neocapitalism. Under the guise of not reinventing the wheel (a process which actually contributes innovation by demonstrating multiple ways of reaching the same goal, some better than others) businesses are able to make their programming dollar go further at the expense of the programmer.
While it is indeed possible for programmers to wait tables in their spare time, I would like to suggest that waiters do not need to invest 4+ years of schooling in their vocation. At some point this must be recouped or the quality and availability of programmers will decline.
Unfortunately, both the hacker mindset and the CEO mindset are currently geared towards the concept of free software -- the hacker for the love of the code and the CEO for the love of free code -- and damned be the concepts of effective software engineering, security principles, or a day's pay for a day's work.
Doesn't anyone else here see the absurdity
of providing high-quality software (via your
precious time) for free to the corporations
that do not give us their technology, food
or services for free?
I'll say it now, and I'll say it again,
those mutherf**kers are not getting one
minute of my time for free. Period.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
The notion of "From Each According To His Abilities, To Each According To His Needs" which is the core of Karl Marx's philosophy is also the core of Open Source ideals. Those of us who can code give away our code so that everyone who needs software can benefit.
The fact that the Cold War happened and 'communism' became a dirty word in the U.S. and other western nations doesn't make Open Source any less about ensuring that everyone can enjoy the fruits of the labor of the most talented without the necessity of enriching the producers of the software or discrimination against those that would not be able to afford software if it was proprietary and commercial.
There are several companies that have embraced FOSS and are making good money. Not by charging money for the software, but by providing services. We always think of Red Hat and the like, but now think of IBM and they way they have embraced the FOSS world yet still make mega bucks providing their services. Linux, for instance, is not the basis of IBM's offerings, but merely one solution they provide. They don't charge for that software, but they do very well capitalistically speaking. There is no conflict between capitalism and FOSS, it merely shuffles the equation around a little. Instead of charging for the software, you charge for your knowledge in other areas. Then you 3. Profit!
Closed-source software houses that screech about their lost profits and how important it is to America to maintain their stranglehold on this part of the economy sounds just like the RIAA. "Save our artificial business model!" Well, it's articifical, and as a business model its time is drawing to an end, or at least being marginalized. Time to make the choice, do you want to be like the buggy-whip manufacturers and the RIAA? Or do you want to be like IBM and make profits from embracing FOSS.
Without open-source software (linux), the smaller companies for whom I have consulted would not have readily had the budget to hire me. Even though I'll happily work on commercial UNIX systems, the availability of Linux has contributed greatly to to my consulting cash-flow especially since the downturn in the economy.
My own perspective is that Open Source can play a major role in reducing major concentration of power (both financial and political). I tend to see both communists and capitalists(even anarcho libertarians) as largely favoring concentration of power-despite much rhetoric to the contrary. Overall, I tend to see decentralization of power as a very good thing.
However, there are some issues that concern me:
will decentralization have negative side effects like getting advanced weapons technology into the hands of folks that seriously misuse that technology?
In a free market, commodity prices inevitably trend toward the marginal cost. With software, the marginal cost is zero, and the popular and best OSS apps (linux, apache, mozilla...) are generally commodity-type items. So far from being communistic, it's coherent with market principles.
OpenSource Software would only be communist if people were forced to perform work for the "common good" Instead people have their own reasons for creating open source software. Some of those reasons are market driven such as wanting to create a demand for services that otherwise wouldn't be needed. Or some are socially motivated, such as wanting acknowledgement or to help improve society as has happened with the explosion of communication on the web and internet.
If people were somehow prevented from writing Open Source Software because it can take some jobs away from certain companies or some other reason, now that would be communistic.
People are free to create and decide what they want to do with that creation. Communism is all about others deciding for you.
Lets take for instance if all the telecommunications companies in the US were forced to give up their lines and hand the upgrading and maint of them to a centeral company. This company would be regulated by the government for prices and what upgrades need to be done through contributions by the "Telecommunications Services Companies" and taxpayers.
It would be my belief that you would see wide adoption of Fiber to the Premises in a much quicker manner than currently being shown by SBC and Verizon. Futhermore those companies that have this huge debt cloud that the fiber would never make money can then focus on providing services over those lines. Also they would not be restricted to the areas they are currently in so in essence I could be a Verizon Customer until I get a better deal then switch over to Comcast who would provide services via my fiber connection.
In essence the national telecommunications network would be considered the Linux of our telecommunications backbone. Verizon, SBC, Cable Companies etc would be considered in the same light as Redhat, Novell, Mandrake and others. It's a common platform and the services are being provided.
The only problem with this is that Linux has yet to be standardized in a acceptable manner. Mandrake looks different from Redhat who looks different from Novell. Fix that, standardize what's being done to the kernel and fight for customers with support and product contracts and we can kiss MS goodbye.
Linux service providers (LSP)'s should be going to Corporations and telling them we'll provide you this service that will eliminate this problem or situation. You have to adopt Linux on that platform but for a fee we will make it do what you want and provide training and support for the life of it.
Other companies should be investing in end to end solutions built on Linux that are standards based and drum up companies to adopt this. We see it in many places today but adoption is slow but picking up very quickly.
Other companies who are standing on the sidelines wondering about this SCO business need to realize all the money they are throwing away and finally need to give the finger to SCO and get on with the conversion. Service disruptions to a Microsoft based virus over the last 2 years have far outshined any royalty payment you would ever have to pay SCO if hell froze over and they won their court cases. Go out and find those balls you had when you made these companies so great and use them again for once.
It looks like only the big corporations can make big money out of open source. Granted the rest of us poor losers get software for free but nothing else from the effort, while the big corps put in no effort and reap big money.
did you forget to take your meds?
I make all my money with free software these days.
I design a database...What do I use? Hmm Oracle? Can't afford it. MS SQL? Can't afford it. Guess it's MySQL or PostgreSQL, with the added benefit that I can charge a couple grand over the liscensing fees for either of those and make nice profit.
Deploy a firewall file server for some business? Win2003? Yea right. Solaris? Too expensive. Linux? I can charge ten grand and beat all my competitors.
Webserver? Apache. Office? Open Office.
MS Zealots can talk TCO all they want, but these people pay me a few hundred dollars a month to keep an eye on their stuff, and it never really breaks. I can admin three dozen boxes by myself, and I'm laughing all the way to the bank.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
This reads like a response to one of MS's most common attacks on OSS, especially when pitching to governments, about how increasing demand for OSS => decreasing demand for proprietary software, which causes the loss of jobs becasue OSS people do it for free, not as a career.
Which is bullshit.
1) Many, MANY OSS programmers work for traditional companies, which may or may not be primarily software companies. Really, it's not a case of some unpaid commie hippie stealing an MS programmer's job, it's a case of a well-paid IBM programmer stealing an MS programmer's job. Which is fine by me--the market at work.
2) The OSS development model seems to have lower overall costs associated with it--open-source projects can give you the same functionality and features, but the total cost of developing all that software is much less than the total cost of developing the congruent proprietary product. This is GOOD, because it means that less people are doing more work, which means we're more productive and efficient. MS hurts because they're not able to compete with the more efficient (and therefore cheaper to the consumer) OSS product, and they lose revenue. Again, fine all around.
What this is REALLY about is that OSS is a different management model for building software, and it's a model that's based on a different understanding of how best to profit from your ownership of intellectual property (copyright on software you've written/had written by others). That's why MS has started an internal drive to study the development process used by the kernel coders and others--they want to see if they can take some of the techniques and processes that are OSS and apply them to help MS become more competitive.
Suppose that we all had to pay a license fee to the estate of the guy who invented fire and the guy who invented the lever and the guy who invented the wheel .... The resulting friction on the economy would kill it.
The reason we have civilization at all is that we can freely use the ideas of others. In the words of Newton, we can "stand on the shoulders of giants."
Free inputs do not hurt the economy. There is a place for proprietary software and people can still make money from it when it is appropriate. It would be like paying a scientist to do some research for you.
Saying that if open source predominates that people would not have the incentive to create is like saying that scientists will not research unless they can license all their discoveries.
Well, IBM can "make" money from Linux while contributing back to Linux at the same time. IBM needs to meet it's customer's needs, and if Linux doesn't satisfy those customer's needs, then IBM can modify Linux to suit those customer's needs. However, the customer isn't paying for Linux, they are paying for the custom services/software on top of it.
Linux allows IBM to quickly build a solution for that customer without having to "re-invent the wheel" or pay software license fees. Thus IBM can get the job done for less, they can pass some of those savings on to the cutomer, and the Linux community can benefit from their additions. So, in essence they made money....
A more interesting question is whether it's sensible for professional programmers to insist that their labor is worth nothing. Or whether it's logical for them to insist that that their labor is worth nothing but that it's an outrage to replace them with someone earning half as much.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If I can implement my proprietary closed source business logic using nothing but open source tools, I will. And I'd like to release any generic tools created in this effort back to the open source community.
