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Open Source Could Learn from Capitalism
ukhackster writes to tell us that Sun's Simon Phipps challenged many open source ideals at a recent open source conference in London. Urging the open source community to look to the lessons of capitalism, Phipps called for "volunteerism" to be replaced with "directed self-interest" and denounced the perceived legal issues surrounding open source. From the article: "Phipps took time out to take a swipe at some of the exhibitors at the conference who were selling professional advice on negotiating the open source 'legal minefield'. 'I disagree with those who say who say open source is a legal minefield,' he said as he threw from the stage a brochure from one firm of lawyers. 'If you think open source is a minefield you're doing it wrong.'"
Whether FOSS is "capitalist" or "communist" or "volunteerist" is completely irrelevant, and quite frankly I think anyone who constantly tries to hammer the FOSS square peg into one of those round holes is doing so for their own purposes.
FOSS is what it is. In some ways, it's capitalist, in others, it's communist, in others, it's volunteerist. That's really the beauty of the movement; you get out of it what you want to get out of it, and you put into it what you want to put into it.
Maybe that's anarchy. Or maybe that's just another way of saying "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." The question is, why does it matter?
Gifts for Geeks - Stuff that really matters!
Free Software is about securing freedom; keeping yourself free is a self-interest.
... I mean, where's my open-source anti-virus and anti-spyware for my Solaris box? Or my Redhat box? That would help complete the open-source experience.
Any good capitalist will trumpet their value based on supply and demand. Then when someone decides to give something away they'll cry like babies. Remember the banks suing the credit unions.
Yes absoluetly people have the right to make free software. And as long as dedicated hobbyists are willing to give it away for the sake of personal satisfaction and being able to control their tools, the corporate guys are going to have to work harder.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Last time I checked, many open source people were pretty capitalistic. I guess the rumor keeps floating around that everybody's a commie or something, but it simply isn't true. I'm a laissez-faire capitalist, and therefore I love open source.
Phipps called for "volunteerism" to be replaced with "directed self-interest"
When you really get down to it, there's no difference. People "volunteer" because they get something out of it, whether it be financial, utility, entertainment, or the satisfaction of simply "making the world a better place."
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
...does not qualify as directed self-interest?
If you are, you haven't looked hard. ClamAV for antivirus. As for spyware, there isn't really any written for Solaris or Redhat, so no need for anti-spyware. There are a lot of security auditing tools, though. Do your own research.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The same applies to companies - Sun didn't make OO.org open-source out of the goodness of its heart; it did so to strike back at Microsoft.
There shouldn't be the firm line Phipps draws between volunteerism and "directed self-interest" - they're interelated. They always have been. They probably always will be.
In the last twenty years, the real wages for college educated US workers have barely
kept up with inflation. Outside the US, the situation is even worse in the majority of cases in those countries that have followed the so-called free market solutions to economic and social problems. Meanwhile, as the majority hang out to dry, the profits for those involved in capitalism proper, eg capital instensive ventures, have doubled dozens of times over. The only lesson capitalism seems to offer is that under a capitalist system, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. How long does it take this guy to get that lesson?
I meant to say that open source should be about writing software, *not* making money or protecting freedom.
(O/T: You would think the Slashdot maintainers would eventually catch on and let people edit posts.)
It's about freedom, and yes it's about liberalism. Although it might be clear for most people I'd like to stress that the threat to open source software is not capitalism but corporatism, and the state. They're responsible for patents, the DMCA etc.
Now the kind of pressure found in a market economy completly apply to open source. Developpers will migrate from one project to another as interest and popularity shifts etc. There is an evolutionnary process very similar to the one found between businesses in market economy, only it is much faster and smoother due to the conditions guaranteeing freedom. Indeed capitalism could learn from open source.
\u262D = \u5350
I'm looking in vain for something concrete that Phipps thinks FOSS "could learn" from capitalism... wish I had the complete text. Open source has always -- to me -- been about having more capitalists
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I don't know FOSS learning from capitalists, but from Sun's market performance they
definately need some capitalist schooling.
So Phipps says the future of open source is in companies (and individuals) cooperating and each one preserving what is of value to it. He says it's not about altruism but about self-interest. Is this news? Do a Google search for "scratch your own itch" and you end up with a whole bunch of references to open source. Hardly original thinking on Phipps's part.
Breakfast served all day!
People like isms -- if something can (even inaccurately) be called "communist" they can safely dismiss it and not have to do any analysis of it as a concept. But I feel I should point out that calling someone "extremist" is basically the same thing. If rms has suggested people avoid anything that "is in some way capitalist" I'd love to see a citation.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I'd love to know.
Here is an article how Linux IS Capitalist
But the notion is that the wrong ideology is like chains. They eeem light at first, and may appear to help you build muscle but the more you progress, the more they thicken and bind you to a course of action that steers you away from what it is that you originally wanted to do. The trick is to navigate the landmarks of right and wrong and they don't always leap out at you. And when they do, sometimes it's too late to keep from getting hurt.
You mean, something like ClamAV, http://www.clamav.net/...? Works just fine on both Solaris and Linux, although the vast majority of malware it detects is for the Windows platform (of course).
"The human race's favorite method for being in control of the facts is to ignore them." -Celia Green
This comes down to which side of the F/OSS coin you're on. Do you use GNU/Linux, *BSD, OpenSolaris, etc. for ideological purposes or because you like it better? Do you define success of F/OSS as having many users or simply having many free software libraries and programs to choose from? (yes, that question is not an either/or)
The open source people are pragmatists. They actually do, for the most part, rely on self interest to get the job done. IBM doesn't really care about the politics behind free software; they just care that it does the job at the lowest cost. There is nothing wrong with this.
