Sun's McNealy Wants Obama to Push Open Source

CWmike writes to tell us that Sun's Scott McNealy is pushing for the Obama administration to adopt a much more open-source friendly policy similar to what has been done in Denmark, the UK, and other countries. "Although open-source platforms are widely used today in the federal government -- particularly Linux and Sun's own products, Solaris and Java -- McNealy believes many government officials don't understand it, fear it and even oppose it for ideological reasons. McNealy cited an open-source development project that Sun worked on with the US Department of Health and Human Services, during which a federal official said 'that open source was anti-capitalist.' That sentiment, McNealy fears, is not unusual or isolated."

Comments

Anti-capitalist?

[Shark4126]

Remind me again how much money Firefox nets each year...

Re:Anti-capitalist?

[Chabo]

A good chunk of that coming from Google for homepage use, too!

Re:Anti-capitalist?

[TopSpin]

This is McNealy quoting an unnamed "federal official" regarding an unnamed project at some arbitrary point in the past. Feel free to go all pretzel like over it if you wish, but it seems far more likely to me that any lack of progress "open source" (however McNealy defines that...) has made is more likely due to cozy relationships between politicians their favorite vendors than the ideological hang-ups of some bureaucrat.

I've developed software as a DOD contractor. It's a very big government so I can't claim to speak for every case, but my experience was that the DOD doesn't give a flying **** what licenses are involved in their systems. They want it Tuesday. Right, wrong, whatever... Tuesday.

But hey, it's Friday and beating up on fictional government merchantilists is fun.

Re:Anti-capitalist?

[rocker_wannabe]

You are so "crack-a-lackin" correct! It would be nice if companies like RedHat and Novell made more headway into supplying government. I know the Navy has the "completely screwed-up" NMCI contract but I'm not sure what the hold up is in some of the other government agencies.

I also blame laziness and inertia. Non-technical government employees don't want to change from Windows because it's all they know and it took them a long time to learn how to setup their favorite screensaver and check email.

Re:Anti-capitalist?

[burnin1965]

Remind me again how much money the United States Army nets each year... The Red Cross... Meals on Wheels Association of America...?

Hmm, I guess the goals of these organizations isn't simply greed and net profit. And amazingly there are many organizations that don't net a profit and yet they are not attacked for being Anti-capitalist. I suppose its just not that simple, is it.

There is another way to look at it. I've given to the Mozilla Foundation, I use their Firefox product as do many others. For some the benefit has been as simple as a better performing browser with fewer exploits for their choice of operating system. For me it plays a bigger role as it is part of an entire software package that has allowed me to avoid paying tens of thousands in software licensing fees for sub par quality software from companies like Microsoft to support their 95%+ gross margins and I have been able to take that cash that would have been used to line their pockets and purchase more and better hardware.

Gee, I guess capitalism is alive and well and non-profits don't necessarily mean anti-capitalism.

Re:Anti-capitalist?

[johannesg]

Remind me again how much money Firefox nets each year...

It would be worth billions if only there wasn't a competitor that gave away a similar product for free!

Tag: selfserving

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see it now:

REDMOND, WA - Microsoft Corp today announced that proprietary software is the only way to keep this country's
data safe from info-terrorists. Also, Sun is a bunch of flag-burning, anti-American scumbags.

That doesn't mean the idea is wrong, only that no one has any reason to take their word over their competitors'.

Washington DC: masters of technology

[MrEricSir]

I've heard rumors on the internets that open source helps unclog the tubes.

Re:Washington DC: masters of technology

[Anonymous Coward]

i read that too. I don't remember the website number, though.

Re:Washington DC: masters of technology

[Arthur Grumbine]

4. I'm pretty sure it was 4-something.org.

Re:Washington DC: masters of technology

[symbolset]

Hm... 4-something.org isn't registered yet. The odds are good it will be by morning.

Sun who?

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NasdaqGS: JAVA) closed trade today at $4.68. Down 50 folds from their high of about $250 in August 2000.

Re:Sun who?

[nicolas.kassis]

Nice, quoting some un-natural high to dis their stock. Name me one tech company that has a market cap higher today than they did in 2000. This is companies that were public then.

Re:Sun who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Name me one tech company that has a market cap higher today than they did in 2000.

Apple.

Re:Sun who?

[burnin1965]

Apple.

See where open source can lead.
BSD --> NeXT --> OSX --> AAPL

Re:Sun who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is not an example of any of the benefits offered by free software. None of the 4 freedoms come intact.

Capitalism vs. Communism

[AKAImBatman]

One of the key issues here is a huge misunderstanding of why the US clings to capitalism. Regardless of anything else, communism and/or socialism in their many forms are the ideal forms of society. If humans were never selfish and always worked for the betterment of everyone, there would be no need for anything like money, wealth, or capitalism.

The problem is that humans are not perfect. Even the best of us attribute more value to our selves or our families than random strangers. Thus a system is required that meets the challenges of an imperfect society. The most natural form of such a system is a risk/reward system where work is done with the expectation of a possible reward. This is, for better or for worse, capitalism. While it may be a long way from an ideal solution, it is a solution that works.

However, just having such a system does not prevent humans from striving for the benefits of cooperation and community strength. Co-ops, condominiums, small towns, and civic centers are just a few examples of ideas which obtain their strength from the community rather than the individual. Open Source is yet another example of such ideals. An opportunity where working together can strengthen the whole.

If there was one way to sum it up, it would be "Together we stand. Divided we fall." Because at some point everyone, even enemies, have to work together if they want to move forward. Open Source just happens to be the technological way of working together. :-)

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Elektroschock]

Just watch the 1960 Kennedy vs. Nixon debate on youtube: Freedom or slavery. It is exactly that superficial view. Everyone was shocked when Bush introduced the terms good and evil in foreign policy.

The American public has been brainwashed with capitalism as a religion while vendors rob their governmental budget.

All nations are today mixed societies, several tools and institutional instruments.

They talk about free market but don't understand market theory. In a free market the license costs of software converge against zero because of non-rivalous consumption. This is why open source reflects a better allocation.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[larry bagina]

Even if humans were never selfish and always worked for the betterment of everyone, communism/socialism doesn't adequately handle scarce resources.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Samschnooks]

Even if humans were never selfish and always worked for the betterment of everyone, communism/socialism doesn't adequately handle scarce resources.

Thank you! The Tragedy of the Commons is a perfect example of what happens when everyone or no one owns a resource. Also, there hasn't been any economic system that has been as successful as Capitalism. And there hasn't been any country that has had a successful Communist political system.

But, the OP posted a brilliant hedge: he italicized "ideal"; which means, all of our posts disputing his claims are for naught.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[evanbd]

There's another problem with communism. Suppose everyone *was* completely altruistic. They all want to do what would be best for society. What should they do? The resource allocation problem is *immense*. The computational resources to solve it didn't *exist* until recently; now that they (probably) do, I don't think we have the mathematical understanding to solve it well even so.

So, how would you decide what everyone should be doing? Enlightened self interest is one answer to the optimization problem. I'm quite willing to believe it's imperfect, but I'm also far from convinced we know how to do better, even starting from the rather fantastical assumption of rational but altruistic people.

I note that this is a problem of scale -- within a family, tribe, co-op, or commune, it's relatively straightforward to solve the problem with reasonable efficiency in a purely manual fashion. When you scale it up to towns, cities, nations, or the world, though, it becomes intractable.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[dangets]

I wholeheartedly agree. While open source software still requires work to be created, it benefits greatly by not being restricted (much) by hard materials. Cars, food, computers, etc, and other hard goods is where supply/demand and capitalism really take hold. This is one thing that the politicians need to understand. Until we make a machine that can rearrange particles and change one element to another, I believe there is nothing as easy and pure to the cause of advancing mankind as open source software. On a ramble: I am sure there will always be the want for people to have power over others, but with software (especially open-source), it is very hard to have elitist software, when the masses set the standards.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Dolda2000]

One of the key issues here is a huge misunderstanding of why the US clings to capitalism. Regardless of anything else, communism and/or socialism in their many forms are the ideal forms of society. If humans were never selfish and always worked for the betterment of everyone, there would be no need for anything like money, wealth, or capitalism.

Please tell me; why should people work for the betterment of the whole of human society rather than for themselves? Why should people do things that do not benefit themselves?

Open Source just happens to be the technological way of working together. :-)

I would argue against that. At least for my part, when I publish programs that I have written as open source, it is for perfectly selfish reasons.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Dolda2000]

There's another problem with communism. Suppose everyone *was* completely altruistic. They all want to do what would be best for society. What should they do?

I'd argue your post would have been better if you had stopped there, because that points out the core of the question: If everyone were completely altruistic, what should they do? If noone had any self-interest, there would be no useful work to do, since noone would benefit from it.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Samschnooks]

Co-ops, condominiums, small towns, and civic centers are just a few examples of ideas which obtain their strength from the community rather than the individual.

You mean where everyone is in your business, if you deviate one bit from the rules (use a different color paint), do something the others do not approve of, ostracise you if you're in anyway a little too "different", or otherwise not conform, you're fucked.

People are cruel, shallow, and small minded.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[AKAImBatman]

why should people work for the betterment of the whole of human society rather than for themselves?

Who said it's an either/or? Communal work usually benefits everyone including the person doing the work. The problem is that the benefits are not always obvious or easy to internalize. Whereas, "I do X, I get back [money|food|power|etc.]" is a very simple concept that very few people struggle with.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Chabo]

I would argue against that. At least for my part, when I publish programs that I have written as open source, it is for perfectly selfish reasons.

Same. When I started FlacSquisher (shameless plug, I know), it was because I wanted a mass-transcoding tool that was aware of what work had already been done. I had installed Rockbox on my Sansa a couple months earlier, and wanted to transcode my FLACs to Oggs easily so I could play them on the Sansa. If I had bought an 80GB player instead of a 2GB player, I would've just used the FLACs, cause I could've fit my entire music collection. Then I never would've written the program. As it was, I only just implemented MP3 tagging a couple weeks ago because I never encoded to MP3, so in my own usage model it just wasn't necessary.