RMS is a little bit out there, though, but he doesn't represent all open source software. Not all software should be free, and a lot of it simply can't be. But having all the building blocks being open source and free is a very good thing for the industry as well as technical innovation in general. The GPL has its place, but there are cases where the license kills its usefulness.
Also, any project that is generic and doesn't contain proprietary business logic, is best as open source software. You just can't sell software the same way as before. Custom software, tailored towards very specific business needs, is where the money is. The market for generic tools is shrinking, and only truly good tools will survive, but for how long?
I've never understood how people took the rant about free software being communist seriously.
:p)
Are lawyers doing pro bono work destroying the market for lawyers? Are doctors who work in a clinic as volunteers destroying the demand for medical services? Are all the people out there who write articles or novels and give them away for free "destroying" the market for books? Of course not.
It's foolish to assume that the best OSS software authors act entirely selflessly. If you could make $50/hr at a corporate software shop, or make a name for yourself on 10-15 hrs/week in coding for free and then command $150-200/hr for the other 25-30 hrs a week, what would you take? I'm making way more money than I ever did in a "real" job as a consultant, and I do it on my schedule and my terms. I got this by releasing a little OSS package... one that isn't even in use any more because I didn't have time to maintain it and it was fairly early-stage. But within weeks of putting it out, I was getting inquiries about modifying it on a per-hour bsais, and I've had a full schedule for over 16 months and more than 1 full time job offer that I've turned down.
Also, it sort of assumes that there's some competition between OSS and certain alternatives. If I had a choice between a free IIS and a $100 copy of Apache, I'd buy Apache. If I had a choice between a free winXP, and paying $89 for linux, I'd take linux. (And I'd dual boot to free windows so I could play games
I'm sure for a lot of people, "free" is a nice thing. But you know what? It's been pointed out before: license fees on software are often a tiny fraction of TCO. OSS is often superior not because of the software cost, but the associated costs.
As far as the "World Economy" goes, this question is in the "Give Me a Break" category. It's like asking whether free medicine would help or harm the world economy. The only difference is there isn't an army of altruistic and excellent drug manufacturers like there are software developers.
He missed a major point in section 7.
LINUX MAKES JOBS.
Its very simple, Microsoft's revenue is $36.8B it employs 55000 it has a high revenue per employee of $669k. It has a monopoly so that high revenue/employee is not suprising.
Other companies are not so lucky:
GE revenue is 140 Billion, it employs 305000, thats $459K per employee.
Citigroup $240K per employee
Walmart $183K per employee...
If companies spend less on Microsoft products and invest it in their own business with similar results to their existing business, then they will create more jobs.
So, if Walmart saves 10 million by not buying Microsoft licenses and switching to Linux
and invests it in its own company, it will likely create 55 jobs.
Microsoft will lose $10m (i.e. 15 jobs). A net gain of 40 jobs.
Walmart jobs are low grade, a more realistic example is Citigroup. 10 million saved on Windows licenses is worth 26 extra jobs.
My point is, it isn't just that companies spend the money on themselves, it's that they employ more people for each $ revenue than Microsoft, so every dollar saved creates more jobs than a $ going to Microsoft.
It should be painfully obvious by now that Microsoft's current MO (aside from funding the litigious bastards at SCO, and their current astroturf campaign about patents) is to lead everyone in the wrong direction about what "free" means (i.e. gratis instead of libre) and then tear down any claims made by that assumption.
Don't fall into Microsoft's trap. When talking about open source with colleagues, customers, etc. make sure they know about the true benefits. Lower TCO is part of the picture (and it does have a lower TCO when anyone not reciving Bill Buck$ is doing the measurement), but there's also the ability to interchange components at will, and the ability to interchange vendors at will, which gives everyone more leverage with their vendors. With open source, everyone wins except for software companies who have built their businesses around lock-in.
If nothing else, this whole thing should serve as a stellar example of why the phrase "open source" is an order of magnitude more versatile than the ambiguous "free software." There's no confusion as to what it really means.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Hmm, with a little visionary power you might conjure up a cleverly designed social engineering scheme, roughly ...
... erm ... profit here
0. Diagnose a social movement that has to be dealt with
1. Create an enemy: M$
2. Channel the movement: RH
3. Conquer: IBM (while taking care of distraction: SCO)
4.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
If we use the same logic that concludes that OS is communist, then we can conclude that some other famous orginizations(even countries) are communist as well:
Canada - Free healthcare? Those bastards!
The Red Cross - Stealing money from the healthcare industry!
There are many others. Can you think of some?
same to you.
I totally agree with you here.
So lets say I put 150 hours into an OSS project, what do I get back out of it from the 500 big companies that take full advantage?
Oh what's that?
Nothing?
Yeah thats right.
I dont get squat, and those big companies that are using what we made for no cost to them other than possibly hiring 1 of say.. 50 of the people who worked on it?
Yeah, thats really worth spending MY time on..
Sorry but Id rather sit in the other room watching TV with my wife.
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Ever hear of Social Security? Medicare? Welfare? Public education, non-toll highways, government funded research?
Yea sure, some people think these things are bad, but they're scary in the other direction.
Marx would have liked it, because it's a dialectic, eh? On one side, Capitalism--heartless and evil. On the other Communisim--mushy and incentive-free. Combine them? Excellent system.
It goes the same way with open source. We give it away, and we reap the rewards. Sure, its not the same kind of money you'd make if you were out to fuck everyone, but it's steady and solid, and the repeat business is kickin.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
It's Open Source. Linux is an Open Source project. Like Apache, PHP, OpenBSD,etc.. all of which are not Linux. Sheesh, you'd think a /. editor would know the difference.
This guy is way out there
That whole thing assumes communism is in any way bad... It's biased to begin with.
So what you're saying is, it would be unfair to condemn the whole program because of a few few minor slip-ups?
On a single user level, this is true only if you would have paid for Windows otherwise. Most people interested in installing Linux are savvy enough to know how to get Windows for free. In that case, whether they installed Linux (free) or stole Windows (free), Microsoft loses.
On a corporate level, since companies can usually count on being sued for having unlicensed copied, this argument holds true. This is where M$ can really be hurt, because Corporations are where M$ makes their bread - but it would take some propgation of linux for Microsoft to begin really worrying about it. They know that Company A will not switch to Linux because then their stuff may be incompatible with Company B, and so on.
Which ushers in that whole "trying to be like Microsoft" debate that slashdotters are so fond of...
What were we talking about again?
Lets look at packaging. Milk bottles- you used to buy them and leave them out for the milkman. He would fill them and return them to you with the milk. Now, the bottle is so cheap it is included in the cost of the milk.
Software is now easier to produce so college kids can get together and generate/maintain an OS like linux. It is thrown in with the cost of support when you buy from a company like Red Hat. Economics are just playing out here.
Some opponents of Open Source bleat about corporate programmers losing jobs because of free software alternatives, but what about the corporate users?
Surely, with finite funds, corporate users have more choice with Open Source and so are able to 'do more' with their dollar and hence are able to be more productive.
Better productivity = better economy = more jobs?
Just the market in action, IMO.
That's the whole point of the GPL.
Sure, SCO has Samba, but its no competitive advantage for them.
If you can write software that gives you or your chosen company a competitive advantage, go right ahead.
Also, only by writing code do you become a good coder. You might have hard-drives full of applications that you've written, but who knows about them? And thus, who knows about you?
Nobody's forcing you to GPL your code, so why should you criticize those who chose to GPL theirs?
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
One large one is the human nature of stupid and weasely people. Not of all people. The essentials of communism (arguably just extreme socialism) has existed many many times throughout human society: Very small nations, Native American tribes, Mormons were originally so communal it was damn near communist. The one thing in common they all had with eachother? They were small, very small. When it's small enough that when you're lazy you see somebody else starve, you're less likely to abuse the system. When living off the system is as easy as stealing cable, and you don't see any immediate downfalls, you'll see a lot more people want to cheat. This is the main reason why Communism on a large-nation scale has always had to be enforced with extreme control over people.
That reason, or the lack of its presence in OSS communities, is why OSS is so successful. OSS is like a dream community, everyone works hard to benefit eachother -- most people selflessly so. The fact that most true OSS people never see any financial benefits for it, and if they quit would lose nothing, is why it doesn't face weasely and stupid human nature ruining it.
Even people who claim that communism is absolutely evil will usually admit that the idea behind it is as beautiful as John Lenin's "Imagine" -- it's just in reality it never turns out that well. Well guess what, in the OSS community, it turned out that well. The people who its success are hurting are trying to tie the word communism to it so they can form negative preconceived notions based on Stalinist "communism".
Finally I'd just like to say that no I don't think OSS is communist, but I think it is a wonderful huge community where everyone is out for the benefit of others. That is the best part of the idea behind communism (and socialism for that matter) and that's why they get tied together.