For the most part, this distinction doesn't really matter. Those of us in the free software movement who work towards the volunteerism and ideals can work in harmony with those who are directed by self-interest. The only thing that we need to agree on is the license the code is using. The license doesn't require you to buy in to any politics to use the code. Stallman doesn't make you buy into his rhetoric before you get a copy of binutils. This is the great thing about F/OSS; anyone can contribute for any reason, and we all gain from the contribution.
The guy is way overpaid, with a salary more than 200 times that of the average worker in his firm, not even including his unwarranted pension, benefits, protection from lawsuits for criminal actions, and stock options he backdates for the best strike price.
Hey, don't ask for capitalism if you can't live under it's rules yourself.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." - grandparent
"And in a more general sense, the statement comports with capitalist ideas of individual agency and self-interest." - parent
I think you've got that backwards. The marxist statement looks like this:
those with the ability -> X -> those with need
where X = the communist state. Capitalism looks like this:
those with the ability = those with the ability
those with need = those with need
notice there is no transfer in the capitalist system. you get what you earn*.
*in general, on average... not talking about inheritance, explotation, etc
Most people I know would prefer a world of cooperation rather than competition, if it were possible. They don't necessarily have to take your word for it that it's impossible (the argument "didn't work in Russia" basically implies "if Stalin can't do it, no one can!") It's insulting to the dignity of human beings to suggest that they cannot affect how the world works -- especially the world of societies, which were created by them in the first place.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I switched my small consulting business to Linux for very little cost, can expand rapidly, don't have licensing fees, and can find low cost IT labor....This means MORE PROFIT for me and my investors....Low cost input, high value output, nothing is more capitalistic.
I'm not anti-capitalist. I'm a "fair trader" who believes in a refereed marketplace where rules are maintained in order enforce basic ethics and preserve the "multi-producer"/"multi-buyer" model (the only way capitalism can work).
What disgusts me are these coyotes who eat other peoples lunches like crazy claiming it was there brilliance. Then when someone comes along and says "I can do that for free" they run to the courts and Congress and attempt to create regulatory barriers (that they previously decried) to protect their own interest against free commerce (something they previously trumpeted).
I don't think commercial software will ever disappear. But I do think that "trivial" software that commands exorbidant fees (Oracle
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
The Pollylog ( http://pollylog.com/ ) uses an open source form of Digg wich is pretty cool although Pollylog doesnt display advertising so I guess it depends on one company being capitalistic (being digg) and another not.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a slogan popularized by Karl Marx ... And in a more general sense, the statement comports with capitalist ideas of individual agency and self-interest.
Man, that's a good one. Look, in a market situation, you may have abilities you don't feel like selling, and you may have needs you can't possibly meet (or, far more likely, a wildly distorted sense of the word "need" means - as in, "I really need that new Sony console.").
Any system that purportes to externally gauge what each person's abilities and needs are, and allocates according to that, is the farthest thing from a capitalist, market economy. What if you have an entire city full of people who have astounding abilities to perform ballet, but that's their only ability? That means you've also got a whole lot of skinny dancer types who also happen to have the need for food, HVAC maintenance, appendectomy surgeries, and so on. Central authorities that attempt to size up a situation like that and re-allocate people and resources in a way that doesn't cause friction end up... named Stalin.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Isn't software development with an opensource context already innately 'self-interested', where the supposed 'meritocracy' translates as a selfish need for recognition within a competitive technical arena?
Wow, an AC posts completely unsubstantiated 'facts', condems a system that:
- made the US the sole world superpower
- made the West's standard of living what it is
- is responsible for almost every useful innovation of the last 2 centuries
- is lifting 100s of millions out of poverty in China and India
- is the single explanation of the vast economic chasm between North and South Korea
- etc and so on
*and* offers no alternative, yet is already at +4 Insightful.
Nice.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
We seem to be forgetting a fundamental lesson we learned a long time ago. If people share information, everybody is better off. In the middle ages, people jealously guarded any information they had. If you were a doctor or a stone mason, you didn't share with anyone who wasn't in your guild. The result was that society as a whole didn't progress. Everyone was poorer.
Once scientists started to share information by publishing it, technology took off. The capitalist idea of hoarding information and patenting everything and suing everyone is just backward. As another poster noted, it helps the rich get richer but it makes us all poorer.
As long as people are willing to produce foss, it will out-compete proprietary software because the benefits of openness far outweigh the supposed motivational advantage of trying to make a profit.
I believe that FOSS can serve many purposes. It seems that any stakeholder can spin the purpose of Open Source to their needs and proclaim that all other methods need not apply. The truth is that capitalists and idealists can all take part. One big variable people keep forgetting about is what license you use. We released our software ListRing http://listring.com/ under the BSD license simply because we want as many people as possible to try this new way of sharing information. We think it is innovative, others may disagree, but anyone who wants can get it with the code. At some future date we will provide added Enterprise features based on what our customers are willing to pay for.
I couldn't disagree more with the common misunderstanding that life is somehow naturally focused on competition.
Let me give you one example of which I could add thousands. Let's look at the food pyramid. This is a classic example because it's probably where you're thinking your argument finds its strength. In fact, the food pyramid proves that competition is insignificant in the big picture.
Measured in calories, where do you think the vast majority of the nutrition on the Earth comes from? That's right. It comes from plants --annuals in particular. Where do the annual plants come from? They come from the previous generation in the form of seeds, spores and shoots. Where do those seeds get the energy to grow? Do they fight each other for it? No, they get it from the sun. If the animals that eat those plants fight over the plants, will the result be more plants? I don't think so.
It's not to say that competition doesn't exist. It does even in the plant world. A certain group of plants in a given area might compete for sunlight. So, the point isn't to deny that there is such a thing as compeition. What I would hope to teach you is simply that a wise person ought to consider the larger picture of how before the world works before assuming that competition is such a central focus of life. It simply is not. That's a fact.