I suspect that most FOSS projects are the same -- driven by a personal need or desire by the original dev for some functionality not already provided by an existing piece of software, and just coding what they'd want to get out of it.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[phunster]

I have to disagree with you. The examples you give are all commercial entities, except of course for small towns which are government entities. Much of America is already running Socialistic enterprises. Lets start with police departments, they are paid for with our tax money and they protect us. When you call the police, they don't ask for a credit card number. Further, all of these alarm companies profit from the existence of police departments, when the alarm goes off the police respond not the alarm company, yet the alarm company profits. Fire departments they don't bill you for responding to a fire at your home or business. Schools again socialized, yes you pay taxes, but the government provides the schools, the teachers, the school itself, athletic fields, etc. Not convinced, what about all the the rural electric companies owned by local and regional governments. I could go on and on.

The point is that much of what we do in America would be called Socialism if it didn't exist and was proposed today. I think the real problem is that so many people are stuck giving "ism" names to things they don't even understand, and then favoring one "ism" over another regardless of its utility to the problem at hand.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[psnyder]

ideal forms of society

There would be a need for food, shelter, clothes, and, some may argue, medical care. So we need a source of those 4 things for our whole families.

We've come such a long way with efficiency recently that many, many people are supported by the few people that farm, build homes, make clothes, and make and administer health care. Everything above that is superfluous and simply adds variety to our lives.

The other things needed in a society I'd like to live in are a system that protects the personal freedoms of my family and friends, and also protects us from mentally deranged people that would physically harm us. Hence, something akin to police and basic laws.

Finally, as with the medical care argument, I wouldn't mind some disaster relief from fires, earthquakes, etc.


It would be nice to see a time when we become so efficient in these things that we'll only need a handful of volunteers (like a volunteer fire department) to run all of these. But that includes volunteers (or robots) to mine materials, repair & build machinery, transport things, make them accessible to everyone, etc. But there needs to be some way to ensure that these systems don't break down or stall due to some volunteer's whim.

As of right now, we live in a society where every individual can achieve these basic things with relatively little effort. The effort is so minimal that many people spend a lot of time and money (the extra value of their work) on things like TVs, computers, fancy (rather than basic) clothes, exotic foods, jewelry, and other things not necessary to survival. In fact, quite often, half or more of people's paychecks goes to things that are not basic survival, or they buy 'nicer' versions of these needs.

If you can easily provide those basic things for yourself and your family, you're living the utopian lifestyle now. However, commercials tell us how crappy our lives are, so we think we 'need' what they're selling. It's a bad part of capitalism, but if we simply don't pay attention and realize how much we really have, it's incredible! Almost all of you, looking at this from a computer, live the utopian life today.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have A CLUE of what socialism/comunism is. Hey, you don't have A CLUE what capitalism is. Go get your uncle Sam poster and shut up.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[TheRaven64]

Please tell me; why should people work for the betterment of the whole of human society rather than for themselves?

Because some of us have worked out that we can do better within the structure of a healthy and functioning society than we could without one. Doing things that benefits society directly benefits us.

The only difference between selfishness and altruism in 90% of cases is how long term you are thinking.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[AKAImBatman]

The Tragedy of the Commons is a perfect example of what happens when everyone or no one owns a resource.

The Tragedy of the Commons happens because of human self-interest and imperfection. Which was the exact point I made. Communal living falls flat on its face because of human self-interest. Capitalism works because it plays to the self-interest of mankind, not because it is a superior way to live.

And yet, how much effort do we humans put into creating "communities"? Perhaps because community is a very good thing, even if we must balance our need for a community against our own self-interests. ;-)

But, the OP posted a brilliant hedge: he italicized "ideal"; which means, all of our posts disputing his claims are for naught.

Or more to the point, because the "ideal" I refer to is simply unrealistic. It would be nice if the universe always worked the way we wanted it to. Unfortunately, it doesn't. So we have to accept that the ivory tower ideal is not the same as the real-world practical. Which isn't to say that there isn't quite a bit of middle ground...

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Dolda2000]

Who said it's an either/or?

To be fair, it is you who introduced the dichotomy; let me quote: "If humans were never selfish and always worked for the betterment of everyone". My problem with that statement is its implication that it is somehow bad when people are being selfish. However, as you yourself write;

Communal work usually benefits everyone including the person doing the work. The problem is that the benefits are not always obvious or easy to internalize.

Which is quite correct. However, when that happens, people work on it together because of their own, selfish interesting in getting done whatever it is that needed to get done. They do not do it for the purpose of "the betterment of everyone"; they do it because they, themselves and individually, benefit from it. To go on:

The most natural form of such a system is a risk/reward system where work is done with the expectation of a possible reward. This is, for better or for worse, capitalism.

You misunderstand capitalism, it seems. Capitalism is not a "system where work is done with the expectation of a possible reward". It is not a pre-planned system at all, to begin with. It is simply the natural consequence of a society where people are free to trade services with each other for whatever purpose and value they individually get to decide. This is the ideal form of society.

You claim that communism and/or socialism is the ideal form of society, and I would like to meet that statement somehow, but unfortunately I cannot, because typically when I ask 10 people what communism or socialism is, I get 15 different answers. I can however assert that people should definitely be selfish, because only then can they move forward.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[geekoid]

"...and other things not necessary to survival. "
I disagree. I believe our survival depends on growth, and those allow for growth.

Technology needs this to continue and improve.

TO ahve a utopia we need a perfect polito-legal and social system.
Sure, we got great stuff and easy access to food, but our political and legal system needs work.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[forgoil]

The Humane Society and ASPCA are two great examples of organizations, in the united states of America, that do not even remotely make money and only work for the benefit of those weaker than us. Reward doesn't have to be wads of cash. Wanting a reward is not evil after all. And socialism doesn't stop CEOs from being greedy bastards. Look at the board of directors for Volvo. Worse value for money can't be found on this earth.

The big question with open source is how to fund it and how to deal with the total cost of ownership and responsibility.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Dolda2000]

Because some of us have worked out that we can do better within the structure of a healthy and functioning society than we could without one. Doing things that benefits society directly benefits us.

It seems that some people, such as yourself, think that being "selfish" implicates the rejection of society. I would argue the opposite of what you do: Doing things that benefit oneself directly benefits society. (Only I won't, because I reject speaking in such terms as a "society which can benefit", as if it were anthropomorphizable)

People benefit from being part of a society precisely because of the other people in that same society doing things that benefit themselves. It is the basis of trade; two parties exchanging goods and/or services because the things being exchanged are worth more to the other. Note, however, that none of the parties trade for the benefit of the other, but for the benefit of the self, and even despite that, both benefit.

The only difference between selfishness and altruism in 90% of cases is how long term you are thinking.

Only if you use some very odd definition of "altruism" which would be unknown. Normally, when one speaks of "altruism", one speaks of doing things with a complete lack of self-interest in the things one does, only for the benefit of others. Which is exactly why there can be no society where everyone is altruistic, because without any self-interest, there would be no benefit in any action, and everything would be pointless.

What is short-sighted is thinking that selfish action can only benefit oneself. Rather the opposite, if it did indeed not benefit the others involved in the action, it would not be agreed to in the first place. And that is why we have courts.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[byuu]

Thank you! The Tragedy of the Commons is a perfect example of what happens when everyone or no one owns a resource.

The Tragedy of the Commons was about self-serving interests over the common good. I don't see how that parallels socialism.

The alternative to evenly dividing a scarce resource is to unevenly distribute it. So for example, with 100 gallons of milk, and 200 people -- where each person 'requires' exactly one gallon of milk a day -- would it be better to give 100 people a gallon, and let the others starve? Or find a way to make a half-gallon work for everyone?

Unless more harm will come by it (eg more than 100 people would die from having only a half-gallon of milk), I can't see the former being the correct choice. The solution to limited resources is not to create a privileged hierarchy, but to:
a) find a way to increase resource production
b) find an alternative resource
c) work toward reducing over-population
d) do all of the above

FWIW, I also don't believe socialism is a workable system with the way humanity is -- at least at our current level of evolution.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[TubeSteak]

The most natural form of such a system is a risk/reward system where work is done with the expectation of a possible reward. This is, for better or for worse, capitalism. While it may be a long way from an ideal solution, it is a solution that works.

Capitalism doesn't work.

It briefly flourished in America during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries (and was the driving force behind industrialization) because the Federal Government gave corporations all the rope they needed. Then, very publicly, the Government hung the corporations, broke up their monopolies, and regulated the shit out of a formerly free marketplace. Minimum wages, unions, regulations of unions, child labor laws, etc etc etc.

What exists in the USA is a mixed economy that leans towards Capitalism.
If you go back a hundred years and explain to 1909 what the future looks like, they'd say we were all socialists.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said. I can't be bothered to create an account, but I had to say kudos. I wish there was more people like you. Not just for your ideas, but succeeding in not belittling others while making an excellent statement.

Jay

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[roman_mir]

Unfortunately for the US what they have is not democracy + capitalism.

Democracy can only work well if the elected officials continued to work in the best interest of the public that they are supposedly representing. However politicians are the most important target of large corporations who want to control the government process.

From point of view of capitalism, everything should be done that makes the capital growth better, more efficient, everything should be done that will make more money. This includes attempting to control the political process. In a democracy that does not implement safeguards against subversion of itself by these corporate interests rise of fascism is inevitable.

The problem is that the current democratic process is insufficient to prevent corporate control of the government. While in a dictatorship there would be no problem, the dictator does not wish to share power (One Ring to Rule Them All), in a democracy without proper safeguards the power will be shared with corporations in the worst ways possible, as long as the politicians can get away with it.

I am a firm believer in democracy and capitalism, a libertarian actually, but I believe that the democracy of today is insufficient to fight onset of fascism through corporate control, which buys its way into the political system and cannot be stopped without a revolt.