I've always viewed OSS as a modern day Community Project for the entire world. Companies develop new software (or little guys do) and then release it to the world. It's like giving your time to the local library... except this has much bigger (and better) consequences! People that think OSS is Communistic are obviously looking out for their own ass and not the rest of the world. The days of bloated profits from software are almost over. Thank god. Some day Bill Gates will be looked back upon as a greedy bastard that walked on the backs of others to be the richest man in the world. Why do you think he started the Gates Foundation? hmmmmm....
Dragnetting /. for ideological enemies is one of the more pathetic human undertakings.
Besides posting as AC, that is.
> the idea behind it is as beautiful as John Lenin's "Imagine"
That's a funny slip - I wonder if Lenin would have dug the idea of the Beatles' pluralistic utopia.
Doesn't anyone else here see the absurdity of providing high-quality software (via your precious time) for free to the corporations that do not give us their technology, food or services for free?
No, because you're not providing it for free, really. You're providing half of it for free.
High-quality software is worthless to any large organization, be it a government or corporation, without high-quality support. And support costs money. A corporation will pay someone money if they like the software; there's no question about it. It might even be you, if you put out a good software package and sell support services for it. If not, that's your problem. You could keep your code closely guarded so no one could possibly do anything evil with it. Or you could license the code in such a way that the user contributes to society or the world of computing by using it.
If a corporation is not an end-user, the GPL can be used to ensure legally that the corporation must release source to anything it makes (again, for "free") using your code. This means that if a group incorporates your code, they are, essentially, giving you some of their technology for free.
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
OK, that's a good question. Let me try asking a couple of other questions in lieu of R-ing TFA:
- does the availability of high quality, low cost literature (Shakespeare, Rabbie Burns) help or hinder world literacy?
- does the availability of high quality, low cost music (Beethoven, Brahms) help or hinder world arts appreciation?
If you answered "of course it fucking doesn't" then may I propose that that is also the answer to whether or not high quality free software harms the world's economy.
Is Microsoft competing on unfair terms with Linux? Maybe. Is Arvo Part competing on unfair terms with Schubert? Same maybe - you could argue he is, or you could argue he isn't. Part can't just knock up some neat patterns thanks to Bach's and Mozart's comprehensive experimentation on the subject. That doesn't mean Spiegel im Spiegel isn't a damn fine piece of music.
Do we hear modern composers whingeing about the availability of high quality public domain music works, or today's authors complaining about how they can't compete with Shakey? I haven't seen Terry Pratchett arguing that Shakespeare's works should be legally prevented from being shared in the PD, or Tolkien's estate arguing that Project Gutenberg should be closed down.
First, why would you bother to defend yourself against this "accusation?" Bush has nearly 50% in the polls these days, so you can be sure that at least half of the US believes that "Patriotism" means "Agreeing with the government at all times, and never speaking out against it."
It is this basic mindset that allows jerks to call people Communists when they have a different business model. I think that limiting trading when stocks are falling is VERY anti-Capitalist and government bailouts of business is rather Communist myself, because you are protecting certain people by limiting free trade and government controlling businesses.
In short, they are wrong, and anyone with half a brain knows this. People use words like "Communist" to turn others who don't like to read instantly against another idea. It is still a powerful word, and can still be used in effective propaganda campaigns.
The way to counteract this effect is to prove your idea works. If employees are paid and good software is made, everyone will come around.
What you don't want to do is make complex arguments against it. It is a waste of time. Money talks more eloquently than people in business matters.
Second, a piece of advice: the word "meme" is arrogant and easily replaced with "idea," or if you are writing a song and need another one syllable word, "thought". Never use it unless you want a toaster thrown at you. I carry toasters around for this purpose.
first you need a world where quality free software exists.
Communism pure and simple, is the idea that people should be allowed to be people.
The way Marx saw it, Capitalism was as close to facism as it was possible to get. You really didn't have any choices if you weren't rich. You'd never own anything, and you'd always be held back by greedy rich people who kept you from doing things.
The whole "government owning everything" thing comes from the fact that you can't be an autoworker if you don't have access to the means of production (i.e. an auto plant). The idea was to free up peoples options. to let them work in ways that uplifted their spirit, yadda yadda yadda.
Now, the Soviets took the whole idea (Everyone will be free!) and made it into a nightmare (We will control every aspect of your lives!). So, they were not really Communism.
Even so, Communism would probably never work. People aren't that nice in their daily lives, and hard work really isn't well rewarded in that system.
But Open Source and Communism actually do have one thing in common...The belief that workers should have access to the means of production. The whole free thing has nothing to do with Communism, though thats what everyone seems to think. It's like the damn gay marriage issue...Hello! They can still get married in a church! All they want is the right to pay joint taxes!
And the idea that people should be allowed to have tools and be free to create has done amazing things. It's an excellent proof of what a bunch of people motivated by the love of their work can accomplish, vs a bunch of wage slaves pounding out shiny crap. It's an excellent thing to be a part of.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
GNU has nothing to do with "free speech" or "free beer".
ack - I meant non-pluralistic
On how to go from a poor capitalism to a communism. There are plenty of poor capitalisms out there. There are many many many flaws in communism, and I think your statement but I don't feel like pointing them out w/ the solution right now is the equivalent of Fermat's last theorem ;)
Taking an extreme example, if it cost $250,000 to make a flat-screen TV, there would be very few people employed making them because so few people would think they were worth it. Reduce that to $2,500 per TV, and suddenly everyone and their dog wants one. The result - far more employees making flat-screen TV's, despite the fact that it takes far fewer employees to make a single TV.
The only problem is coming up with worthwhile applications to invest in. We are a far cry from that, however.
I'm a laissez-faire, free market, anarcho-capitalist libertarian. Nothing could be more pro-free market than protecting the right of people to GIVE away their creations for whatever motive they choose. It just so happens that there are economic incentives to do so in many cases.
Anti-free market would be if you decide the government has to step in to "promote competition" (i.e., stamp out activity that seems to weird for the politician's radar and/or threatens established business models). Anti-free market would be if you RESTRICT people's right to give away what is theirs. The fundamental of the free market is the right to do what you want with what is yours.
Anti-free market would also be, IMO, granting any kind of monopolistic or exclusive rights to people or entitites, for example, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." A real free market solution would let the free market promote the progress of science and useful arts instead of doing it by government compulsion. And we are seeing that when there is a vibrant set of public works available through public domain and/or favorable licensing terms, science and useful arts advance dramatically as almost all discoveries and inventions build on prior art. Removing these restrictions would do so far better.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
"However, the customer isn't paying for Linux, they are paying for the custom services/software on top of it."
In other words, IBM is making money off the closed source software and the chumps that contribute to Linux.
+1, Funny!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Wow!
I did as you suggested and looked it up in the wikipedia.
If the 20 or so pages of text explaining some of the ideas in 'capitalism' are any indication, seems like there are MANY concepts that are part of capitalism. 'Free Market' is one of the concepts than can be part of capitalism as an economic system.
Find coupons in Greeley
Ther ia a better question than "is high quality ubiquity good", the answer to that is obvious.
The real question is will the world support software insurance sales as a viable business?
Using JBoss as an example, they sell 3 things
1. Cost advantage vs. other guy (note there must be another guy to make this work)
2. Faster Better Cheaper support for problems
3. Indemnification against IP suits.
If we are to assume high quality, don't we also assume low support costs? That delta is the gross margin on professional open source.
So if the model is selling cheap, indemnified response to a "disaster", then how is this different than All State?
> People think Communism is bad because it didn't
... tens of millions in Russia, Ukraina and Eastern and Central Europe. what about Africa ? North Korea ? Vietnam ? South America ?
> work.
No. Bad because there were millions of deaths worldwide because of it. Many more than because of any other idea - including fascism - just include over 60 millions of dead in China alone
What's in a name? If a bunch of people get together and pool their resources, and when one of them has a problem they get taken care of, we call it socialism. If you do the same thing only with stockholders raking off some of the money, we call it an insurance company.
When someone wants to give away something that someone else is trying to sell, should that be called "socialism?" I can think of one recent case where it was called "Microsoft Internet Explorer."
Photos and text are "open source" but they are not freely shared because the history of exploitation of authors and artists is well known. The history of exploitation of software engineers is very new, because software engineering is new. You get paid once, fired, and your employer publishes a million copies without any royalties.
Software is no different from books and music and games and movies. It is a different language of binary content. If you write a book, do you want the opportunity to sell it, or do you want it forced into the public domain as soon as it is digitized?
Everyone can pick a random page of Harry Potter and type it it. Post the text on your own web page as harrypotter.vol1.page217.html. Now a third party, Bookster.com can can make a search engine specifically to pick up and sort the pages into order, and one day after it is published, we all have it for free! Yippee! But is dispossessing the author of the right to sell her book the the right thing to do?