The interesting thing about open source (politically, not technically) is that the phenomenon should not be possible if the Marxist account of capitalist societies is correct. What OSS shows is that self interest is a more complicated thing than the traditional left wing models allow, and that it manifests itself in more varied ways than they allow. So we have for instance Sun with OO, acting assuredly out of perceived self interest, yet in a way that would be inexplicable in traditional Marxist terms. I have often wondered why left wing academics seem wedded to MS, and unwilling to even try OSS or find out about it. Perhaps it would be too disturbing. A bit like finding that the Lord does not in fact strike you dead if you eat pork in a cold non-desert climate, and are not a pastoral nomad. You start to wonder if the problem might not be the Lord's view of pork, but some rather specific ecological aspects of pig rearing, hot deserts, pastorality and nomadism. And that is really really scary. Similarly the discovery that self interest can motivate large sections of a community to act in apparently non-proft maximising ways, to the benefit of society as a whole, and in a capitalist society at that. Well, that is a truly terrifying idea. If that is possible, whole lives can have been wasted in devotion to false ideals. Yes, they have been. And masses exterminated as well. In fact, what Western societies have discovered, and OSS is an instance of this, is that freedom to follow one's beliefs, and the means to do it, leads people to act in very interesting and varied ways, which benefit their fellow man in ways Marx never dreamed of.
How to respond to business advice from Sun? Laugh, cry, both?
Perhaps they could reach this happy medium by auctioning off the process of opening sources for projects. Start with a high initial bid and reserve and see what the market will pay to have source code opened up.
Nope, you got that wrong.
What you're talking about falls under the *.
what.... you don't think communist governments have scams? explotation? etc, etc, etc
exactly
Let's see. I think it would break down like this:
1) Someone gets paid some money by some group or project to write some code.
2) Another person who also wrote code for the project but didn't get paid says "I want mine!"
3) The whole project folds as some idiot starts equating pay to the number-of-lines-written multiplied by the moeny-per-line-of-code of the first person.
People, if you want to write software for money, get a job. If you want to write software because you think the project is neat and/or worth you while, donate your time.
Same goes for volunteering in other things. The world could use our help - for free.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
people are always going on about this and it sounds like a great idea in theory, but you would need an effective mechanism to prevent bait-and-switch trolls.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
A key concept of capitalism is the concept of lending money at interest. What happens in an interest transaction is that the person who has the money, the capitalist, gets to set the terms. It's not just the amount of interest they get to decide. The capitalist also gets to decided when and under what circumstances to foreclose on their loan. Without government created and enforced laws to limit the terms that the capitalist puts on a loan, the capitalist can simply make money by victimizing the weakest members of society. Now you seem to think that the fair thing is to let that capitalist decide with complete "freedom" how to set those terms. You really think that's the way things should be? Or do you believe that there is a place for government regulation where freedoms are taken away in the name of the public good?
Ok, I'm pretty sure Phipps isn't trying to tell you what or how you should think when contributing your code to open source. He's only trying to outline which products will have the most impact, reach the most users, and make the largest positive impact on the FOSS community. Whether you're a socialist or an anarchist, in today's online community market forces will dominate. The strongest products will rise to the top. How do you make the strongest products? Answer: Directed self-interest. Ask yourself what would make you most happy in your desired product. Be completely selfish and 'me'-centric in your analysis. For example, in designing a Linux distribution, I would want a package that offers all the programs I need, no extra baggage, a full set of drivers compatible with whatever video card or auxillary I plug into it, and a sleek and intuitive, yet powerful, interface that is regularly patched and well-maintained. Oh, and if I could make a few bucks so I don't go bankrupt trying to upgrade and patch that beast after release so people could rely on the distribution, that would be great. A product like that would be widely distributed, and succeed in the market-like environment. If, instead, you choose to focus your efforts on, say, an Amiga emulator that runs smoothly on Fedora simply because you noticed no one has made one yet (even if you're not an Amiga enthusiast), your contribution to the FOSS community would be much smaller. Market forces decide which products flourish, and don't ignore this when you design a product. Follow your selfish whims, design a product that fulfills your most rigorous expectations of what YOU want, and if you have the necessary skill to implement it, you have probably made a sucessful product in the process. I think this is the thrust of Phipps's directed self-interes talk. Enjoy!
We disagree on what the definition of open source "prosperity" is. Phipps, as a executive, is thinking entirely in terms of financial prosperity.But what's valuable for Phipps isn't necessarily valuable for open source. In other words, open source's value lies not in the revenues it earns(though that may be what makes it valuable to the private sector), but in the degree to which it is truly open. It is valuable because its sole concern is making available useful products that anyone - not just companies - can modify to suit their needs. As such, it doesn't obey any rigid economic rules or favor any particular economic entity. It is agile, and adapts to many different market circumstances.
I'm not entirely sure, but I think that Phipps' argument here is dangerous for open source. "Connected self-interest" is not something that easily preserves openness. If we take his advice, I see open source gradually being appropriated by private entities to the extent that it becomes indistinguishable from a proprietary product to the outsider. Most corporations tend towards proprietarizing - it fits into a basic principle of capitalism(ownership). This has always been the case, and it runs in direct opposition to the openness which open source seeks to preserve. In any case, until intellectual property and licensing laws are revised, it will be very difficult to achieve the vision for open source of "connected capitalism" that Phipps has, since he seems to be ignoring the whole element of market *competition* and why it creates concerns over what constitutes private property.Open source may be a part of how companies make revenue, but open source *itself* should remain mostly independent and non-profit. That's the only way to preserve its openness, IMHO.
In the last twenty years...
... the Soviet Union crumbled, China became a market economy and the standard of living for millions of Chinese has improved dramatically, India became a market economy and is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, South Korea continued to flourish while North Korea suffered, and the Vietnamese government abandoned Marxist central planning. Why did Russia, China, India, and Vietnam, all command economies until the 1990s, embrace capitalism?