The current economic crisis is firmly connected to this problem of corporate power over democratic politics. The creation of the US Federal Reserve itself is the problem, but it was profitable for large oil companies and banks to allow cheap money to be borrowed, money to be printed, money to be disconnected from any standard (such as the gold standard). Government fixing 'interest rates', having preferential treatment of corporations, buying/selling bonds, setting taxes and distributing wealth (to corporations as now or as before through contracts), 'insuring' credit (removing moral hazard), starting wars... all of the above and much much more than that - this is where the economic crisis originates.

This is not a failure of capitalism, this is not the failure of government regulation, this is too much government that is too controlled by its real owners - corporations, not working for the people but really working for a very select group of people with real money.

I believe that it is fascism now, not democracy + capitalism. Is the hold of fascism too strong now? Maybe it is, maybe it can only be removed by force. On the other hand we'll see. The balance is no longer there, it is too shifted to one side and probably a total economic collapse is not really a bad thing anymore. Given that people are not really interested in taking the power away by force (people are too comfortable, to scared for their lives/lifestyles, are not desperate enough) maybe the economic crisis will have a similar effect that a revolt could have? I wonder.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[TCPhotography]

So for example, with 100 gallons of milk, and 200 people -- where each person 'requires' exactly one gallon of milk a day -- would it be better to give 100 people a gallon, and let the others starve? Or find a way to make a half-gallon work for everyone?

If you are China, you take the milk, water it down so you have 400 gallons, add Melamine to make the protein count look good, and sell half to the rest of the world.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[nine-times]

Well I wouldn't quite put it that way. I think it's true that pretty much any economic system works as long as the underlying assumptions work-- which they almost never do. Communism assumes all sorts of things about a person's personal motivation, problem-solving abilities, and ability to cooperate with others. So does capitalism, but capitalism tends to make slightly more realistic assumptions.

But when you get down to it, not all the assumptions work out. People who are extremely in favor of capitalism tend to assume that people will spend their money well. Adam Smith implied that the system would only work well if people with money spent it wisely (it's been a long time, so I don't remember the context, but I remember him implying this though not saying it explicitly). When Greenspan admitted his mistakes in not regulating certain aspects of the financial industry, he said that he didn't think the heads of banks would be so foolish as to jeopardize their banks the way they did. There's an assumption that having money is proof that you're wise enough to have earned that money, and therefore are wise enough to know what the best thing to do with that money. Unfortunately, that's not always borne out.

There's also an assumption that "free markets" and "governmental regulation" are the opposite of each other. However, that's not always the case-- the most obvious example being monopolies. Power has a nasty habit of accruing more power, even in capitalism. The rich and powerful are in a position to influence the system, and therefore become more rich and powerful. After a certain point, pooling power gains enough influence to sway and even overturn market forces. Sometimes the government must intercede to open a market back up, allowing consumer choice, and therefore allowing market forces to correct the situation again.

But really those are just a couple practical considerations that someone in favor of capitalism should keep in view. The bigger problem is when people start believing that capitalism is an ethical/moral system instead of an economic system. For some, capitalism has become a religion, and for them, cut-throat competition towards making money is the only real virtue, and selfless cooperation is a deadly sin. Any human activity where the chief immediate goal is not to make money is "communist", which may as well be called "satanic". Even if the goal is to make money, if the means to do that involve cooperation with others, it's potentially communist.

This is where FOSS comes into the picture. Some people may be developing FOSS for fun, for the good of mankind, for educational purposes, or for some other reason. However, *lots* of developers are employed by companies like IBM, Novell, Google, Apple, Red Hat, and Canonical. These are companies who are investing money in building software so that they can sell products and services. It's a money making venture. Still, Capitalists (with a capital "C" to indicate those who believe in capitalism as a moral system) believe that the venture is "communist" because it involves open/public cooperation.

I really wish I could convince people that capitalism isn't a form of government and isn't a moral code. It's just an economic system. We don't engage in a capitalistic economic system because it's right, moral, or holy. We do it because it's effective and efficient. We should be willing to stray from it in cases when it's not effective or efficient.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[nine-times]

The Tragedy of the Commons happens because of human self-interest and imperfection.

I think it's also worth noting that there's no clear way that the "tragedy of the commons" applies to open source software. It can't really be over-used or used-up by any of the owners. Your use doesn't hamper my use.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

Intruigingly, capitalism is an excellent way of increasing resource producing (assuming increased production is possible). Because people see a need and feel they can reward themselves by filling it, everyone benefits. There is nothing inherently wrong with enlightened self-interest, and there are many "greedy" actions, which while they benefit one disproportionately, are better for everyone in general.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Anonymous Coward]

Suppose everyone *was* completely altruistic. They all want to do what would be best for society. What should they do?

Kill themselves to make room for everyone else. Unfortunately, only non-altruistic people would be left, and if everyone was completely altruistic, it would be the end of the human race.

What? You mean, "what if everyone was completely altruistic and somewhat intelligent? They'd suffer, many would choose to die and make room (maybe through the drawing of lots, or a lottery), and people wouldn't have hardly any children, so that the next generation wouldn't have that problem. It's a shame that this is such an unrealistic expectation.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Minozake]

If everyone was completely altruistic, would everyone be dead unless there were sufficient resources for all?

Let's say there's a water shortage. Every single person would take the most equal amount of water or refuse water to give the whole a larger portion of water. Thus eventually the population will quell itself by denying necessities until the population is small enough for everyone to get the necessary amount of water.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[leereyno]

Capitalism is a term whose literal meaning is at odds with its actual meaning.

Capitalism isn't about capital, but about entrepreneurship. The capital, as in venture capital, is simply the catalyst and fuel that makes the entire process possible.

Communism is also a term whose literal meaning is at odds with its actual meaning.

Communism isn't about community, but tyranny. There will always be those who seek dominion over others, and communism is simply yet another excuse in a long line of bullshit that our would-be rulers use to justify their crimes against their fellow man. Divine right of kings just doesn't quite have the same ring to it that it once did after all.

Communism is an attempt to enslave people. The excuse that is given for this enslavement is that in a free society some individuals will achieve more than others, with the result being a society that is not equal. Everyone wants equality right? The problem is that no one stops to think exactly what equality means as the term is used by the communists. It doesn't mean a free society in which everyone has equal rights, but a slave state where everyone is equally miserable.

Capitalism is the natural and virtuous economic result of a society where men and women live in freedom and where their fundamental rights are acknowledged and respected.

Freely shared intellectual property is the natural and virtuous result of a society where men and women live in freedom and where their fundamental rights are acknowledged and respected.

Far from being anti-capitalist, open source IS capitalism at its best.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Daniel Dvorkin]

But there's more to doing an open source project that just writing the code. You could have written your program, kept it to yourself, and never bothered with choosing a license, putting it up on Sourceforge, etc. Or you could have decided that it was useful enough that people would pay for it, and tried to sell it as proprietary software. If you say you have a selfish reason for doing it as OSS, I believe you, but it's not clear from your post what that reason is -- "a personal need or desire by the original dev for some functionality not already provided by an existing piece of software" doesn't cover it.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[CannonballHead]

Er... I'm confused. Did you just say the US is essentially socialistic in comparison to the US of a century ago? Seems like you did. I agree. But you seem to imply that the US is an example of capitalism failing (modern day US) and then say that modern day US capitalism isn't capitalism at all, but only leans towards capitalism ...

So, where is the argument for the blanket "capitalism doesn't work." statement?

(my opinion - capitalism as an ideology isn't perfect, but appears to be the best idea so far, given human nature... socialism, communism, fascism, monarchy, anarchy, oligarchy, etc., all have appeared to completely crumble and fall apart - and incidentally, capitalistic-US is becoming more and more socialistic AS it deteriorates ... so why is it that we blame capitalism again?)

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Daniel Dvorkin]

At least for my part, when I publish programs that I have written as open source, it is for perfectly selfish reasons.

And those reasons are ... what, exactly?

As I said elsewhere in this thread, creating an open source project involves more than writing the code. There's work involved, and you don't get paid for that work. So there must be some other reason for doing it. While I can understand abstractly how that reason might be selfish, I certainly don't see my own OSS work that way, and I'm curious to hear an explanation from people who do, in fact, consider their OSS work to be selfish.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but neither does capitalism. Hear of spillover costs and benefits?

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[evanbd]

It seems a silly exercise, as the premise is obviously impossible, but... Clearly, if there aren't enough resources for everyone, the optimal solution is to decide who should get them early on, so that the greatest number can stay as healthy as required to do the other things that need doing. Inequality can be part of an optimal solution.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Dolda2000]

Well, it's quite simple, really. I have a need for a program, so I write it. That's obviously my selfish reason for writing the code, as you rightly point out.

Then, when I decide to publish it as open source, it is for a number of reasons;

• Partly, I tend to hope that someone will look at the code, and maybe comment on it or even improve it. That hasn't happened to any great extent, however (though I have gotten a few human language translations for a webmail that I wrote);
• Partly, it is because of my personal joy in seeing people use what I've done. This is one of the reasons that I'd like to emphasize, though, because it may seem selfless or altruistic at first glance, which in fact it isn't;
• Partly, when people use it, I do tend to get a variety of bug reports and comments, not on the code, but at least on the features of the program, which is often quite useful to me;
• Partly, it lets me speak from personal experience in threads like these, rather than just speaking of principles without having partaken practically in them myself. :-)

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Chabo]

Honestly? The biggest reason I made it open-source is as an ego boost. People are using software that I wrote, and I'm much more likely to get more than 5 downloads if it's on Sourceforge than if I made a no-name site and distributed it there. This is especially true among the target audience, as nerds (like me) who listen to Flacs are much more likely to trust OSS than plain-old freeware, and they're highly unlikely to pay for small utilities.

In Linux, FlacSquisher can essentially be replaced by a small shell script. Here's the pseudocode:

foreach flacfile in flacfolder
        if !Exists(destfile)
                encode(flacfile, destfile)

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[binarylarry]

The problem is that Jack does X and gets back money, food, power, etc.

But Bob does 0.000X and gets back the same amount.

That's why capitalism makes more sense.

All men are not created equal.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[maxume]

How is the way you are framing different from "If people weren't people, communism would work"?

What I mean is, doesn't an 'ideal' system have to account for actual human nature?