Personally, I think that authorship and the ability to profit from creative work is very important to humanity.
Sure music CD's are drastically overpriced by a dictator. If they were priced based on supply and demand they would be much cheaper. Sure commercial software with propriety compiled codes suck.
The publishing Behemoths in Hollywood and Redmond of course don't respect authorship unless they are forced to by star power. They don't want to sell books and disks anymore because the used market holds down the price of "new" licenses. They want to rent infinite copies of the same property simultaneously at a dictated price. Of course any real real estate rental market suffers from oversupply. And they don't want to pay royalties either. They want to acquire content under work-for-hire rules, dispossessing engineers like the authors and actors and musicians of old who sold their equity for a single cash payment. Remember record studios paying $50 for copyright on a blues recording? Thats dispossession.
But the communist reaction, to brainwash everyone into signing over their creative work to the greater glory of the proletariat is an overreaction and is also disposessionism.
What we need is a way to have open source economy but respect ownership and the ability to buy and sell copies of information property on open markets instead of dictated prices. Once you sold too many copies, the value would approach 0.
Its possible to do so using stock market technology. I solved in in 1997. http://jordanpollack.com/softwaremarket
Always struck me as the first sign that corporate lobbyists had run out ideas as far as attacking Linux goes. Firstly, the protagonists always seem to confuse Soviet style Stalinism with communism which as the original article points out were not the same thing. Secondly, when comparing the Soviet system to modern software Microsoft's monopoly and arrogant, oppressive behaviour via the KG.... oopps, BSA bears more resemblance to the control freakery of the USSR than the relatively chaotic dispersed model practised by FOSS authors and development teams.
The economic damage argument is also a sign that MS and their schills are grabbing at straws. I imagine that the first use of gunpowder led to cries that arrow makers would be unemployed and the powered loom leds to concerns of unemployed weavers but every time a new business model arises the end result is that people adapt and their bloody good at it. Thousands of Miners, whole communities were made redundant in the UK in the 1980's but the end result is that they just moved on and found other things to do.
If any economic effect will be felt in the event of a major shift to OSS it'll be the free availability of software to businesses of any kind, large or small, rich or poor a startup in Bengal will have access to same CRM, office suite whatever that a major corporation in the US or UK has. Open standards will make the dissemination and exchange of information flawless across the global industrial base and a whole industry will spring up installing and supporting it.
The development of such an industry is almost guaranteed by the fact that just because the software is free doesn't mean that businesses will install and maintain it themselves. If this were the case people would be doing it with Windows and as I spend my working life in a sort of purgatory going from office to office doing such exiting things as showing people how to put the shortcut they deleted back I can't see it happening at any point soon.
Besides, there's always the option of following the dual licence model that MySQL, OpenOffice/StarOffice etc. follow so that businesses can buy in the product and service from the manufacturer if they choose to do so.
Anyhow, The more blatantly stupid lines that MS and Co. come out with the greater the pressure thay must be feeling which is a good thing in my book.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Well, three dozen boxes at 100 dollars a month:
100 x 36 = 3600
3600 x 12 = 43,200
You can make 43,200 a year working ten hours a week in fast food? Gotta get me some of that! I mean, that plus what I've already got, plus stuff I deploy...I could be making six figures! Sure the local businesses cry and moan, but those bitches wouldn't hire me two years ago, so they brought this shit on themselves.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
>China is an interesting hybrid of Communism and >Capitalism, I am not fully aware of to what >degree, but hear that it keeps their astonishing >population fed (for the most part) as opposed to >suffering and starving as compared with the >Capitalist counterparts.
6 to 12 million people were starved to death
in 1930s in Ukraina thanks to communism.
Millions died in North Korea.
Starving comes when there is more people than resources. Drastic birth control is what helped
China.
Does wide availability of high quality, low cost software harm or help the world's economy?
Well, there's a good analogy to reason from. Does the wide availability of breathable, freebie air harm or help the world's economy? Just think how much more drudge work would we all have to do if we had to pay air fees! The thought experiment confirms the obvious: free stuff is good. The less you have to pay for any specific thing, the wider your effort=>money spreads.
A simple argument supporting the pro-Capitalism nature of Open Source:
No artificial measures have been used to "prop up" Open Source. Yet it exists in a Capitalist society. Free markets do not reach equilibriums instantaneously, so it is possible that the existence of Open Source is merely a bizarre transient. But every passing day is an indication that it is not.
On the other hand, artificial measures DO exist to prop up closed-source software. This directly hurts Open Source, yet Open Source is alive in spite of it. That's a pretty strong indication.
I can't give you a balance sheet showing how Open Source is "in the black", but if you believe in natural selection in the context of a free market, there's not really another explanation for the existence of Open Source.
It's somewhat ironic that the label 'communist' gets attached to open source software. In fact, software, like all information goods in a networked world, is a pure public good (a technical economic term; look it up in Wikipedia or your Econ text) and therefore a standard textbook case of market failure. One possible solution to this failure is government intervention through legislating and enforcing copyrights/patents (closed source). The other possible solution is a tying arrangement whereas the software is given away for free, and technical services (not a pure public good) are tied to the software.
As a solution to public goods market failure, tie-ins have been studied by economists for decades and are conceptually nothing new (look up Nobel-laureate Ronald Coase's classic article on lighthouses). In fact, since they're entirely market-driven and require no government intervention (in the case of public domain software), they're closer in spirit to the ideals of a free market than copyrights.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
the fact that some software is similar to the printing press, and can have the same revolutionary effect upon society. Software patents on concepts therefore can be very counter productive. Thank goodness that the people that invented the spreadsheet understood this! May the best product be the winner.
So, I won't argue with low cost. Sure is. But high quality? A few exceptions aside, open source software is often terrible quality. Just look at the never-ending story of Mozilla. Sure it's starting to clean up, but it's also taken years to build it into something!
OpenOffice for OS X? Sorry, I much prefer MS Office 2004. That's sort of ironic. And sad.
Open source holds a great place - and I think it's helpful that it forces the corporate players to improve their products. But I'm not confident that open source is the next wave or some incredible movement - at least until more attention is paid to installation, distribution, user interface, and stability. The mainstream user would rather spend more money to have a product that will work out of the box and is backed by a company. Most folks just have no interest in getting free software from some teenager - as incredibly talented as that teenager may be (Not to stereotype - but that's the perception if average people know what open source is about at all).
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Communism doesn't work because you can't offer need-based provision to those who spend more time and effort educating themselves than other people. If Jim has to spend 8 years in college to become a doctor, but his buddy Bob can go to work flipping burgers right now, and they both get provision "according to their need," why would Jim go to college?
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
First, I think that it is fundamentally wrong to assume that public works and benefits are somehow communist in the way that Communist governments exist today. This sort of thinking has been a way of attacking public sector projects in thinking that "I don't want my tax dollars paying for it."
Instead, it seems to me that we are talking about some sort of continuum between Capitalism and Socialism where the difference is that Socialism has a number of public works controls which help to redistribute wealth and keep in check the big business capitalism.
I use the term communism to refer to Soviet, Chinese, Eastern European, and Cuban communism. Whether or not they are the ideal is irrelevant. They are the examples of communist governments that we can reference. Communism in this perspective seems to be a socialist feudalism with state control and ownership of producers. This state control has limited utility and consequentially at some point one has to move to a person-based (corporations are artifical persons) ownership model.
Hence the move from Feudalism/Communism to Capitalism/Socialism seems to be a one-way road, provided that one only allows one ot consider a transition complete once it has really taken root. I.e. the family succession of elected offices in places like Singapore indicate that feudalist mentalities are still alive and well in the psyche of the citizenry.
The problem with open source from a capitalist perspective is that the means of production (in this case intellectual property) have become socialized, in the words of Marx. However, this is fundamentally different from Communism as I have defined it because socialized doesn't mean "owned by the state" but rather "owned by the producers and users." In other words this is a move towards community ownership which on the surface seems more like communism. To be fair to Marx he seemed to indicate that capitalist institutions such as corporations and the free market would likely continue to exist in his vision of communism.
I am willing to admit (as Wilhelm Reich quite strongly advocates) that Lenninism is NOT to be equated with the theories of Marx, and that Communist parties are simply wishful thinkers and daydreamers. In this theory cooperative businesses are the true manifestation of Marx's ideas of communism, but the term communism can't be used because of confusion with the communist party and the Soviet regime. He uses the term "Work Democracy" in his book "Mass Psychology of Fascism."
Of course what we have here is a strange way in which work democracy is implimented here where the "workers" including "corporations" own the means of production. This is something which could be equated with Marx's communism but bears no relation to the state-controlled Feudal political philosophy which has started in Russia during WWI. Indeed, when compared to the ideas of the "Communist Party," open source more closely resembles capitalism because it assumes no state ownership and the operation of a free market.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The success of Free Software in a capitalist market is illustrated by considering the iterated prisoner's dilemma. Self-interested, profit motivated corporations will cooperate for mutual benefit. The GPL maintains a Nash equilibrium by punishing defection (cheating).