The only lesson capitalism seems to offer is that under a capitalist system, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
If the rich in America have been getting richer ever since the colonies gained their independence, and the poor have been getting poorer, how come I'm not living in a hovel? It certainly could be argued that we are entering a new Guilded Age, because wealth disparity is definitely increasing. But to say that the current situation is proof that capitalism is fatally flawed ignores the overall movement from poverty to wealth that capitalist societies create over time, and ignores historical evidence that capitalist economies are generally much more capable of righting themselves than socialist economies.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Urging the open source community to look to the lessons of capitalism
Now what lessons would those be? Sacrificing quality to meet shipping schedules? Or butchering established standards to ensure that competing products cannot interoperate? Or ignoring security fixes to disable the latest workaround to copy protection because the first only protects customers and their data while the latter increases company profits?
Phipps called for "volunteerism" to be replaced with "directed self-interest"
He is ignoring the fact that any participation in open source is directed self-interest. Keeping myself free is a self-interest; keeping my computer and its abilities under my control is a self-interest; being able to design hardware and write software free of all the shlock mentioned above is a self-interest. Working as a wage-slave for some company that will pay me pennies but make millions from my designs is volunteerism of the basest sort.
Capitalism is a system based on "profit motive". IMHO, open source is not. Open source always seemed about the idea "this is spiffy, I want everyone to have the spiffy", which is leans more toward the ideals of socialism then capitalism. If everything is free, there is no "profit motive", and therefore no capitalism.
It exists in a capitalist system, but is not based upon it, and therefore the Karl Marx still has a point. His logic flaw was he thought that people would always put up with self-interest in a capitalist system.
I give bread to the poor, they call me a saint.
I ask why the poor have no bread, they call me a communist.
You had it pretty much correct but reached the wrong conclusion. If the analysis is that workers get very little and buisines owners gain a greater return, the answer is of course to become a business owner and gain that greater return for yourself.
The drawback of course is that generally you have to work harder to gain that greater return. That is why many people are content to simply be employees, making a wage and living a more stable and certain life. There is nothing wrong with just getting by so long as you can do so indefinatley.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Excerpt from "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand
------
"Well, there was something that happened at that plant where I worked for twenty years. It was when the old man died and his heirs took over. There were three of them, two sons and a daughter, and they brought a new plan to run the factory. They let us vote on it, too, and everybody - almost everybody - voted for it. We didn't know. We thought it was good. No, that's not true, either. We thought that we were supposed to think it was good. The plan was that everybody in the factory would work according to his ability, but would be paid according to his need. We - what's the matter, ma'am? Why do you look like that?"
"What was the name of the factory?" she asked, her voice barely audible.
"The Twentieth Century Motor Company, ma'am, of Starnesville, Wisconsin."
"Go on."
"We voted for that plan at a big meeting, with all of us present, six thousand of us, everybody that worked in the factory. The Starnes heirs made long speeches about it, and it wasn't too clear, but nobody asked any questions. None of us knew just how the plan would work, but every one of us thought that the next fellow knew it. And if anybody had doubts, he felt guilty and kept his mouth shut - because they made it sound like anyone who'd oppose the plan was a child killer at heart and less than a human being. They told us that this plan would achieve a noble ideal. Well, how were we to know otherwise? Hadn't we heard it all our lives-from our parents and our schoolteachers and our ministers, and in every newspaper we ever read and every movie and every public speech? Hadn't we always been told that this was righteous and just? Well, maybe there's some excuse for what we did at that meeting. Still, we voted for the plan-and what we got, we had it coming to us. You know, ma'am, we are marked men, in a way, those of us who lived through the four years of that plan in the Twentieth Century factory. What is it that hell is supposed to be? Evil-plain, naked, smirking evil, isn't it? Well, that's what we saw and helped to make-and I think we're damned, every one of us, and maybe we'll never be forgiven...
"Do you know how it worked, that plan, and what it did to people? Try pouring water into a tank where there's a pipe at the bottom draining it out faster than you pour it, and each bucket you bring breaks that pipe an inch wider, and the harder you work the more is demanded of you, and you stand slinging buckets forty hours a week, then forty-eight, then fifty-six - for your neighbor's supper - for his wife's operation - for his child's measles - for his mother's wheel chair - for his uncle's shirt - for his nephew's schooling - for the baby next door - for the baby to be born - for anyone anywhere around you - it's theirs to receive, from diapers to dentures - and yours to work, from sunup to sundown, month after month, year after year, with nothing to show for it but your sweat, with nothing in sight for you but their pleasure, for the whole of your life, without rest, without hope, without end... From each according to his ability, to each according to his need...
"We're all one big family, they told us, we're all in this together. But you don't all stand working an acetylene torch ten hours a day - together, and you don't all get a bellyache - together. What's whose ability and which of whose needs comes first? When it's all one pot, you can't let any man decide what his own needs are, can you? If you did, he might claim that he needs a yacht - and if his feelings is all you have to go by, he might prove it, too. Why not? If it's not right for me to own a car until I've worked myself into a hospital ward, earning a car for every loafer and every naked savage on earth - why can't he demand a yacht from me, too, if I still have the ability not to have collapsed? No? He can't? Then why can he demand that I go without cream for my coffee until he's replastered his living room? Oh well... Well, anyway, it was decided that nobody had the right to judge his ow
Circumcision is child abuse.
Capitalism is based on "profit motive" (capital)
Open source is free.
Therefore, open source produces no capital.
Therefore, open source doesn't work towards "profit motive".
How can learning form capitalism benifit open source? Other than destroy the idea of open source?
I give bread to the poor, they call me a saint.