I guess there is some value in contemplating societies composed of perfect beings, but it is a damn shame anyone tried to make use of them.

(Note that, long ago, I had a sig that read: "Capitalism -- A form of socialism that bothers to account for human nature.")

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Arthur Grumbine]

Almost all of you, looking at this from a computer...

I'm reading this from a punch-card printout, you insensitive clod!

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[FlyingBishop]

Code is an abundant resource.

Furthermore, in economic terms, code is non-subtractable. My use of code does not diminish your use of it. It is an ideal thing to put in a communal pot.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[rohan972]

Regardless of anything else, communism and/or socialism in their many forms are the ideal forms of society. If humans were never selfish and always worked for the betterment of everyone, there would be no need for anything like money, wealth, or capitalism.

The problem is that humans are not perfect. Even the best of us attribute more value to our selves or our families than random strangers. Thus a system is required that meets the challenges of an imperfect society. The most natural form of such a system is a risk/reward system where work is done with the expectation of a possible reward. This is, for better or for worse, capitalism.

So to paraphrase: In a non-existent fantasy world, communism and/or socialism in their many forms are the ideal forms of society. In reality, capitalism is the best system.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[rohan972]

Perhaps because community is a very good thing, even if we must balance our need for a community against our own self-interests. ;-)

You don't have to balance community against your own self-interest, community is one of those things in your self-interest. So you balance your efforts at obtaining one thing that is in your interest with the other things that are in your interest. It is in my best interest to have workable relationships with neighbors etc.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[coryking]

Or you could have decided that it was useful enough that people would pay for it, and tried to sell it as proprietary software.

But in many cases, people wouldn't pay for it and I don't want to deal with the hassle. It is easier for me to just slap a BSD license on it and give the damn thing away. Somebody else gets to incorporate my little bit of code into their project, and I get to claim I contribute to open source projects. Win win.

Most people, I suspect, open source their stuff for precisely these kinds of reasons. They don't sell it because the software isn't worth polishing up to the state that somebody would ever pay for it.

That is why most open source projects that have nobody drawing a paycheck (i.e. not firefox, redhat, etc...) lack polish. If they had polish, the original authors would be selling it. Firefox has lots of polish because people are being payed money to work on it. If nobody got paid, nobody would invest what it took to make a good installer, good docs, and an overall polished appearance.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Muros]

There is nothing inherently wrong with enlightened self-interest

The unfortunate problem of modern capatalist societies lies in the enlightenment part of that sentence. Most people really don't give a crap about long term sustainability. They think only about the sustainability of revenue streams, and shifting the sources of those when one dries up. So resources invariably get used up. Fisheries are fished out, agricultural lands are overfarmed with chemical fertilizers and pesticides until the local ecology is destroyed, oil fields are plundered for quick cheap energy that could be just as easily reaped from slightly more expensive renewable sources leaving future generations needing new sources for advanced materials production. People are not educated as well as they could be, because in the short term, it would cost too much, and in the long term it would inevitably mean a drop in RELATIVE income for people in professions that are currently kept at quasi-artificial proportions of the populace. All this will bite us in the arse, because we are going to end up in a world with collapsed fisheries, wasted farmland, cheap energy resources squandered before we have put in place a permanent global renewable energy generation infrastructure, and a hungry world population wondering why the generation before them was so smug about having escaped our Malthusian past.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[rdnetto]

It could simply be getting someone else to do the work for you. I've written a bunch of useful programs that I'm considering uploading to sourceforge. If I did that, others would be able to expand on my work, and it builds up my reputation, which could be beneficial when I'm looking for a job. Additionally, having others build on my work means I get some nice new features without having to do the work myself.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[xero314]

What I mean is, doesn't an 'ideal' system have to account for actual human nature?

One could argue that in an 'ideal' system human nature wouldn't matter. On the other hand it depends on what your 'ideals' are.

'Ideally' all humans would work collectively toward the betterment of all, so I support any system that does away with those not interested in this 'ideal' goal.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Muros]

The problem is that Jack does X and gets back money, food, power, etc.

But Bob does 0.000X and gets back the same amount.

That's why capitalism makes more sense.

All men are not created equal.

I assume you mean thats why capitalism makes more sense for Bob. Because people getting paid exorbitant fees for their work only really occurs in capitalist scenarios. Unless you happen to be a government minister somewhere in Africa, where that kind of thing is also perfectly acceptable.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[burnin1965]

One of the key issues here is a huge misunderstanding of why the US clings to capitalism.

Key issues where, in the article or on Slashdot?

Actually if there are any misunderstandings its that the market model used by some software companies is Capitalism. The use of lawyers, lobbiests, and fake grass roots community organizations to crush competition and guide governments, individuals, and businesses away from alternative software products have lead a few software vendors far from the realm of capitalism and more into the realm of corporate based socialism and communism where they decide what is developed and what the price will be.

The fact is open source software is closer to capitalism than most proprietary software businesses because it puts ownership and control of the various pieces of a software market into the hands of those who actually produce the products and services in the market. Everyone is hung up on control of the code behind software when it is only a small part of the entire market. The reason people are hung up on control of the code is because it is the root of a business model that enables bullying of all other vendors down stream to produce gross margin profits for the single up stream software provider in excess of 95%. There is nothing wrong with such high profit margins, as long as your not the down stream hardware vendor who has to give up you profit margins just to sell a product. Remember a certain CEO and Software Architect decreeing that hardware vendors must reduce their prices as the future would eventually be free hardware supported by hefty software licensing fees? Okay so they left out the part about hefty fees for their software, what a crock.

The most natural form of such a system is a risk/reward system where work is done with the expectation of a possible reward. This is, for better or for worse, capitalism.

Actually no that is not specifically capitalism. In fact pretty much every system involves a risk/reward system where work is completed with the expectation of a reward. The difference is that capitalism puts ownership of the means of producing into private hands with the idea being individuals will take bigger risks and compete to create products and services for a market. If you take away the risk and competition your left with ownership which is rather close to communism, socialism, in some cases even slavery and serfdom.

Open Source is yet another example of such ideals. An opportunity where working together can strengthen the whole.

No and yes. Even a corporation that is privately owned with individuals paid to do a job involves cooperation for the benefit of all, its not a free for all. And open source is not communism or socialism as the developers are not told what to develop, what license to use or what they should charge. And while open source software is in many cases a community effort that benefits those within the community it breaks from one important caveat of most closed source software, after the software is developed it does not bleed off profits from every other down stream portion of the software market from distributors to hardware integration and system builders to end users.

If there was one way to sum it up, it would be "Together we stand. Divided we fall." Because at some point everyone, even enemies, have to work together

I suspect you are a little naive. :) Open Source is more like the wild west with bands of people who work together for their common good, individual wild cats who break away from the community or never manage to find a place where they fit but still produce open source code, and splinter groups where projects have split for any number of reasons.

Open Source is a realization that once a software application is developed it doesn't cost an exorbitant amount to reproduce, in fact with todays technology the cost of

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Muros]

capitalism as an ideology isn't perfect, but appears to be the best idea so far, given human nature... socialism, communism, fascism, monarchy, anarchy, oligarchy, etc., all have appeared to completely crumble and fall apart

I'm interested in what examples you'd care to provide regarding both socialism and communism to support that. I'm not terribly interested in monarchies or oligarchies, fascism is just wrong, anarchy... well it could be interesting but far too unstable. But I am unaware of any true communist society ever having been implemented, just dictatorships disguised as communism. As for socialism, most EU countries are socialist to one degree or another, Sweden especially seems to be a good working example of a functional socialist society.

and incidentally, capitalistic-US is becoming more and more socialistic AS it deteriorates ... so why is it that we blame capitalism again?)

You seem to be trying to establish a cause effect relationship, although you haven't given any evidence as to which is the cause.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[falconwolf]

People who are extremely in favor of capitalism tend to assume that people will spend their money well. Adam Smith implied that the system would only work well if people with money spent it wisely (it's been a long time, so I don't remember the context, but I remember him implying this though not saying it explicitly).

I think Adam Smith said something like this in his book, which many people don't know or think about, " The Theory of Moral Sentiments".

Falcon

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[techno-vampire]

It would be nice if the universe always worked the way we wanted it to. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

Exactly. As I see it, both communism and socialism ignore human nature. They'd work just fine if there were a way to change human nature, but as it is, there isn't. And, if they did, would the result still be human?

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[binarylarry]

Uh, under capitalism, Bob gets 100% the result of his work, i.e. 0.000X%. Whereas Jack gets the fruits of his labor, which is far more than Bob.

So JACK is the one whom capitalism makes more sense for... you know, sensible people with brains who work hard. I hope you misread my comment or something, or else you're some kind of hippy communist douche.

If that's the case, all I can say in response is that what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[burnin1965]

If you are running a business in the new Capitalist China and you prescribe to the new Greed is Good mentality you suspect that you can get away with watering down the milk and adding Melamine to make the protein count look good and sell more product at a lower price than competitors. Unfortunately the plan backfires and Sanlu Group is bankrupted by the scandal and the one time entrepreneur Tian Wenhua is sentenced to life imprisonment. The communist government tries to cover up the incident and amazingly points fingers at other countries but in the end it was the capitalist entrepreneurs that chose to taint their product with Melamine, not the communist government.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the future dichotomy of American society is not between capitalism and communism. Economically, we will always be a capitalistic country. The two ideology is going to between communal-ism and individualism. The blue/red unreligious/Christian socialists/libertarian divide are all reflecting that.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[CharredMetal]

Also any natural language text, digitized music, still and motion pictures are abundent resources, in economic terms everything which is mentioned here is non-subtractable. My use of digitized media does not diminish your use of it. It is an ideal thing to put in a communal plot. ....Err, There always be value attached to any digitized media, or set of computer control instructions. And the creator should say whether he wants it to put into a communal plot. Most of the value comes from creator's time invested creating the creation + his time experienced learning trades of his profession. most self serving creators will not put their work in the communal plot if that is thier primary source to generate income.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[burnin1965]

Actually Jack got his degree in Business while Bob got his degree in Computer Science.