Logic is not Divine.
But not everyone wants to pay for the extra hardware. I usually give the firewall away as an added extra for the fileserver if they aren't inclined to pay for extra hardware. In the long run, it makes less work for me.
I live close to Atlanta, so a lot of overpriced Windows shops pillaged this area four or five years ago, before the bottom dropped out. (This isn't MS bashing actually; these guys charged 40-50,000 for a modest server setup, where their cost was around 11,000. Real rip jobs). Now there are a lot of people with slow servers looking for alternatives.
Unfortunately I'm freelance so I have to spend a lot of time selling the stuff. It's not usually all that hard to sell. I can offer all kinds of guarantees, and they still remember how much it all cost 5 years ago, so 10-15,000 dollars for a 30 user fileserver doesn't seem too much. Monthly maintenance fees are good too--just don't guarantee the hardware.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Does wide availability of high quality, low cost software harm or help the world's economy?"
...
If you are in the business of providing high quality , HIGH cost software it certainly doesnt help YOUR businesses economy. but the question is asking about a larger picture than just how it effects software companies who do copyright restricted propriotary products as a business model, its asking about the worlds overall economy i think.
the answer to this question i believe is obvious.
Ofcourse Open Source is a good thing for the world economy.
the thing to keep in mind is the medium we are talking about, "software" is by definition NOT hardware, this allows us to make direct copies of things while never denying access to the origional to its owner. the idea that *ideas* themselves can be shared and improved upon on a global scale is perhaps the most amasing thing to have come out of the last century, if that fact alone does not do its part to help the world economy it will only be due to false barriers put in place by those who have an interest in keeping certain advantages over "the rest of us"
going further...
I often hear people complain about not getting their own private rocket ship or that was promised to this age by a previous generation, and they often ask why we dont have those sorts of things yet, well to me the answer is obvious. I mean, look arround every device you have purchased has been locked down and restricted to perform a very (limited) specific function, "they" (the producers) dont WANT these items to fill too many gaps because that would eliminate an upgrade cycle that would allow for more profit, technology can only progress at the speed of business, and when business practices such as those so often observed (and discussed) in forums such as this are supported by the consumers it only perpetuates the cycle.
the only cure is to educate people as consumers, to keep the bigger picture in mind when making small purchases, because those add up to great costs for society as a whole.
Vote with your money, its the only vote that seems to count.
Slashdot quote at the time of posting this comment is somewhat ironic given the topic of discussion
"I use not only all the brains I have, but all those I can borrow as well. -- Woodrow Wilson"
I am an economist to some extent. At this point, I stopped reading the article (well, i read a little more to see if he at all tried to substantiate this very very very very very very very bald assertion - he did not).
His "facts" are not facts to the world of economists who study the issue in detail. While some may agree upon this position, many more do not (well, it's hard to tell, what exactly is 'global progress' anyway?).
His article was nothing more than cheerleading. It was not a balanced look. It was FUD.
There is a general trend for most mass market goods to become commoditized. This should have happened in software some time ago, but there were unnatural monopolistic forces that slowed this process. In particular, Microsoft is doing everything in its power to prevent the commoditization of their bread and butter applications. But even with the presence of Microsoft, there remains a tremendous pressure by natural market forces to commoditize a lot of the software products in use today.
The only unusual wrinkle to this is that software becomes commoditized by becoming essentially free. There are intrinsically no costs of production or distribution (except of course for the initial effort to create the software). To me open source is not an expression of some type of political manifesto, but the realization of natural market forces that have been held back too long by some of the large software companies.
What makes this hard to understand is the commitment by so many to do "free" work for the community. How can market forces cause people to do uncompensated labors? Well, there are really three principle reasons (and probably a host of other ones as well). One is to enhance other people's free labors incrementally to make it useful for myself or those who I work for. This is where the GPL license is vital because I have to contribute those labors back to the community. The second is the desire of fame and the many ways fame can be translated to fortune. Again, the GPL license is vital because it prevents others from obscuring my contributions. The last reason is to reduce the costs of creating a successful software solution to a problem. I have to use commoditized software and enhance it because if I don't I will lose to competitors who do. This is why large companies like IBM are willing to pay staff to do open source development.
So I do not view free software as a force in opposition to or separate from standard rules of the capitalist game, but just a natural outgrowth. If we did not have software developers creating open source solutions under a GPL license, the natural market forces would create such a solution very quickly.
I would say that anybody who tries to invalidate the rules of the game by which the free software community thrives (such as the GPL) cannot possibly claim to be pro free market. They really only serve the interests of the existing market players and their real agenda has nothing to do with the true spirit of entrepreneurial capitalism.
Another way to look at is that open source really helps a free economy. No offense to open source projects but most projects do not give us something new as much as give us a free alternative of something that already exists. This is simply the commoditization of a software solution where cost has been driven to it's lowest level. This is not unlike any other industry where commoditization drives the price down. Anyone can build a bolt for a car & car manufactures use the cheapest version that meet some basic requirements. The only real difference is that in the physical world manufacturing costs far outweigh design costs. In software, manufacturing costs can truly go to zero. How does that help the economy? Well it allows those truly doing innovative work to build upon commodity software to provide a differentiating solution with less cost. A good example - Tivo. While they may have improved the version of Linux they use in Tivo, generally it's just the required nuts and bolts to them. They were then able to focus on aspects specific to their product that allowed them to produce a differentiating product with out being restricted by limitations or burdened by royalty costs of a closed system. (Again no offense to those doing inovative work in OOS projects, I'm only trying to point out an economic argument! :)
This attitude is amazing. Communism killed more people than the Nazis. Ever hear of the Ukranian famine of the 1920's, ever look at what collectivisation did in the USSR, ever look at the cultural revolution, ever seen 'The Killing Fields', ever heard of the Katyn massacre?
My grandfather escape death by communism by luck and courage. What you're saying sounds to me like what someone whose parents escapes the death camps must feel when told that the Nazis were not that bad.
This attitude that Communism was a quaint little belief that was not implemented correctly is abhorrent. The MILLIONs killed by Communists around the world deserve more respect than that.
It's just the same as saying that the Nazis were nice guys, it's just that they didn't implement their ideas correctly.
What Free Software does is make the knowledge and skills and the people who have them valuable and not just the intelectual property that they create.
FOSS means that the software is there to be used by all but you still need people capable of integrating it, modifying it, setting it up, monitoring it and supporting it. Knowledge of a product becomes more valuable than the product itself.
This is good for the great mass of businesses that shell out billions for overpriced software that barely works. This is even better for IT workers in general because creating a product and then firing all the people who helped code it and design it will no longer be an easy way to make money.
The commodization of software will not destroy people's jobs, rather it will make many jobs more secure. It will become necesary for software companies to retain their developers who have valuable knowledge of a product because the product without the support that comes with it is worthless. Companies that stick to the old model are already finding it difficult to compete with FOSS software.
GPL software will very likely increase the number of in-house programmers that companies hire because modification for in-house use is not subject to the mandatory release of source code.
FOSS requires companies to support their products in order to make money, not just sell them and tell their disgruntled customers to re-read their EULA's and take a hike.
FOSS will gradually increase free public access to a wide variety of software and stop forcing companies and individuals to reinvent the wheel. Software development will advance because it will not be necesary to redo the work of others or buy expensive licenses to develop new ideas for a wide variety of software. FOSS software will do what the public domain was not able to, guarantee that a wide ranging body of software related knowledge is free for everyone to use.
.... linux, OSS, FOSS isn't an economic system, Its SOFTWARE and made and used by the efforts of people from many different economic systems and government rule.
I wonder how many people know what communism identifies. Its a totalatarian government and a socialistic economic system. Thats the simple definition of communism.
But again, its software, not an economic system or even some government rule.
If there is anything that might be closer to NOT being a non-sequiter, it'd be to say OSS is HUMANITY...
This article is just ignorant. It neglects the history of open source and free software beign described as *anarchist* concepts and instead opts for an ignorant comparison to communism. It make the erroenous argument that communists (and anarchists) are in favor of "utopia." I don't know of any communists or anarchists who seek utopia. And the discussion here on Slashdot illustrates how impoverished discussions about these subject have become in this forum. Four years ago you would have found a more intelligent discussion with posters explaining how open source was an example of anarchism.
Open source is an example of anarchism in practice. Search the archives for any of the discussions that support this.
"Historically, software didn't always cost money. In the early days programmers shared technology." ...because it used to be considered a type of SCIENCE, eh? Imagine people sharing information in order to get things done in the most efficient way possible for any particular application. Hmmm...sounds vaguely familiar...