I ask why the poor have no bread, they call me a communist.
Sun giving out advice on Open Source? Now that is really funny. Sun is giving out advice on capitalizm? Based on there earnings I would say that is kinda scary.
maybe IN SOVIET RUSSIA.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Where would you rather live... your presious North Korea/Iran or the U.S.?
exactly, LOL...... too easy.
can information realy be property?
one of the things that make property what it is, is its buildt in limit. if i sold of gave it away, i no longer have it.
but if i tell someone how to fish, both of us can do it, no strings attached.
sure i can take payment for teaching you, but whats stopping you from going over the hill and teach someone else for less then what i ask in return?
software is in essense information. machine read information maybe but still information.
its like a instruction manual for the computer. a sequence of steps to be done to produce a specific result.
what open source does it hand out pens and paper to the community, allowing them to refine said manual.
i say the time of the software house have come and gone. now is the time of the community and the carpenter/programmer. just like a family can keep a house standing from generation to generation by swaping out old parts, adding wings and remodeling rooms, a community can keep a computers manual continualy refined.
the one thing thats interesting is that those that find open source to be a legal minefield is the pure software houses. those that dont are the computer houses. those where software is what allow people to interact and use what they are realy selling, computers.
why is it a legal minefield for the software houses? because its one wrong step and their whole reason to exist is blown up. not a happy tought when maybe 10 years ago the company was worth millions or maybe even billions.
gah, this turned into a incoherent rant. sorry about that. just to many interlocking subjects for me to be able to sort it all out. the internet, and the ease of communication that it provides is disruptive like nothing else known in history...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Closed source has a far bigger anti-capitalist problem with EULAs (name a car that limits where you can drive it) than Open source will ever have.
The assertion that a EULA can be indefinitely scoped is the most unbounded liability in the entire product marketplace.
--Dan
In real life, open source has almost always been driven by self interest; people and companies don't invest years in developing software unless there is open source. That is true even for RMS: his philosophy is the result of self-interest and bad experiences with proprietary software.
But Phipps is wrong when he generically says "there is nothing wrong with self-interest". Con-men act in self-interest, but their actions are not beneficial to society at large. And, in fact, Sun's misrepresentation of the Java licenses and the JCP are an example of how, if you fail to balance your self-interest with ethical behavior, you end up screwing your customers and hurting the community; Sun's self-interest has amounted to establishing a proprietary platform by pretending that it's open, and extracting hundreds of man-years of contributions to a proprietary platform under the false pretense that what these people are creating is "open".
As Sun's business keeps going down the toilet, you can expect more and more of this kind of spin from Schwartz, Phipps, and the other talking heads at Sun. It's clever of them to have their "open source officer" make these statements and attempt to reinforce the stereotype of open source developers as anti-capitalist dreamers. Phipps only needs to look at his company's failing business to see how much open source means business. I'm really looking forward to that company closing its doors.
neither is the Preview button
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Someone needs to beat Sun hard with the clue stick really. Open source (and free software) in the main has ALWAYS been about directed self interest - the old saw about scratching an itch. Even RMS would admit that the Free software movement is certainly partly from directed self interest: after all, I'm sure RMS gains pleasure in working on GCC and sharing the results of his work with others.
These comments by a prominent Sun officer show that Sun still doesn't get it - that Sun's upper management is clue resistant. It's a real shame - their clue resistance is driving them into the ground. Don't take this as anti-Sun: I own some Sun kit, and I really want to see Sun finally Get It and survive as a company. It's also a bit confusing them still not Getting It, particularly in the light of some of the really cool things they've done recently, such as releasing the code for Solaris.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
The point? He misses it!
The claim that people are better off because of capitalism is never made by the people who can't afford to feed their families, despite working a full-time job. I have never met a person who has made this claim that has ever been hungry.
And if you ask an anthropologist, you will be told that our lives are not "naturally" based on competition with each other, and will cite one culture after another that is based on cooperation. No, these are not cultures with supercomputers and missions to mars, but these are cultures that lack things like poverty, or situations where some people grow fat while others have to beg for food.
As Rawls very wisely put it: If you were blind to your position in society, you would favor a policy that helped the poor [losers] more.
Palm trees and 8
Sometimes he sells the software, which is a bit like selling a copy of a textbook.
And sometimes the software is free; that's more like an exercise book.
It's usually the warranty; the proposition that my employer will move heaven and earth to keep a client up and running, if he has paid the insurance premium; that's the valuable part.
Someone will find a way to abuse any system you put in place. The patent system is really really being abused. Fiascos like NTP vs. RIM provide a strong argument that patents aren't doing what they should do. While we're at it, check out how the drug companies game the patent system to prevent generic drugs even after their original patents have run out.
From Wikipedia: Idea of FOSS is someone gives you software, and eventually they might find something in it and fix it, and give you the benifits back. Seems fairly similiar.
In fact I said and routinely say nothing of the sort. Matt Asay does a fine job of summarising the main points I made, which you will note do not include claiming "open source could learn from capitalism". In fact I wonder if the other reporter was even at the same event. Reading through the whole thread here I'm amazed that people feel they can come to any conclusions about what I think based on an intentionally provocative and ill-informed article by a ZDNet reporter who badly summarises the thrust of my keynote in reported speech apparently intended to garner Slashdot coverage.
And I disagree with your outdated analysis of Sun, naturally.
The claim that people are better off because of capitalism is never made by the people who can't afford to feed their families, despite working a full-time job. I have never met a person who has made this claim that has ever been hungry.
The claim that communism was a good system wasn't made by the people standing in line for toilet paper. The claim that socialism is wonderful isn't made by someone that had a spouse die because of a bad doctor.
Half the people in this conversation talk about the 'poor' like they are a bunch of saints and the 'rich' like they are evil overlords. Nearly everyone I know that is 'poor' have performed actions that contributed to their situation. Many I know that start out 'poor' manage to build a good life through hard work.