Jack is a brown nosing back stabbing sneaky weasel who squirms his way up the ranks, he hob knobs and rubs elbows but doesn't really product much of anything.

Bob not only has a degree in a technology field but is truly interested in the science and develops productivity improving solutions for the business and on his own time delves into open source projects to expand his knowledge and skills.

Jack believes he is a mover and shaker, the epitome of capitalist success, Bob actually does things that impact the business and the computer science field, his work in and out of the business drives capitalism in multiple markets.

Just kidding, a bit. I agree that hard work often results in great rewards in a capitalist economic system, but capitalism is also replete with worthless parasitic twits who don't do jack and yet receive reward beyond belief while individuals who put in excessive effort receive a pittance of the wealth they actually generate.

Oh, and by the way, "...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...".

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of dictactors etc that would disagree with you. There are plenty of cases where you gain more by hurting the community than by helping it.

It isn't always in your best interest to have workable relationships with your neighbours. A simple example - if you have a chance to betray or screw over your neighbours in return for a large amount of money. The amount of money you gained could be worth more than the relationships with your neighbours would yield.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[ClosedSource]

"Uh, under capitalism, Bob gets 100% the result of his work, i.e. 0.000X%. Whereas Jack gets the fruits of his labor, which is far more than Bob."

Actually, if Bob is a CEO of a bank he probably gets about $10,000 for every $1 he lost for his company.

There's never been a strong correlation in the US between how hard you work and how much money you make and in the last 30 years the connection has gotten weaker.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[dodobh]

That is exactly why you have global warming, pollution, the current financial mess, ...

Capitalism would work if you could make people pay for externalities. Since there doesn't seem to be a way to do that (Kyoto, for example), we have to make do with worse alternatives.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[ignavus]

One of the key issues here is a huge misunderstanding of why the US clings to capitalism. Regardless of anything else, communism and/or socialism in their many forms are the ideal forms of society. If humans were never selfish and always worked for the betterment of everyone, there would be no need for anything like money, wealth, or capitalism.

Please tell me; why should people work for the betterment of the whole of human society rather than for themselves? Why should people do things that do not benefit themselves?

Because they are nice people?

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[cyber-vandal]

How about the former boss of Royal Bank of Scotland:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7911722.stm

£650,000 a year pension after presiding over the ruination of a 200 year old bank and the biggest corporate loss in British history. He should spend the rest of his life in prison or at least in poverty, not in a mansion living the high life.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[cyber-vandal]

And they always will but let's face it the legal and political systems in the developed world are superb compared to the totalitarian structures we used to have and which a lot of the world still suffers under. The political and legal systems will never be perfect while humans run them but they're a hell of a lot better than the "divine right of kings" we used to have.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell me; why should people work for the betterment of the whole of human society rather than for themselves? Why should people do things that do not benefit themselves?

Why should I help a blind stranger to cross the street? Why should I call police when I see someone else being robbed? Why should I tip the delivery boy? Why should I explain some stranger the way?

Because I behave like I would want others to behave.
Because I think the world is a much better place to live when people are helpful, generous and .
Because I am not a sociopath.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[JAlexoi]

Amen , to that!
Being a "team" player is in self interest of every smart person. Since every smart person knows that he/she cannot do everything on his/her own.
The stupid person, views self interest at a reptilian level - all for me, none for everyone else.
Oh. And BTW, Christianity is the ultimate form of religious communism. Problem is that it has been transformed so much from it's original form, that most of the original ideals were lost.(Read about how the first Christians were organized initially. Sample: the last supper and similar practices)

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[JAlexoi]

Please tell me; why should people work for the betterment of the whole of human society rather than for themselves? Why should people do things that do not benefit themselves?

Reality! You cannot achieve anything individually. You may have a illusion, in your current society that you can. But reality is that, much like the animal world*, we have to be a community to achieve ANYTHING.
Imagine, that Newton would think the same way as you. We probably wouldn't have much of what we have now. Einstein, was not a billionaire, but his theories were already applied in his lifetime. And most researchers work to better the life of society.
You would probably think otherwise, if your family was touched by such illnesses like cancer.
By your logic, why shouldn't the research companies charge 10 million USD for cancer drugs? Really, why? You would go to the "end of the earth" just to live, so why should they give it to you for such a measly sum?
Why should anyone share their knowledge in any way?
* - See the lone insects and mammals vs organized ones, ants and bees, what they achieve as a community.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Dolda2000]

Why should I help a blind stranger to cross the street? Why should I call police when I see someone else being robbed? Why should I tip the delivery boy? Why should I explain some stranger the way?

Because I behave like I would want others to behave. Because I think the world is a much better place to live when people are helpful, generous and . Because I am not a sociopath.

Thank you for proving my point: Obviously, you do it for selfish reasons. Per your own admission, you do it partly because you wish others to learn from your example and reap the benefits of reciprocal action, and partly because it makes you feel good ("because I am not a sociopath").

There is, as I've explained elsewhere in the thread, nothing that prevents selfish action from also benefiting others. The difference lies mainly in knowing that, ultimately, you do everything for selfish reasons, and there's no reason for being hypocritical about it.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't say that the capitalism that is applied in US is "working" until they have a balanced budget. At the moment the capitalism of US forces them to take loans each year to keep running.

I'm not sure of the numbers but someone wrote a number in the vicinity of 10% of the GNP.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell me; why should people work for the betterment of the whole of human society rather than for themselves? Why should people do things that do not benefit themselves?

Game theory! Because you expect the other to do so, and since you can't do it all by yourself (maybe you're good at programming, but if you get ill, you need for someone else, if your car breaks down, you need for someone else etc.), it would be a good thing.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[rohan972]

There are plenty of dictactors etc that would disagree with you.

Who also continually have to beware of uprisings, assassinations, etc.

There are plenty of cases where you gain more by hurting the community than by helping it.

Generally requiring you to take a very short term view and/or be ignorant of the real consequences of your actions.

A simple example - if you have a chance to betray or screw over your neighbours in return for a large amount of money. The amount of money you gained could be worth more than the relationships with your neighbours would yield.

Only if you do not regard your character to have any value. What do you do with all that money if you've become the type of person you despise? Doesn't sound like much of a benefit to me.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[vivaelamor]

There always be value attached to any digitized media, or set of computer control instructions. And the creator should say whether he wants it to put into a communal plot. Most of the value comes from creator's time invested creating the creation + his time experienced learning trades of his profession. most self serving creators will not put their work in the communal plot if that is thier primary source to generate income.

Value can be attached to anything, if only by sentiment. The idea that a free market requires consideration to non commissioned works in the name of encouragement is, I think, counter-intuitive.

Intellectual Property laws are comparable to mandating that all legal advice must be paid for unless the counsel explicitly says otherwise and that anyone else who uses that advice must also pay the counsel.

Somehow the lawyers still get paid even though the product of their efforts is essentially as free as Open Source software.

Your assertion seems to be that the only value in an intellectual creation is the time and effort put into it and therefore that we should mandate a price on all time and effort put into a creation, effectively making it a material resource.

The problem is, we already have the material resource.. the person. Much like the legal counsel, a programmer can in fact rely on their skills to make a living regardless of the material value of their work.

Intellectual Property law actually works counter to the free market in making certain peoples time and effort a material resource based upon their skill-set rather than treating people as people and their time and effort as a personal resource.

The issue specific to Open Source vs Proprietary software is that as long as states enforce Intellectual Property law, you rely on the goodwill of people to not take advantage of the law and to sell you their services as people rather than sell you the results of their work as a material commodity. I view it as a testament to the enlightened world-interest of people who make open source software that it is successful despite the laws. The fact that proprietary software is so successful is a testament to how greed can take advantage of poorly thought out laws and how hard that is to undo.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[rohan972]

Being a "team" player is in self interest of every smart person. Since every smart person knows that he/she cannot do everything on his/her own. The stupid person, views self interest at a reptilian level - all for me, none for everyone else.

Yes.

Oh. And BTW, Christianity is the ultimate form of religious communism.

I was with you right up until that. Try reading Matthew 25: 14-30 and see if you can salvage any communism out of that. Or II Thessalonians 3:10-12 "For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread."

If that hasn't done it, then in the middle of the "communist" church in Acts 5 you have Ananias and Sapphira who were told concerning their possession "While you kept it, didn't it remain your own? After it was sold, wasn't it in your power?"

The early church was not communist, they had property rights and those who gave did by choice, not compulsion. Communism is to generosity what rape is to loving sex. The compulsion turns it from a wonderful thing that builds relationship to something that ought to be considered horrendous and destroys any value of the act itself.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[davecb]

The Tragedy of the Commons is a perfect example of what happens when everyone or no one owns a resource.

Just to be anal, no real village commons suffers from the cited problems, as the community is self-protective and small enough that the violator of the norms gets enough flack that he backs off. The paper is about what happens if you try to create what Hardin considers an unnatural commons, one of unrestricted size and without I usually call "societal norms", which he terms "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon".

See Hardin, Garrett The Tragedy of the Commons.

--dave

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[davecb]

Fire departments they don't bill you for responding to a fire at your home or business. Schools again socialized, yes you pay taxes, but the government provides the schools, the teachers, the school itself, athletic fields, etc. Not convinced, what about all the the rural electric companies owned by local and regional governments.

These three services were actually privately provided at first: Benjamin Franklin started a commercial fire company, schools were restrictively private in the old British "public school" system copied by the American colonies, and power companies were often private enterprises in my father's day, even up here in Soviet Canuckistan (;-))

None of them stayed private: the competition between fire companies caused widespread public revulsion, as did the restriction of schooling to only the upper class in egalitarian America, and power companies didn't scale. One died because they were seen as immoral, the second as a conscious choice of the voting (and school-bond-buying) public and the third from technical reasons.