This proprietary software stuff is looking SOOO 1990's.
I swear this Open Source Economy topic is covered so frequently on /. with so many talking heads that all I read anymore is:
.... .... ....
There's money in Open Source
No there's not!
Talking Head Jim says
Just bullshit babble over and over. For Christ's sake, it's services or product or both. Quit treaing the topic like it's some damn revolutionary concept.
Mormons were originally so communal it was damn near communist.
Two fundamental differences between the Mormon's United Order and communism are (1) Mormons who wanted to join the United Order voluntarily gave their means/property/output to the Order, whereas in communism, it is taken from him by force, as others on the list have pointed out, usually with an AK47 to his head. And (2) if a person was lazy, in the United Order they were put on probation and then kicked out if they didn't work. No so with communism.
Force vs choice. Work vs indolence.
Rather fundamental and critical differences, if you ask me.
For another practical example, study up on the first colonies settled in the New World. They started out as a communal society (crops, etc), and after the first winter, switched to a private-property-driven capitalist society. The Governer had some interesting words to describe the difference from the first year to the second!
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
I think he started the Gates Foundation because he is a good man by any standards except those in the IT profession. To most he can be considered a hero and rightfully so in my opinion.
What kind of an idiotic falicious argument is that? Communism is bad because communists killed people. Doesn't that mean that christians should also be abhored? After all, Christians have killed millions of people over the past couple of thousand years in its attempt to rid the world of "primitives" and "heretics". And the USA killed MILLIONS of aboriginal Americans over the last few hundred years. So USA == Chrisitianity == Communism == Evil and deadly.
So the Nazis were also good too then?
It's about how many people were killed and what else was done. I apologize if the deaths of millions of people don't matter to you.
BINGO, thanks for proving once and for all that open source is all about promoting communism. By eliminating high paying jobs by forcing them onto lower paid "wage slaves", you destroy the very foundation upon which our society rests. If I cannot be rewarded by my skills with CASH, why would I get into this stinking business?
By and large, open source work is done as a branch of capitalism (give away the code, make money off services), or as a beneficiary or capitalism (don't need the money, give away the code). Open source developers do not submit code into the public domain, and have some benevolent central authority assign to them the resources they need to survive daily. Instead, the open source developers who get the resources are those who fill a market need. Just like free market capitalism.
There's also nothing fundamentally incompatible between capitalism and open source code. In the ideal case, where the software is both free to acquire and free to operate (author makes zero money), all it means is that you can't make money doing a particular thing. But even under capitalism there are many things that don't make any money at all, such as charity work. However, we don't complain that charities take jobs from prison guards!
What does intersect is the communist ideal, which is basically like everybody else's ideal: that we're all rich and happy. Having Free/free software to use makes us a little richer and a little happier. The similarities end about there.
/* You might have hard-drives full of applications that you've written, but who knows about them? And thus, who knows about you?
*/
See, the whole point is, who cares? As long as HE'S happy with his software and doesn't really give a flying fuck about what you or some corporation thinks about him or his software, then it really doesn't matter who knows about them. The only person that truly counts is him. It's his software. he doesn't have to give it away or even let anyone else know it even exists. "OH, but how is he going to get a job?" What if he doesn't WANT a job writing software? Hard to imagine, I know, but it's true. I gave up programming because I found out I really don't enjoy it much. I've got several "in house" (erm, my house) applications that I use for myself, and only myself, and I really have no desire to see them out in the "wild".
The whole point of "freedom" (including software) is making a conscious choice on whether or not you want to share. I don't need the GPL to dictate whether or not I want to share (and consequently, I choose BSD if it matters), and when I develop my own software, I'm under no obligation to you or anyone else to release my source, my licensing, or even the application itself unless I deem to. isn't freedom great?
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
anything wrong with beeing a communist! =)
" Section3
This means that if you have developed a program that can be sold for $1,000,000 to four people in the world or $100 to three million people, it is your solemn duty to keep the price at $1,000,000, even if that means that 2,999,996 people who need that software will have to go without. "
Actually.. being a Ukrainian who moved to Canada in 1917... the 12 Million Ukrainians did not die from starvations for the most part... most were executed.
I think on some level Linux is a challange to aristocracy because it reduces their power over your computer (and thereby, you). Hence, all the same groups that hate democracy hate linux.
Use linux because _THEY_ don't want you to. (:
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act" - George Orwell
Support jobs exist whether or not the large corporations use Linux or Windows. All OS's need support! You're kidding yourself if you think that Linux creates more support jobs for everyone. And even if it did, there is more to software than SUPPORT... Maybe your life long dream is to give all your personal time writing software away for free after work hours and then work in support all day, and you're welcome to it. Sounds like job hell to me.
"Linux brings us the ability to benefit Small-Medium Sized Businesses with powerful tools at no direct cost, direct meaning no purchase price -- the time involved in implementing it, however, is a factor dependant on the skill level of the IT Staff."
This is not meant as a troll.
The problem, being a small business owner, is with this "factor dependant on the skill level of IT staff." Most small businesses don't HAVE AN IT STAFF!
They depend on outside contractors. Ouside support folks for Linux earn more than their Windows trained counterparts. Try finding an accounting system that runs well under Linux, and then try to find a CPA that will work with it! Seeing technical people, who don't own small businesses that are not technology related recommending FOSS is all well and good, but it means more COST for me!
Basically, buying shrink wrapped Linux costs more than Windows. Hiring folks to work on it costs more than Windows. I can't get the apps that I need to run my business on Linux. They are out there for Windows.
Explain the value proposition for a small business owner from Linux. I would like to "stick it to the man" as well, and support Linux. However, I am in business to make money, and not run my computer systems.
Actually, a whole bunch of corporations give away at least some of their stuff for free, including IBM (eg Eclipse), the Apache consortium, the folks that make MySQL, to name three of many. Open source gives me way more software than my individual contributions would buy if I was trading my hours for money. As long as it's a net gain for me, why would I care whether there are also a lot of freeloaders out there?
And here's a question: what's the ethical difference between an individual who uses open souce software but doesn't contribute anything back, and a freeloading corporation?
provided: (1) you don't expect me to give mine away, (2) and you don't violate any laws (such as patent infringement) while doing it (3) And you don't give it to other countries that are enemies of the US that could use it to harm us So far Linux *potentially* violates (2),(3) of the three conditions. And then there is pressure from Stallman et al for (1). (1) and (2) can be possibly be resolved. What about (3)?
I don't like communism. But when putting open source in relation to communism, something goes wrong very badly. Communism is not liked because communist people usually have no free speech and are working 'as friends' because the are FORCED to do so. In practice, that is totally contrary to open source. Nobody is gonna arrest, torture or kill you if you stick to proprietary licenses.
:-)
The _theoretical_ idea of communism is something that cannot be avoided -- and the internet proved to provide a cheap way to let some sort of e-communism emerge, the first communism that has been set up by the free will of the masses.
Many IT personnel speak of free hardware and software rental licenses. But we already have free software -- enough for at least 95% of all imaginable uses. In the end, everything will be free because some day we will have automated ourselves out of the production business. Open source is the natural way to go on. We cannot stick to reprogram and resell text editors until our electronic desktop calendars show the year 10.000.
I suggest to stop talking about capitalism and communism. What we really mean is freedom. But the quality of slashdot postings are really getting too worse. Why do I have to read about some professor trying to copy chunks of sound out of his mp3 recordings? That's disgusting.
Please let us rate the story posters! *eg*
Hmmm... why not sort stories on slashdot's top page according to the ratings of the posters instead of letting the guys at slashdot do the selection? Remove that censorship! I want to apply my own preferences and ratings! Thanks.
"Thus IBM can get the job done for less, they can pass some of those savings on to the cutomer" Bwahahaaha.. yes, I'm SURE they are going to pass those cost saving onto you. Bottom line is that they are going to get personally rich off of the free effort of those who made Linux.
From what I've seen Red Hat and some of the other companies doing here, there seem to be around six factors that I've seen that enable businesses to make money selling Linux.
1) An initially proprietary value add which greatly improves the user experience, but which via the GPL also improves "the state of the art." RPM, Anaconda, and YaST would all be examples of this.
2) Consultancy/Installation. "Our operating system is free, but sling us $5-10k and we'll install it on your corporate network, to your specifications."
3) Support. "We'll also show you how to use our free operating system, after you've paid us to install it on your network." This is good for businesses because they only need to pay money on a per-incident basis, and as a result, even though the initial install/training might be several thousand dollars, over time it can still work out to be a lot cheaper than having a resident sysadmin on the books. A per-incident consultant won't ask you to pay his super.