Find coupons in Greeley
Wow, Simon and Sun figure out that you have to somehow make money with all this open source stuff. Everyone applaud! Hurray for Sun! Now, if they keep true to their history, they'll change all their plans yet again and try something new, maybe give away free storage systems, see what that does. Keep going Sun, it's fun watching you dig your ditch. Pass the shovels boys, Simon wants to go deeper!
Wik
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
no text. none at all.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
The biggest problem with "capital" today is that private for profit central banks create it out of thin air and more or less control it, and a lot of that control consists of favoritism, cronyism, running massive scams and a huge amount of social engineering by the "elite".
We need to go back to (honestly elected) governments creating it and having *the idea of it as portable representations of true wealth* be returned by being "backed" by quantifiable tangibles, something that can be openly disclosed and serve as a transparent and honest indicator about how much the ecoomy really "grew", as opposed to what we have now, which is how much credit they can push on the population and in which direction, with them as the creditors from their printed up scam "money".
My idea would be an immediate freeze on new capital being printed or data entryed into existence, followed by a fast review of the previous fiscal year's top 100 traded commodities/"things", because they represent wealth creation as opposed to wealth re-arrangment and social engineering by controlling the capital supply. Then compare those numbers to the previous year to that, and you can easily get a proportional representation of how much "new" capital to place into circulation. then you follow that rule to the penny. You create no more than you deserve, and you never create less than what you as a society actually made.
This avoids deflation and inflation completely, and puts everyone in the same boat as regards "producers"-the more producers and wealth creators we have, as opposed to everything else,the "wealth rearrangers", the better. It also allows business and society to evolve, some industries and commodities drop off the list, others get added, etc. We use 100 because the decimal system is easy to parse for anyone, our percentage system is based on it, the current "money" scheme is based on it, and 100 gives a wide enough sample to be indicitive of current business in general.
He clearly means that it should be okay to not 'share' code as long as the commons is 'enriched'. This is an argument for proprietary software, thinly cloaked. My bet is that he's thinking of licenses that say "You can look at the source code and modify it to fix bugs for your use, and even distribute those bug fixes, but you may not use it to produce a product that competes with ours" - sure, it's better than what they used to offer, but it is just not good enough. It's not free software, it's slightly less painful proprietary software. It's Java - join their developer program and you can see the code, and submit bug fixes, but you can't share the code with anybody.
Here he's arguing that people shouldn't be reimplementing Java (as kaffe, sablevm, etc), but instead 'cooperating' with Sun and working on Sun's proprietary implementation of it. That's what this is probably all about. Sun don't want to release Java as free software, they just want the community to help them develop it.
The message here is: free software is bad, stop doing it because we don't want to play and that means competing implementations which is bad for everyone.
Even the anti-freedom 'pragmatists' would have to admit that it's not really a very convincing message. Creating and maintaining a completely independent code base is, all else aside, ensuring that there is always competition so Sun will continue having to work to stay ahead of them.
This guy wasn't telling open source people to become more capitalist, he was telling capitalist people to do more open source. What he said was to stop thinking of open source as volunteerism and start thinking of it as self-interest -- that is, don't release source because it makes you feel good, release source because it's in your best interest.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
...capitalism learns from open source!
Open source could learn form capitalism, he means it should charge more than it's worth and not release the source code... Basically what this means is "stop making open source projects, I don't like them!!!11onewonjuan"
When will people realise what open source is about?
I'm tired of explaining open source too people only to have them say "what? they do it for free??? fucking idiots"
God Be Gone
Well there's that Linus Torvalds guy... you may have heard of him? he's a bit of a cult hero IIRC.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Stalin
1) make a product people want
2) market and sell it properly
3) stay out of red
4) *** profit, for God's sake !!!! ***
(oh... wait... you've been trying to do this for years to no avail...)
(oh... wait... RedHat has done it already... those commies !! )
Stallman's acting to maximise his measure of utility, which is a perfectly capitalist thing to do!
There's nothing in capitalism that requires self-interest, but rather simply property and trade. The rest we deduce from those who attempt to justify their own self-interest, but that has nothing to do with capitalism per se. Ayn Rand is wrong.
In short, interests don't need to be self-interests. This is known in politics when politicians (occasionally) have to declare which charities they're involved with, amoungst other things.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Well, I decided to stay at Sun because in my personal opinion the company has found a new direction and energy under new leadership, focussing on providing the systems to deliver the next generation of computing in a world where open source is dominant. I think the company is returning to its roots and heading in the right direction at last.To give you some examples:
Doubtless there are plenty on Slashdot who'll come over to throw rocks, but I'm very pleased all this and more is happening as there was a time not so long ago when I would not have been so positive (or keen to stay). As it is (and regardless of what Bruce may say), I'm proud to be running Sun's open source strategy on the watch where Sun's Java implementations all go open source.
where's my open source BONZI BUDDY!?!
Simon argues that we need to shift away from a "right to use" model in software, and toward a value model - targeted "bundles of value" to specific vertical market segments.
What on Earth does that mean? Another Matt you point to, says a little more, but I'm still confused by the concept and how you can make it practical. It looks like you don't get free software at all. Indeed, there seems to be little difference between your "bundles of value" and the way Sun has always done things. Perhaps you can enlighten me.
The "right to use" is freedom zero for me. Who on earth are you to tell me how I'm going to use "your" software on my computer? It seems like a given. Of course, it's not really a given if I can't modify your software to suit my needs. Once it suits my own needs, I might want to share that with my friends. What good is something I can't use to help others? Being able to share my improvements without your permission is also part of doing what I want with the software. Without these other three freedoms, I might as well be stuck with a binary file which I can only use as you intended. Getting people to pay you for development of code that suits your customers is all fine and good, but using that service to put restrictions on the user is not. How restrictive are your bundles really?