--dave

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[GPLHost-Thomas]

Where did you see exactly that "Capitalism works"? Half of the earth wealth in the hands of a hundred, while half of the earth is starving, you call that a success? Come on, open your eyes and face the reality: you are comfortably setup in your cozy home writing this, while the vast majority doesn't have the basic survival kit.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Anonymous Coward]

That isn't entirely true; the tragedy, in this case, is that improvements become "somebody else's problem". However, this isn't as serious as the tragedy usually is, because it doesn't deny anyone the functionality that was there originally.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Tubal-Cain]

the tragedy, in this case, is that improvements become "somebody else's problem"

The "scratch an itch" method has worked out well so far. Do you pine for a feature that nobody else cares about? Do it yourself. If you aren't willing to do that, you don't need it bad enough.

Re:Capitalism vs. Communism

[Muros]

No, that's not what you said at all. What you said is Bob gets the same amount of pay for 0.000X units of work done as Jack gets for X units of work. Therefore, Bob is getting paid 10,000 times as much as Jack. Perhaps you meant something different, but that is what you said. Bob is clearly the winner in the picture you painted.

Re:Oh, terrific

[TheRaven64]

Lord Tebbit once said this to me:

You can judge a man by his enemies. I'm very proud of all of my enemies, and I wouldn't want to lose a single one.

Comments like yours remind me of this. To collect detractors like you, he must be doing something right.

It's not just open source that is suffering

[Goalie_Ca]

The old farts in washington are from another era and have no understanding of any of today's issues (if they can even identify them amongst the old and tired ones they stubbornly still debate) yet these are the people making the decisions that have an impact for years to come. To me.. this hurts a lot!

Re:It's not just open source that is suffering

[chuckymonkey]

This was fine up until about 70 years ago. People felt better about having a stodgy old politician in office before then because the times really didn't change as much as they have in recent years. That's one unfortunate side effect of the tech explosion of the last few decades, people just cannot keep up, so you have politicians in office that are only vaguely aware that this thing made of tubes called the intarwebs even exists. Most of them do not realize just how much of a game changer it is. The Internet is just one example, look at things like stem cell research, nuclear energy, or other forms of energy and you see a trend.

Re:It's not just open source that is suffering

[ArsonSmith]

I agree 100%, yet some other idiots want these people to be in charge of health care, finance institutions, and almost every other facet of our life.

Re:It's not just open source that is suffering

[Samschnooks]

What do you mean "understanding"? They have no idea of the existence of F/OSS, let alone understand it.

Re:It's not just open source that is suffering

[Daniel Dvorkin]

This was fine up until about 70 years ago. People felt better about having a stodgy old politician in office before then because the times really didn't change as much as they have in recent years.

70 years ago was 1939. Are you seriously going to argue that the world is changing more rapidly now than it was at the beginning of World War Two?

People who shout about how fast modern technology is changing the world really ought to pay more attention to history. We've been going from one technological revolution to another for a couple of centuries. Pretty much anyone born since 1800 or so has seen a completely different world, technologically and in many other ways, in their adulthood than the one they saw in their youth. And existing power structures have really never been able to keep up.

Re:It's not just open source that is suffering

[Muros]

70 years ago was 1939. Are you seriously going to argue that the world is changing more rapidly now than it was at the beginning of World War Two

.....

We've been going from one technological revolution to another for a couple of centuries. Pretty much anyone born since 1800 or so has seen a completely different world, technologically and in many other ways, in their adulthood than the one they saw in their youth. And existing power structures have really never been able to keep up.

I would say the world is changing more rapidly. WW2 was all about imperialism, the same as WW1, and most of the wars for several centuries before it. Imperialism did not end with WW2. The aftermath of WW2 was the end of Western European imperialism around the globe, to be replaced by imperialistic jockying between Russia and the USA, with all sorts of militaristic and economic fun in South America, eastern Europe, Africa and Asia. Today, there is the resentment against imperialism that has ALWAYS been there throughout the ages, but unlike in previous times, there is a general worldwide agreement that it is wrong, and that we really should all try to just get along and work together instead of spending huge sums of taxpayers money on fucking each other over. And one of the reasons I think people actually DO care, is because of technology. Those far away savages that needed to be beaten into submission 100 years ago are now some nice people you might meet on your holiday, or maybe play computer games with in some clan or guild. Technology has a huge impact on modern life and how we think, and the people who legislate should have some idea of what its all about.

Re:Oh, terrific

[Chabo]

Then Bush must be our all-time best president!

Great Headline

[wild_quinine]

What's next, 'Lonely Midwest teenager would like to be next winner of American Idol'?

I agree

[DaMattster]

Open source makes for the best way to achieve President Obama's goals of transparency. Open source ensures a standards based method that will allow everyone to access government websites, information, and portals. No longer do you need to be tied into the M$ quagmire to conduct government business. If M$ won't open its software and standards, folks like Red Hat, Novell, Sun, and others will. You will have a choice of products to use.

Re:I agree

[DevStar]

Open source doesn't do what you suggest. First open source doesn't imply standards compliant. Open source doesn't imply access to government websites (that has more to do with permissions and open networks than it does anything about the source).

The _only_ thing open source ensures is that everyone has access to the source code. No guarantee it is well written, understandable, useful, or correct. With that said I'm not sure that everyone having access to the source code is all that important for government. No more so than the recipe for all foods we eat be available to everyone. It would be nice, but an audit trail (ie., the government has access to all source code, but not every guy on the stret) can probably gets you 99% of the value and doesn't bias against any vendors.

Scary idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Some good examples are IBM's JT400 toolkit (jt400.sourceforge.net), Java and Firefox of course, and some examples like the jtds driver that outperforms Microsoft's own. (jtds.sourceforge.net) Some may argue that OpenOffice is superior to program for as well.

Lets not forget the Knoppix cds that are used specifically for tightening network security.

If the government gets more on-board it will be a great contribution at least for motivation behind Linux. We'd also see some inevitable contributions as they assign their resources to projects like Wine for interoperability, Pidgin for communication, Nagios for enterprise monitoring and starts exploring Lotus or enterprise groupware apps for Linux.

The scary thing would be the amount of potential leverage it could give FOSS for stuff like patent suits. It could actually make the government bias in the opposite direction!

-Tres

and all will be revealed

[jcgam69]

Just ask Biden for the open source web site number.

Re:and all will be revealed

[MichaelSmith]

But don't real hackers use IP addresses?

Well, it's not PRO-capitalism, that's for sure

[Anonymous Coward]

"Capitalism is an economic system in which wealth, and the means of producing wealth, are privately owned and controlled rather than commonly, publicly, or state-owned and controlled." -- Wikipedia, and of course you might not trust that. But capitalism is about private ownership of property. Open source is about collective ownership.

Re:Well, it's not PRO-capitalism, that's for sure

[QuasiEvil]

Or it's at least counter-intuitively capitalist...

The conventional, straight-forward capitalist thinking is to tightly control access to the resource (software) to create scarcity, and thus control the price. He does this for his own profit, as well as to cover his costs (capitalist programmers, overhead, etc).

The open source capitalist realizes that economic theory dictates that prices of software will trend towards zero, as there are very few barriers to entering the market. Any reasonably trained goon can write software (not necessarily good software, but something that gets the job done). The open source thinkers are searching elsewhere for markets with higher barriers to entry, such as support, customization, integration, etc. - things where the cost of entry is a fair amount of background knowledge and experience.

Re:Well, it's not PRO-capitalism, that's for sure

[Eternauta3k]

I'm not sure intellectual property fits in that definition. However, giving away stuff that could be sold doesn't seem capitalist to me. Which is far from scary.

Re:Well, it's not PRO-capitalism, that's for sure

[TheRaven64]

In that case, corporations with shareholders are anti-capitalist too.

Re:Well, it's not PRO-capitalism, that's for sure

[rohan972]

But capitalism is about private ownership of property. Open source is about collective ownership.

Not the way I see it. Open source is about the end-users control of their software. I can modify it, redistribute it, whatever I want really, just like any other product in a capitalist economy. What I can't do is prevent other people from modifying and redistributing their copy, preventing them from enjoying capitalism. Proprietary software is capitalism for a few, FOSS is capitalism for many. In a capitalist economy where price is determined by supply and demand, infinitely copyable goods such as software approach zero in price, which is exactly what we see with Free software now. It is a restoration of capitalism, not it's destruction.

That said, I don't really see FOSS as capitalist idea vs communist idea. When you have some pretty hard right leaning individuals and hard left leaning individuals proclaiming the benefits of FOSS, maybe we need to accept that FOSS is workable regardless of your ideology. It's not inherently left or right, but good and effective. I remember reading about Israelis and Arabs working together on fonts or character sets or something. It's worth thinking about.

Re:Well, it's not PRO-capitalism, that's for sure

[SimonInOz]

>> Any reasonably trained goon can write software (not necessarily good software, but something that gets the job done)

Er, not in my experience.
How many times have you watched a room full of software developers produce ... nothing? Ok, so perhaps you are not a developer, maybe you haven't.

But I have. Countless times.

Writing software is hard. Writing good software is really, really hard.

Having "anybody" write software has been tried again and again ... FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC, Visual Basic ... all were attempts at making software writing accessible to "the masses".
And the results - not so great, really.

To write software that solve problems of any complexity requires discipline, knowledge and ability. Not resources in common supply, sadly.

And "reasonable training" for a "goon" is not going to change things.

Re:Well, it's not PRO-capitalism, that's for sure

[falconwolf]

The conventional, straight-forward capitalist thinking is to tightly control access to the resource (software) to create scarcity, and thus control the price. He does this for his own profit, as well as to cover his costs (capitalist programmers, overhead, etc).

The conventional but not the original capitalism. Originally capitalism and free markets or trade was about voluntary exchanges. Where there was scarcity capitalism would route around it by creating something that had an equivalent utility.

Falcon

Re:Oh, terrific

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, Lord Tebbit once said to me:

Who're you?

Anti-capitalist? Sure, why not.

[the white plague]

open-source development project ... during which a federal official said "that open source was anti-capitalist."

OSS is anti-capitalist if when you say 'capitalist' you really mean 'Plutocracy'.

Re:Anti-capitalist? Sure, why not.

[Tranzistors]

-isms have nothing to do with -cracies.

And if we believe Wikipedia,

Capitalism is an economic system in which wealth, and the means of producing wealth, are privately owned and controlled rather than commonly, publicly, or state-owned and controlled.

free software is very anti-capitalist.