4) Saving time. A corporate or home user can buy a copy of Fedora Core or Mandrake and have a working system in approximately an hour. On my Celeron 1.7, by contrast, even a fully automated Linux From Scratch install takes a bit over four hours, and that doesn't include the roughly 3 months I've spent working out how to do that. What I'm trying to say here is that a company *could* employ an administrator to build a custom Linux system...but prototyping for specific needs takes a lot of time, and the admin will be paid by the hour for that time. Preconfigured software is a lot quicker, and therefore, cheaper again.
5) Although the value added programs mentioned above are lisenced by the GPL, anyone building custom Linux needs to invest time learning how to use them. This means that, while they're free, companies who already have the knowledge of how to implement them can do so for the consumer, which is a service that can be charged money for. Red Hat for example could also leverage the fact that although RPM is GPLed, they were the authors of it. "Other people *can* build an RPM-based system, but we have far more intimate knowledge of the process. We're the *inventors* of RPM!"
6) Branding/Recognition. If you establish a good reputation for yourself as having a solid distribution and doing great after-sale work, this can create the famous "positive spiral" effect which will in turn generate more sales.
I personally don't in any way see Linux as Communist or something which is resistant to making money. What it on the other hand does do is force a vendor to behave in a more ethical and value-oriented way, by shifting the unique selling position from the software itself to the service that the vendor gives the consumer.
I can understand how some companies (I won't name names here, but I think we know who I'm talking about) don't like that, if they prefer to make money from hurting and controlling their consumers rather than genuinely helping them.
"Hmmm... why not sort stories on slashdot's top page according to the ratings of the posters instead of letting the guys at slashdot do the selection? Remove that censorship! I want to apply my own preferences and ratings! Thanks. :-)"
Because you will conform to the OSS movement. YOU MUST! The Tux-BORG will assimilate you and you will be assigned your own free-software work-cube to contribute to the greater good, the good of the Group Mind!
If there is so much big money in OSS, where is it? Where are all the companies out there making (big) money making OSS? or even supporing it? "Big Money" doesn't include breaking even or skirting bankruptcy. It means people are getting rich by it.
The only person I see getting rich over Linux is Linus himself because he lands cushy jobs by reputation and the belief by the companies that hire him they will suddenly receive great benefit from his religious following.
Wow. How old were you when you moved? You might just be the oldest /.er!
Hmmm. It weren't the Tux people that forced me to switch my OS. It was the Microsoft-BORG that did Because they failed to adapt themselves quickly enough, thus providing a safe harbor for all sorts of digital pestilential bacteria on my box.
Now tell me one thing: how will they gonna merge a complete relational database with the overly complex NTFS file system if they cannot even fix critical bugs in their internet explorer product within some reasonable time frame? I guess Microsoft desperately seeks reasons as to why customers should stick to Windows. Hopefully, they will fail at that attempt.
I, for one, am completely tired of the whole "is Open Source bad for business" discussion that keeps getting pushed. Guess who does the pushing? Companies that are fearing their business being harmed.
By freeing up money and making one sector of business more streamlined, by default another will open and the world will advance. It just happens that way. Sure automobiles put most horse and buggy makers out of business. But they created many jobs for producing automobiles. Eventually roads were made that still provides jobs.
Fact: IT departments are by far and wide the biggest money losing departments of businesses. They don't sell anything. They are cost centers. Open source can help alleviate that and allow for that money to be used on something else. In the long run, this will always be good and help new sectors grow. Those that fight this change will go the way of the horse and buggy maker. Those that retool their shops to embrace will reap the rewards.
I bought Windows for $100:
So for me:
+ $100 of software
- $100 of cash
----
net 0
For MS:
+ $100 of cash
- $100 of software
----
net 0
Net result of Me + MS $0, ie the status quo.
*After Linux*
Me downloading Linux and buying beer:
+ $75 of software (linux isn't as useful as windows)
- $100 Cash
+ $100 Beer
----
net result +$75
MS:
+ 0 Cash
- 0 of Software
----
Net 0
Guinness:
+ $100 Cash
- $100 Beer
----
Net 0
Net Me + MS + Guinness = +$75
If you save the money rather than spending it, you reduce the ability of the economy to grow.
Actually just the opposite. Search google for Solow growth model.
For-profit corporations are, by definition,
only in it for the money, and as such, are
willing to do anything to achieve than end.
Witness Enron et al. Look at the environmental
devastation, government influencing (running?)
and practical enslavement of human beings. This
is all because the owners of a corporation have
no responsibility to the land or their employees.
Witness the shameless job-cutting and overt
utilization of overseas labor whose laws would be
considered medieval compared to ours.
There is simply no morality in 99% of for-profit
corporations. The CEOs get mega-bucks while
the layoffs skyrocket. Among the big-boys, it's
all just the "good ol' boy network", except
they've had the time and money to buy the laws
and the judges that enforce them.
A hobbyist or single user who uses free software
is ok - he/she can use it to better their
education in many ways. I completely advocate
free software for personal use, as long as that
personal use does not support corporate America.
On a related note, free software can be a great
benefit to developing countries or even the poor
within America. If corporations had any decency
in them, they would recognize that and help
fund such initiatives, but they will refuse to
do that until we make them. How to do that is
a big question, for you can't make anyone assume
moral responsibility.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
hate free speech
you can buy bottled water for outrageous prices-- or you can turn on your tap.
You can use open source, or you can use a proprietary operating system/application.
Socialism is not communism , in a socialist system not everyone is equal in power and not all have the same thing.
...
And sorry if you plan on acting like a capitalist you will loose and loose really big , all those who where capitalist in the way they do business got litterally crushed by the socialist.
Microsoft = Socialism , they offered cheaper software to the mass , so that everyone could use a computer.
Wal-mart = Socialism , where the lowest price is the law
Ford used to be capitalist , they adapted and now offer some good offer for the money you give them. Due to the other using socialist idea.
etc
Sure their software is basically crappy, but
they have managed to write an OS that works
with an unbelievable amount of different kinds
of hardware. If in doubt, check the list of
supported hardware in Linux or BSD.
That's not the point though, my point is that
M$ is at least charging those corporate sob's
for their work, and, last I checked, the
Bill Gates Foundation was giving away something
like a billion a year (I could be wrong, tho).
In any event, they have created (along with
Paul Allen and other old-time M$-ers) a paradise
of biotech research labs. So they have
effectively done a little Robin-Hooding of the
corporations and then taken that money and at
least done *some* good with it. Gates has
said that when he has finished running M$, he
will do philanthropy full-time. And, while a
lot of people speak a bunch of bs, his
foundation's track record speaks for itself.
Of course, his business practices are iffy at
best, but if he is truly out to help the world,
then would you rather a truly evil corporation
like Mosanto or Haliburton or one of these
prison-corps be owning your computer, or maybe
someone like Gates who may simply be using
their techniques for a greater good?
It is a possibility.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
"I'm SURE they are going to pass those cost saving onto you."
Duh. If they don't, find a vendor who will. That's how the free market works. You look around for who will give you the best deal. Since anyone can redistribute and support Linux, someone will do so cheaply.
I think an economic argument in support of free software would carry more weight coming from someone other than "OSNews publisher, ex-Red Hat employee David Adams."
Who better to argue the point than someone who's personally profited from the model? Not only does Red Hat do so, but Adams made a fair chunk of change from Open Source software by leading the team that developed Tallyman (later folded into Interchange) and getting the company bought by Red Hat. In the meanwhile, they made their money by selling services based around the package, which was open source.
In short, Adams has made the model work for him, which probably has a good deal to say about his qualifications regarding and enthusiasm for it.
Tweet, tweet.
Incorrect. Nothing in communism mandates anything be taken by force, Marx just saw a (possibly violent) revolution as the only way to achieve communism which to me has always seemed as his worst miscognition.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
I'm sick and tired of the current trend of evaluating all human endeavors in economic terms. Free markets and capitalism are not the culmination of western culture and not the final purpose of the Enlightenment (which, as the inspiration for the French and the U.S. revolutions is the God father of the current western democracies). Who cares if open source software is pro-capitalistic or not. What is much more important is the fact that it is an manifestation of a much more important tradition of the Enlightenment - freedom of expression.
"There is a terrorist behind every bush"
Some may argue that the USSR, etc., wasn't "real Communism" but then the question remains: why wasn't it?
Because there was no copy command. It is main reason. If you want somebody to share food with others, you have take food away from him (and he probably has other ideas how to use this food). That is why USSR need oppressive goverment - to forcebly take goods away from manufacters and distribute them.
If you want to share some piece of software, there is no need to deprive you from any use of this software. You can even continue to sell it for those who don't like to download it for free for some reason. Not mention that you can still use this software.
There is old saying If I have an apple and you have an apple, and we exchange them, each of us have one apple. If I have an idea and you have an idea, and we exchange them, each of us now have two ideas.
Software is an idea, not a goods item.
So if you give away some food, you've produced, you clearly in loss. If you give away some software you've developed for your own use, you can benefit from it - somebody may point you to a bug before it hits you, or came up with idea of improvement which never occur to you.