Now for practicality. How are you going to sell restrictive software when people are making less restrictive software for every purpose? Sun is famous for quality, I won't knock that. The problem for you is that free software is getting better all the time and for good reason. If I write a piece of software, I have little to gain by keeping it to myself and everything to gain by using publically available gpl'ed code as a base. Once I've made it work, I really don't mind posting it up and the copyleft is that little bit richer. After six years of free software restrictions as insignificant as an "I agree" button are odious,
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Even microsoft is moving toward open source, and it even seems like they're trying to copy sourceforge: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/de fault.mspx
more usability testing, more QA, and more effective marketing as well as tried-and-true "advertising" techniques, I'd agree.
One of the many wonderful things about the model is we can provide those things ourselves, as individuals, and out of whichever mode of personal reasoning we d*rn well please: directed self-interest (very Randy of Mr. Phipps, btw), volunteerism, revolutionary proclivity, or all or none of the above.
That the bulk of this discussion surrounds the Zealotry v. [*] PoVs means the discussion is, for the most part, missing Mr. Phipp's point.
From the perspective of capitalism, the fact these things are needed (and, IMO, they are) has been and continues to be a fantastic opportunity for those with the wherewithal to provide the "Fit and Finish" needed by many technically and functionally fantastic projects to get them better suited for business.
S
http://www.meanbusiness.com/
all those lower_case underscore_separated variable names in open source proje... oh wait. Capitalism, not capitalization. Sorry, never mind.
Last time I checked, many open source people were pretty capitalistic.
Exactly right.
I gave a presentation to a local business group on Open Source last week, and I made three comparisons. Open Source is like, capitalism, federalism, and evolution.
CMSMatrix.org is a good example. There are over a hundred Open Source CMS systems. This is probably too many by an order of magnitude. So, the groups will compete for users (the currency of Open Source). They will compete on features, documentation, ease of use. Some will try out new ideas that work - some will take risks and fail. They will borrow from each other and before long some will be abandoned, some will be clear winners, and some will only have tenuous niche followings. Later, rinse, repeat.
This system of experiments, partnerships and cycles of differentiation and consolidation has proven to be the strong basis of the abovementioned successful systems. It's also why Open Source is destined to succeed.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Are you planning to reply to this soon? We'd really appreciate another set of clarifications from you. Thanks!
Well, people need to contribute more to these projects intstead of just downloading and taking something that is free. OSS and FS are at their best when many minds help out with it. Anyways, I can see that commercial marketing can coexist with OSS say as a project matures a spin off that is close source is made and the open source version is used as a test bed for new features and ideas.
People often use capitalism as an adjective applied to particular activities in a society. They have the feeling that a corporation seeking profit is capitalist, whereas a charity is not.
This is a mistake. It is the system, not the particular activity or organisation that is capitalist. The interesting thing about FOSS and Western capitalism, and the thing that is incompatible with Old Left and Marxist analyses, is that within capitalist system, there has evolved stuff like the endowment of charities, the donation of intellectual property to FOSS, the free distribution of software...and so on. If the Left would ever raise their eyes from their Microsoft supplied Windows screens long enough to use and see what Open Software means, they would be confronted with a very uncomfortable refutation of their overall world view.
What it shows is that the Marxist account of human nature, and of the evolution of capitalism, was just wrong. Peoples motivations are more complicated and diverse than allowed for. The flexibility of capitalist societies is far greater than expected.
Do not be surprised. We are dealing with an evolutionary environment. It is a bit like looking at an ecosystem at a given point and projecting what you see into the indefinite future. This is what Marx did. You cannot do it.
He was also deeply hampered by taking Hegel seriously, which can be compared to trying to run with your legs tied together.
* Private ownership of means of production and capital
* Prices determined by the market (I.e. no government interference)
By that definition, Open Source is capitalist. The production of software is owned privately, and the price is determined by the market. I think Open Source is a shining example of why capitalism is so good. A bunch of people decided that they could do better, at lower cost, which is what they did. It introduced competition in a market that desperately needed it, and I think it's made a lot of things better. Heck, even Microsoft has had to answer by improving security, opening their data formats, etc. And in return, Open Source software has had to improve usability, functionality, etc.
About the only place the Open Source movement fails in terms of capitalism is when some of the proponents keep pushing other companies to make their proprietary code open. Then it's no longer capitalist. That's nothing more than an outside force trying to remove the ownership of a good or production of a good from it's rightful owner.
So while I'm a big supporter of Open Source, I don't think it's right for the movement to request that governments institute all sorts of policies, such as no closed data formats, that stifle competition. For one, it's not necessary. If open data formats or open source is that much better, it'll win. Second, it completely goes against the spirit of capitalism, which is to leave the market decide for itself what's best.
Phemur
I don't intirely agree with Marx, but like I said, he does have a point. Now, capitalism in the normal terms does not cause the apocaliptic end like Marx suggested, but that doesn't make it right. Then again, it doesn't mean Communism is right either. There really must be a balance of the systems, some things being provided for and distributed and others being competed for. Remember, what everyone wants in the end is a society that works for the betterment of all (Star Trek world), and to do that we must remind people that they have a duty to all their fellow man. That what socialism does is take away from materialism, and that furthers Star-Trek-like world.
And remember, no one practices true capitalism, where the govenment keeps its hands completely off private business. Every government controls private business to some extent, because doing otherwise would just promote corrupt monopoly companies. Both extreem capitalism and extreem socialism are oppressive, and both fall.
I give bread to the poor, they call me a saint.
I ask why the poor have no bread, they call me a communist.