What I don't get is - why is capitalist paradigm defended with such frenzy. Does it mean it is not natural for people to believe it?

Re:Anti-capitalist? Sure, why not.

[JAlexoi]

Problem is that most people in USofA identify:
- communism = autocracy
- capitalism = democracy
So even though it's totally incorrect, from the GP's point of view it is correct to compare the two.

Re:Anti-capitalist? Sure, why not.

[Anonymous Coward]

OSS is anti-capitalist if when you say 'capitalist' you really mean 'Fascism'.

There, fixed it for ya!

"Anti-capitalist"

[Anonymous Coward]

In 15 years' time, it will be "don't terrorists use open source?"

Re:In today's world...

[AmericanGladiator]

I agree with you in part. Lawyers and software should almost never cross paths. The tag Imaginary Property on Slashdot always makes me smile.

You should read "The Millionaire Next Door". It is a study of high net-worth Americans. One of the shockers is that a majority of them were self-made. I have to prefer a system that is dynamic and allows people to rise and fall based on their own work ethic and risk-taking.

The current economic problems all stem from risk being pushed into the banking system. If banks had to service the loans they originated (this is one major cause of today's problems), we wouldn't be in this mess. They were more than happy to originate "liar loans" because they weren't the ones having to collect the monthly payments. It all became collateralized and the whole system then bore the risks.

Capitalism and risk-taking are good, as long as you are the one bearing the consequence and potentially reaping the rewards for the risk.

Yeah let's put HaikuOS and AROS in the White House

[Orion Blastar]

Let us see if the federal government can work on a 100% open source software solution using real open source operating systems and software applications.

Open source is not Communism, Open Source is freedom and Democracy as our founding fathers saw it. One can be free to choose any OS or software they want and still get work done, and not be tied down to just one vendor.

Push Open Source? It should read more like "Support Open Source" so we don't get confused with Microsoft pushing Windows on us all.

Open-Source as the savior of public interests

[Anonymous Coward]

Really I can't see why someone working in politics would refuse open-source. It's like made for that kind of employment. It's free and easy to modify. Goverments, schools, public libraries, etc. would have a single one time development of the software needed, WORLDWIDE and could share their development costs and have an end product that is totally free for use and fits every need they have for decades!
It's simply madness not to use this potential, as a politician one should have the good of all in mind and oss cuts back costs and delievers a safe environments for decades if not forever.

Re:Oh, terrific

[Anonymous Coward]

The meaning of the quote has to do not with the number of enemies, but the type of people who are enemies. The troll is, well, a troll. I'd be glad to count him as an enemy too.

Man... Scott McNeally

[alexborges]

Okay, the guy deserves respect, so here it is: R E S P E C T for Scott, a true father of the net, a civil libertarian.

THere, now onto the matter at hand: why the fuck would McNeally get Obama's ear on open source if he isnt really a guy behind the community or that wants ANYTHING ELSE than a better-doing Sun Microsystems?

My point is that I would be happyest if some LINUX company would lead that kind of lobby effort and not some guy that only wants his company to come back from the dead.

I smell treachery.

Re:Man... Scott McNeally

[ultrabot]

My point is that I would be happyest if some LINUX company would lead that kind of lobby effort and not some guy that only wants his company to come back from the dead.

I smell treachery.

Huh? Widespread use of open technologies benefits Sun, and the open source community. It's not like Sun's self-interest in this wasn't obvious, but as long as we are sharing the same interests, it's all good.

Who needs open source?

[daem0n1x]

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services?

Who needs open source when you have MUMPS?

Open source and even free software is very capital

[Jessta]

during which a federal official said "that open source was anti-capitalist."

I always find it strange that people come to that conclusion, it's a very narrow view of capitalism.
Open source and even free software is very capitalist. Capitalism is about an evolving market that is based on competition, open source software allows for a huge amount of competition because it's very easy to get in to the market.

Building a modern operating system requires a lot of resources, thus only a select few large companies have the resources to build one.
But there is a wide variety of things within the development and support of software where companies could compete.

eg. support contracts, patch timeframes, deployment and custom configuration etc.

Development of the software in the first place is a very small piece of that pie and without the source code and the ability to modify and distribute it only one company gets to compete in that huge market, which is very bad for the consumer.

- Jesse McNelis

It's not a matter of capitalism vs. communism

[deanston]

... or idealists vs. realists... all these simple categories are already out-dated. The old scams are failing us left and right, whether they are from the Left or Right. Nobody has figured out the right FOSS business model yet. We need some fresh ideas or at least the Next Bubble.

One thing's for sure, when all the cyber attacks are coming from countries shielded behind custom Unix/Linux variants, the Feds will have no choice but to recruit similar skills to protect the government and consumer systems in the West.

Better summation: Love doesn't scale

[SuperKendall]

Full credit to Eric S. Raymond.

However, just having such a system does not prevent humans from striving for the benefits of cooperation and community strength. Co-ops, condominiums, small towns, and civic centers are just a few examples of ideas which obtain their strength from the community rather than the individual.

Related to the quote above, you'll notice that all those things are examples of smallish groups of people acting together. Those ideas often work great on a local scale.

The moment you step outside the scope where you can easily remember the names of everyone involved, inherently we start to care less about those than the ones we know, and prefer. Which is why socialism simply doesn't work for governments, even if intentions are good.

Re:Oh, terrific

[binarylarry]

Whats funny is that you completely misunderstand what the quote means.

ROFL!

Coming from a public servant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't working for the government, ergo a public servant serving those without profiting, be anti-capitalist?

Personally?

[SuperKendall]

Lord Tebbit once said this to me:

Right, "Lord Tebbit" came and spoke to you personally.

Just as you judge your "enemies" by cherry-picked badly worded commentary you disagree with, I choose to judge Obama by supporters who live about as many planes away from reality away as the buttons in the Magic Moving Room will take them.

I don't consider you an "enemy" by the way, just sadly delusional and not really noticing the cold water of reality swirling around your ankles. Once you wake up we can start the true bailing, rather than opening all the faucets and hoping the water goes the other way.

Yet another case of government getting in the way

[MobyDisk]

Already today there have been two other stories today about people wanting government or adminsitrators to override technical decisions about what software to use. Seems like I get modded troll every time, but I'll keep saying it. Let the techies choose technology, not the bureaucrats. It's like people want the government out of their way, unless the government is doing what they want. I'd love to see open source everywhere, but I'm not calling someone 500 people up the decision-making chain and telling them to make the decision. I'll advocate open source by writing it, using it, and recommending it to my boss. That's where it should stay. Keep the geeks out of politics.

But Open Source is Communism

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the same nonsense that always gets repeated on slashdot, and moderated "Insightful" for God only knows what reason (and He isn't telling us).

If someone decides to become a murderer, you lock them up or kill them. Communists do it. Capitalists do it. Everyone does it. If there really were a system that assumed everyone was good, it would have no way of dealing with murderers. Such a system could not exist.

Capitalists fear open source because it's Communist. It has Communist ideals and seeks to undermine Capitalist systems. But there is nothing wrong with being Communist. Sometimes Communism really works, as in Open Source. Why do people assume that Capitalism and Communism must exist in exclusion of one another? Let's take the best that both ideas have to offer and work from there.

(no) Re:Anti-capitalist?

[Anonymous Coward]

The most cost effective solution should win.

Perhaps you could compare Firefox, MSIE and others:

How much money/resources does Firefox cost to maintain and enhance? What is the result?
How much money/resources does MSIE cost to maintain and enhance? What is the result?

The result of Firefox is a browser that is freely available. The browser itself is the most significant capital here.

Claiming that Firefox is anti-capitalist is similar to saying "iced-tea" is anti-capitalist, where "Pepsi" is capitalist.

MS choices to compete with Firefox would be:
  - add more development resources to compete with the worldwide development resources of Firefox.
  - give up, adopt Firefox or similar. Try to invent something new.
  - try to get the government to ban open source and the internet.

This is a vendor's current strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

"... a federal official said 'that open source was anti-capitalist."

You should know that a certain vendor is actively, actively pushing this position as we speak. I recently witnessed a high-level official from this not-too-open-source-friendly vendor try to push that perspective in a private meeting with government officials, that they should not use open source because open source will crash our whole economy.

You and I may call it FUD, but I've seen it in action (made me want to puke) and they call it "lobbying." The media says this vendor is "cozying up to open source"? Yeah, riiiighhhttt.

Re:Oh, terrific

[Anonymous Coward]

parent is right, it's about the quality of enemies ... as in it's better to have intelligent enemies than stupid ones.

Re:Oh, terrific

[binarylarry]

That's correct... except you obviously did not read the OP.

Unless you consider that an intelligent post.

Re:Open source and even free software is very capi

[stephanruby]

Open source and even free software is very capitalist.

Also, if it weren't for second sourcing, a "possible" cousin of open source, the PC revolution would never have happened in the accelerated way that it did. It was the Federal government's defense requirement to have a "second source" for every defense supplier -- that made Intel share all its expertise and advances with AMD (not to mention a host of other companies). Requiring to have a second competing supplier, it really doesn't get more capitalistic than that.

And it's only recently that capitalism has been redefined as handing out no-bid contracts to your friends, and that Medicare Purchasing has been prevented from using its larger size to negotiate better supplier contracts for itself.

Not gonna happen

[symbolset]

The President is appointing the legal staff of the BSA and RIAA to the top law enforcement positions in the land, and the MPAA has initiated the revolving door maneuver with Assistant Attorney General John Malcolm. It seems to me that the more things change the more they remain the same. What we've done is change who our government is sold out to.

Apparently with the change of administrations imaginary property has become the new military industrial complex because of a focus shift from foreign to domestic policy, in accordance with the party predilection. We're pulling out of wars with other people and engaging ourselves. Next step: disarm the victim. Yay! I can't wait to see how this turns out. I would rather we engaged foreign people if we have to fight at all, but my true preference would be to relax and let stuff sort itself out.

The headline might as well read "Sun's McNealy wishes for invisible pink unicorn."