Remember, people do not eat software, do not wear it etc. They use it as tool to do other things. And if you have some tool you benefit from its use, no matter how many other people use same tool.
shortest offtopic karma whore ever
From economics, a free market is based on the following assumptions.
Read these assumptions and decide for yourself, does free software or propriatory software fit the free market model the closest?
In my opinion many of the industries crying out in the name of free market economics are in fact the industries furthest away from these assumptions.
1. First, markets must be economically
competitive - meaning the numbers of buyers and sellers must be so large
that no single buyer or seller can have any noticeable effect on the
overall market.
2. It must be easy for new sellers to
enter enterprises that are profitable and easy for sellers to get out of
unprofitable enterprises, so that producers are able to respond to market
signals of consumers' wants and needs.
3. Consumers must have clear, informative
and accurate information concerning whether the things they buy will
actually meet their wants and needs.
4. And finally, consumers must be
sovereigns - their tastes and preferences must reflect their basic values
- their tastes and preferences, untainted by persuasive influences.
(source http://www.pl.net/6business/marrul.htm)
Hey, where did you get your economics degree from? Kim Jung Il's North Korea?
None of your "points" makes any economic sense.
Your lil scenario might apply in Nirvana, dreamland or communist, bankrupt North Korea.
This happens to be America and real life.
"Hopefully, they will fail at that attempt"
You guys have been saying that for the past 10 years, meanwhile Microsoft continues to grow from strength to strength and drive the open source nuts back to their usual drunken stupor out of sheer frustration.
Now we come to the crux of exactly what you have been beefing about.
Just another run of the mill Microsoft-hating open source fanatic.
People like you are a dime a dozen, just road kills on Microsoft's inexorable rise to supremacy.
The US would think it was some open bean communist coffee house, and point to StarBucks as the true way forward.
Sorry, that makes little sense, but with a weeze like that I couldn't wait until I had thought of something more sane...
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
The most anti capitalist thing I
can think of is a monopoly, and
we all know Microsoft is one.
lol.. pardon my inability to converse... my FAMILY moved in 1917. I am 26.
I'm surprised there hasn't been more conversation about the public good nature of software and informational goods generally. The choice seems to be between treating software as either:
(i) Private property: Generating commercial incentives to create software through property rights regimes (copyright, patents, etc.) but not giving it to the many who value it but value it less than the profit-maximizing price; or
(ii) Public property: Selling/distributing software at marginal cost (essentially zero) but with the consequent lower incentives for producers to produce it.
OSS is the public property route. A key tenent of Marxism was the call to abolish private property. In that sense, the charge that the open-source software movement is Marxist seems quite accurate.
But this is not a very interesting claim.
> Doesn't anyone else here see the absurdity
> of providing high-quality software (via your
> precious time) for free to the corporations
> that do not give us their technology, food
> or services for free?
Actually, much of the free software is given away for free by corporations, either directly (like IBM's contributions to the Linux kernel) or indirectly by employees who hack on free software for internal use, but contribute the changes back to the community with the blessing of the company.
In fact, I suspect more of the free software *being used* come from such corporate contributions, as come from home hobbyist, students, government organisations and researchers.
I can understand that gaining $4,000,000 instantly would be a very enticing alternative, but any sane business leader would surely choose option 2. Let's look at the theoretical maximum profit that can be made by the two options:
Option 1:
Selling at $1,000,000 for 4 people = $4,000,000
Option 2:
Selling at $100 for 3,000,000 people = $300,000,000
That's a ratio of 1:75 in terms of profit. I do realise that marketing a product to a larger audience would take a major part of that extra money, but from a business perspective it would also make (a maximum of) 3,000,000 people dependent on your product. We've already seen the amount of power that can come out of gaining a large market share (*cough*Microsoft*cough*), which the 3,000,000 people certainly would be.
Also one could argue that, only some of the 3,000,000 people would (for the sake of the argument let's say that they could buy) actually buy the product. However, due to the large proportional difference and the fact that apparently the people desperately need the product ("people who need that software..."), the first option would still be very difficult to dismiss from a profit perspective.
"In regione caecorum rex est luscus" -Desiderius Erasmus
1. The fact that other axioms were not mentioned does not dispute that the three axioms which were stated are INDISPENSABLE to our society's practice of individual rights, the general trend of civilization, and the basis of any morality which recognizes the primacy of individual rights, (which one could argue is a prerequisite for morality, since the social mechanism of morality is only necessary where there is need for self control as a result of, and prerequisite for the existence of individual freedom).
2. There should be no rational dispute that communism is, by it's own definition, a political system, not a philosophical excercise in idealism. Since Ms. Coulter was discussing the political system in practice, ideals are completely irrelevant and not worthy of consideration until they cease to be ideals and become actual practices.
3. There is no rational objection to Ms. Coulter's citing only a few regimes, since every other communist regime has been equally deadly to the three axioms which are indispensible to individual freedom, and a theoretical regime never existed is a collection of ideals by another name, not a political system. Pol Pot is just a face in the crowd compared to Ho Chi Min, Kim Jong Il, Mao Tse Sung, Castro, Stalin, Idi Amin, or any of the other host of serial murdering psychopaths who count their victims with at least 6 zeros, and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE REGIMES savaged these axioms.
4. But if we want to talk theory, then let's be crystal clear: Communism, the political system, has been an absolute abject failure every time it has been tried, with each and every regime having made a significant contribution to over 100,000,000 individuals slaughtered in the last century. We do not need to try it again to "get it right". We need to rise above the level of an obstinate retarded child and recognize that 20-some experiments which render 100,000,000 extinguished lives without a single exception or anomaly is VERY strong evidence of a causal relationship between the political system and the destruction of individual freedoms. Therefore one does not need to wait for the midnight knock of the Internal Security Directorate to shift the burden of proof onto the next would-be butcher to prove that communism ISN'T antithetical to individual liberties.
5. Much like dreams and ideals, communal housing arrangements are not a political system, because they are voluntary associations within a political system which respects the right to form such associations. Calling a hippie commune within a democratic political structure "communism in practice" is like calling an oyster "fearlessly idealistic" because it has no intrinsic exoskeletal protection and ignore the non-intrinsic hard shell that completely encloses it. A hippie commune is a voluntary association of people who voluntarily accept restrictions upon their behavior. A communist regime is not a voluntary association, nor does it tolerate voluntary adherence to its proscriptions.
It looks like capitalism because everybody can start a "project" as he/she likes. In fact, it is easier to start a project in OSS than capitalism, because there is no "desctructive" competition to make it hard for you to survive. A form of competition does exist between OSS projects, but it is constructive competition. If two projects have the same function in OSS, people behind those projects will try to do better than the others out of pride, not out of fear of losing all there money in bankruptcy and starving to death. Even if you make money out of your OSS project, wich is the case of few OSS projects, and it "fail" because an other one is way better, it is easy to start a new one. This is much less likely to cause people who work on these projects to go to extrems to protect there project from competition. In capitalism, you must be competitive at ALL cost (laying off employees, polluting, etc), because if you dont, your competitors will. They are just too afraid of losing everything. There is also nobody in OSS having central control over projects. There are of course people who are very influent in OSS, but this influence is limited and can be gained by just anybody, like in capitalism. However, in OSS this influence is gained through respect over your talent and leadership, not through your wealth wich your employees need a part of to survive. I believe that authority gained thanks to your talent is much more fair than authority gained thanks to your richness.
It looks like communism, because the incentive to work is no longuer the obsession for profit. In OSS, usefulness, necessity and fun have reclaimed their right as incentive to work. Also, the sharing of computer software that todays technology make possible is not hindered by OSS, unlike the capitalist economic model based on demand versus offer (not to mention greed) wich forces us to create an artificial limit on offer to make it possible to make profit out of any form of data, be it software, music, movies, etc.
OSS is undoubtably a revolution. How big will it get ? Will it be limited to software ? We cannot say yet. Our current capitalist economic system does make it hard for OSS, because this way of thinking leave very little place for economical profit for developpers, forcing most of them to do it only as past time while having a "real" job. An economical system no longuer driven by the obsession for individual economical profit (like communism), but that would also respect individual freedom of speech and action (like capitalism) would not only make it easier for OSS developpers, but certainly also for the rest of society wich could more easily start their own "project" that capitalism's "destructive" and greedy competition model uses to kill in the egg, be it software, electronics, power generation, farming, etc, and reclaim their right to influence the world in wich they live. Making it easier for everyone to start their own projects would also help redistribute wealth more fairly. Such a system could actually achieve the goals of both capitalism and communism. OSS may be the roots of such a system, but the OSS revolution is not an economical, nor political revolution, it's a revolution of the way we think, a revolution of the way we see profit. In OSS, profit is no longuer limited to it's economical and individual aspects.
Some info about US & Plan Condor
You might understand when you get older.