I am fascinated by the words you are putting into my mouth here. The things you claim I said are pretty much the opposite of what I believe - I suppose that's what happens when you use reported speech from a clueless journalist as truth. The journalist really didn't understand what I was saying.
Absolutely not. In the talk I explain clearly that those who do not share their work lose out. Keeping source to yourself benefits no-one and the whole point of that part of the talk was to explain why attempting to withhold work from the community was a mistake.
Absolutely wrong. See above.
It's hard to see how you possibly be further from my view. If I thought free software was bad, I would not have licensed the OpenOffice.org source under LGPL, for example, and I would not be directing the staff at Sun to take Sun's entire software portfolio open source.
Communism always contains the lie. The lie is that everyone is equal. In truth,
the bottle of vodka is at the top. Communism is not religion, even though some
very stupid and selfish people romanticize it. Communism is a government/business
arrangement.
Jesus stood for one thing: truth. Communists stand for one thing: A big manipulative lie.
Jesus was a Jew who once and fo all solved the Jewish Problem of us/them, one set
of rules for the Jews, another completely different set of rules for interacting with
non-Jews. This is why the Jews hate him, because he cracked the two-faced operations
method open like a egg.
Now, US taxpayer, prepare to pay $80m of your tax money to replace the power plant the
Israelis just blew up. Guess what, the guy who built the plant insured it through the US
government. Policy due, tax payer.
Yes, you're missing the point of what I'm saying - I in fact agree with you. What I am saying is that, in a world where one can no longer charge for the right to use software, the only place there is left to earn a living is by providing value to the software user at the point where they need it. I have explained this in detail before but essentially what I my "Software Market 3.0" point says is that once Freedom 0 is guaranteed, business models based on restrictions on use can no longer work, and all business models available in the F/OSS future are based on delivering value - service, support, bug-fixing and so on - at the point where the customer can no longer provide those things themselves based on skills. The whole point of my job is to help Sun transition into that F/OSS future.
What a strange post!
The quote almost means the opposite of the famous Jesus/Marx saying. It says what you put in and get out are what you WANT, while Marx and Jesus said you put in all you CAN, and get out all you NEED. Anaesthetica is either unable to understand English, or perhaps high on gas? Either way - totally wrong.
Christian and Marxist are two very similar philosophies for life, with the accent on working together and helping each other.
Capitalism is not. It really has nothing to do with paying people back for what they put in, or any kind of fairness. It is a simple power relationship - if you are stronger or luckier you can beat hell out of your competitor.
Raw capitalism is a very ugly philosophy, which is why America is a very ugly country.
That's not a fucking question. Don't put question marks after it.
I've always thought of OpenSource as presenting a critique of capitalism. A critique not in the sense of rejecting it but of looking at it in a radical way. Radical capitalism would be a return to the principles of Adam Smith - particularly in putting power back in the hands of the small independent producer rather than large Corporations, cartels, monopolies...
Open Source embodies this. People work on OSS and FS projects in their self interest - I don't even know what volunteerism means in this context. There is an element of altruism to be sure but look at SourceForge, freshmeat, etc. Most projects have to do with problems that need to be solved; needs that must be met.
Gate's "Open letter to hobbyists"-style FUD is still the order of the day. Call FSF and OSS communistic as if that means anything today. If it is an attack on anything it is an attack on corporatism. Not capitalism.
Keep your dirty Randian nonsense to yourself. What you do in the privacy of your own home is your own business, but posting excerpts of Ayn Rand's work in public is the literary equivalent of leaving a flaming bag of dog crap on someone's doorstep. She's literally one of the worst, most boring, heavy handed authors I've ever read and her philosophy is bogus, elitist dreck. It exists only to provide excuses to selfish asshats for their anti-social behavior. For anyone with half a brain or more, reading Ayne Rand feels like bathing in pig shit.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You know the answer to that, so the rest of your i want free-as-um-whatever and oh i want to share with my 'friends' and cure cancer too rant is, as always, inconsequential. Thanks for playing.
"If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life. And why the FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie?" --Adaptation
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
More and more your customers are watching your moral stand in many issues, not to pay attention to them may be the competitive disadvantage.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Common, point to us people spousing the ideas of Stallman and telling you you can't or shouldn't make money from software.
Copyright, that is what the GPL is all about, did not exist in Communist countries btw.
Copyright was born on capitalist societies. Anybody that really follows Stallman understands this.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The source code is not the capital. From dictonary.com the two defintions that have some bearing:
"Material wealth used or available for use in the production of more wealth." which code clearly isn't because it is not material (hint: it is copyrightable).
"Human resources considered in terms of their contributions to an economy" which may apply stretching the defintion to its limits, but one has to wonder how you measure the contribution of ideas (which source code is) tto an economy. Most economists don;t bother, so I don't see why we should.
Software has always been a service, companies are using all kind of artificial constructs to make it appear as a physical product, which it clearly isn't.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
more usability testing, more QA...
Didn't I read an article about Linus implimenting this in the kernel dev???
Complete with better-managed dev cycles???
IMO, we could all learn from each other, in implication also implying that we ALL have a lot to learn!
OT: version numbers are an atiquated ideology. They should be replaced with release-dating, such as 20060629!
Much easier to manage, yes?
The Illuminati would kill me, but I'm not rich enough to take notice of.
Who are you talking about here? Certainly not about me, as my compensation package is not publicly reported (and you have it totally wrong). Your biases are showing rather too clearly here. If you meant me you should remember you are libelling a real person who hangs out on Slashdot, not a corporate concept that can be whipped forever without bleeding.
To be clear, and as Dana Blankenhorn was written, the actual words I said in the keynote were describing how F/OSS works, using a model remarkably like Benkler's, and the reference to capitalism was a dig at Microsoft. Like so many posters here, you have joined an instinctive pile-on against Sun rather than asking whether the report-of-a-report is actually accurate.