You 'ists and your 'isms

[symbolset]

With about a million years of human history we've proven that the one social system that scales is tyranny. Good luck with your feeble "experiments," noble and otherwise. You'll find they devolve into tyranny no matter what you do.

But if you're not interested in the social experiment the answer is simple: get yours and reproduce as fast as you can. Ultimately Darwin wins out even over tyranny.

<sigh> I wish it were not so.

The difference

[Sycraft-fu]

Is the difference between theory and reality. Communism is the ideal system in theory. If we had an ideal world, where nobody was selfish, nobody was greedy, communism would be great and indeed we'd probably tend towards it automatically. I mean wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone just did what they were good at doing, to the best of their ability, and everyone just took what they needed, no more? What a wonderful idea...

However like many wonderful ideas, it has no basis in reality. Humans ARE selfish and greedy. Not only that, humans are also lazy. Communism would only work if everyone was hard working. However if you let someone get the same reward for busting their ass as they do for sitting around and doing nothing, well many are going to choose nothing. Thus it doesn't work in the real world and we see the countries that have tried and failed miserably.

Many self proclaimed communists will whine about how it has never been truly done. They are right about that, none of the communist countries ever were that ideal. What they miss is that is because they can't be, because people aren't ideal individuals that would make that work.

Capitalism deals with real humans. It accepts the fact that humans are lazy and greedy and uses one to overcome the other. You want more stuff? Ok, you can have it if you work harder. You don't work, you can't have anything. It uses greed to overcome laziness.

So maybe it would be more accurate to call communism the "idealistic" for of society. It's great in theory, sound great on paper, until you actually consider that it is real, lazy, greedy, selfish, humans that you have to deal with. At that point, it all goes to shit. So as "ideal" as it may be, it doesn't matter because it won't work in the real world. Whenever you are talking about solutions to human problems, you have to be pragmatic about it. You can't start proposing solutions that require fundamental human nature to change because it won't. You have to deal with humans as they are, and figure out the best way to manage that.

Re:The difference

[Dolda2000]

You are quite right in your point that "communism cannot work, since it does not deal with humans", but that is about as far as I'd be willing to agree with you.

To begin with, communism is not the ideal form of society either in practice nor in theory nor anywhere else. It is the product of a man who rejected all forms of rational thinking (you do know that Marx used Hegelian dialectics to derive communism, right?). You assert that in an ideal world, noone would be selfish, but as I have described elsewhere, a society of such beings cannot work to begin with; if noone were indeed selfish, there would be no self-interest to satisfy even by others, and noone would be happy to get work done for them, since they would not benefit from it. Selfishness, on the other hand, is what drives people (and thus, indirectly, society) forward, as I described in the post you replied to. The world of which you speak, where people are completely selfless but even so derive benefit from doing things is not only not the ideal world, it is a contradiction in terms.

Second, you describe capitalism as a system that "deals with real humans", which is a notion that I reject, and which is why capitalism and communism are not "alternatives" or "rival theories" as is often claimed. Communism, and many other theories like it, are indeed designed systems that are supposed to be applied to society. Capitalism, on the other hand, is not such a system; it was "designed" by noone, but grew by itself as a natural consequence of a society of free men. Certainly, it can be treated as a system, and there have indeed been many treaties written on it, but the difference is that capitalistic economics is a science that observes and predicts reality (as best observed in Austrian economics, as far as I've been able to tell), whereas communism is an edict, pushed onto a society.

You may want to read Common Sense by Thomas Paine, which explains quite well why we have government at all, and why government and society are two completely different things.

Re:Open source and even free software is very capi

[mathfeel]

Development of the software in the first place is a very small piece of that pie and without the source code and the ability to modify and distribute it only one company gets to compete in that huge market, which is very bad for the consumer.

Yes, where in capitalism does it say consumers necessarily benefit? It is usually a fortunate byproduct in the long run with competition, but in the short run (could be decades) with new technology, Capitalism makes damn sure that capitalists won first.

VP spec is "full retard"

[symbolset]

Nice save, not. He did a Palin maneuver. Give it up. It's OK. He's the vice president. It's an indoor job with no heavy lifting . At least he waited until after the election.

The mission of VP is to appear so completely stupid or insane that noone in their right mind would seek your elevation to Commander in Chief. He's doing fine converting his image from platform bulwark to insurance policy.

Should the unfortunate occur though, I would look first at the American business interests (MPAA, RIAA, BSA) who stand to gain from his ascension.

Just like old times

[ClosedSource]

It's nice to see Scott McNealy going back to what he does best: obsess over Bill Gates and MS. I'm sure it will be as effective for the government as it was for Sun.

Re:Stupid Karma Whores, Stupider Mods

[kaffiene]

Christ, you get modded flamebait for that. What a load of shit. You hit the nail on the head.

Re:Oh, terrific

[Anonymous Coward]

I was agreeing with you... -_-

The UK ?????

[Anonymous Coward]

> similar to what has been done in Denmark, the UK, and other countries

Huh ? I've worked for the UK government at various points in the last decade and often proposed using open source solutions. There was no chance. The official position is that it cannot be used as it is "not supported" and "too risky".

For the most part software can't even be written "in house" (without loads of fighting) An inferior product, which doesn't do the job properly, has to be bought "off the shelf" after which it is kludged into some sort of working shape - no matter how bad a fit or how disruptive this is. People then have to adapt themselves by finding work rounds to the horribly botched system.

Honestly the UK government hasn't got the first clue about open source. Not the first clue. It's almost regarded as some sort of virus.

Even suggesting setting up something as simple as an Ubuntu server to run a WIKI has management almost literally soiling themselves with fear.

A Better Headline...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Scott McNealy says something that he doesn't even believe, but it has Obama's name in it so America will pay attention and maybe think he still matters."

The simplest, most effective strategy

[Rambo Tribble]

After a number of years working with government procurement agencies, I have learned the easiest way to generate overwhelming demand for a product or service in the government market; simply tell the government employees that the product/service is "too good for you". Overnight the legions of public sector desktops and servers would be changed over, should this strategy be applied to Linux.

Its anti-monopolist

[bokmann]

This won't be news to the slashdot crowd, but can be a useful thought to stick in someone's head when/if you hear them have that "anti-capitalist" attitude.

"Open source isn't anti-capitalist, it is anti-monopolist, but I can understand how big companies marketing efforts have made it easy to confuse the two. I can show you hundreds upon hundreds of commerical companies from (1-2 person shops to hundreds of employees) making money with open source software, and I can show you conferences and training events that generate millions of dollars of revenue, all based on open-source software. Food is a great analogy - even though recipes are freely available and you can grow your own, restaurants still make a lot of money cooking and serving food. Source code is just a recipe - it does nothing until a professional 'prepares and serves' it for you."

Yes, the analogies are tortured, but can bring someone who believes the first statement closer to the truth. Learn to parrot that back without a religious-sealot-like gleem in your eye, and you can help persuade the world.

Re:Oh, terrific

[binarylarry]

Oh, lol. My bad! :)

McNealy should start by looking in a mirror, first

[tmp31416]

Considering how badly Sun is handling OpenOffice & MySQL (and any other FLOSS projects they might be involved with), they should start by trying to *truly* understand what FLOSS is and how be be good citizens of the FLOSS "universe" before they do anything else. I mean, ensuring OO code is purposely obfuscated and almost discouraging external help on the project?

They make Apple, IBM and even Intel look very good as FLOSS developers/contributors.

The security angle

[Fr33thot]

The US government and to a larger extent the military has been trending toward IT security in a large way these past few years. Getting Windows to stay secure between patches and upgrades has always been a huge nightmare--and before you start I'm not trying to assert it would be easier with [insert your favorite distro here].

If government were to set-up an agency whose charter were to maintain a standard government server and desktop OS and the software it would run then they could have more control over security. Obviously they couldn't do this unless they started with an open source OS such as Linux or BSD.

This certainly wouldn't be a Utopian approach--there would be tons of hurdles for everyone involved--but it would be better than the government assisting in building a corporate monopoly.

Re:Oh, terrific

[Tubal-Cain]

You're thinking of Donald Knuth. The rest of the quote is:

How did you get in my house?

Re:Oh, terrific

[jonaskoelker]

Send 2 tea bags to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on April 15th.

He'll just dump it in the harbor :-)

Re:Yet another case of government getting in the w

[ultrabot]

Let the techies choose technology, not the bureaucrats.

The bureaucrats and managers almost always make the major strategic technical decisions. And that's the way it's supposed to be, since they are accountable for the money spent now and in the future.

Government is using taxpayer money, which makes the issue even more important. Incompetent techies can easily overspend, merely on grounds of being familiar with some technology or attending a corruption lunch.

Re:Open source and even free software is very capi

[gronofer]

Free software is surely capital in an economic sense, but from a capitalist point of view it may seem worthless. It can't be traded and there's rarely any profit in creating it.

The one you call Mcnealy

[skeeto]

I don't remember the website number, though.

Then just produce the one you call Mcnealy!

Are you a doctor? A policeman? A rubbish collector

[jotaeleemeese]

There you have it. You would not have all the resources necessary to provide for all your needs.

That is why societies formed in the first place: the bigger and more organized a group of individuals was, the better chances of prosperity and survival for all its members.

What you seem to forget is that no human is an island, there is such a thing as society, irrespective of what Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher said.

Funnily enough ....

[jotaeleemeese]

... Sun's hard times started when they made peace with MS....

Official position in UK changed last week.

[jotaeleemeese]

Check this website for the article....

Re:Are you a doctor? A policeman? A rubbish collec

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, before you post your half-baked drivel, it might help if you at least take a look at the other posts in the thread, which answer exactly the points that you made again.

Re:Yet another case of government getting in the w

[MobyDisk]

The bureaucrats and managers almost always make the major strategic technical decisions.

Which piece of software to use is not a strategic decision. And if they did make such a decision, they should do so based on the recommendations of their technical people. The issue here is that they are making the decisions based on politics, not technology.

We have seen this time and time again on Slashdot, government should not try to legislate technology. (And we shouldn't let them try, just because we think they will do what we want.)