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Are Bad Economic Times Good for Free Software?
Dog's_Breakfast writes "In a declining economy, software licenses become a luxury. Linux and the BSDs offer free alternatives. As the USA toys with the possibility of defaulting on its national debt (and thus risking economic collapse), the author wonders if this might not, at last, lead to 'The Year of the Linux Desktop.'"
I'd argue against that because most people do not save money. They spend everything they have. If they save $50 on an image editor, that money doesn't go in the bank... It goes to buy something else.
It doesn't restrict the flow or money at all... It only changes which company gets it.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
That's the most broken windows thinking I've seen in a while.
I would argue though that it can be bad for the US economy, as software is a pretty big export.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
getting money to move from the average consumer is what's needed to drive an economy.
And you know what would do that? Burn their houses down. Anyone objects is basically a traitor to our glorious economy.
Insofar as software licenses are economically efficient and the proceeds of license sales fall upon as many people as possible you could be right. But if software licenses simply impose economic rent and the lions share of the revenues accrue to a few large corporations, which proceed to put the money in their checking account, its not so clear.
Open-source can also stimulate economic activity through sales of support contracts, new equipment, etc. What a recession does is it keeps people where they are, regardless of the sort of license they have -- they know what they have, they don't want to spend money learning something new, and the license they bought two years ago is still just as good today as it was when they were rich.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
In the midst of an economic crisis the more expensive Mac platform enjoys a sharp increase in market share. I'd say the proposition is false, price is not the primary driver of operating system selection.
Perhaps FOSS apps have some advantage but Mac OS X is unix based so many run as well on Mac as they do under Linux. Some FOSS apps also have windows ports. So there does not seem to be a real economic driver for Linux on the desktop via FOSS apps either.
Moving money around as a way to grow the economy is overrated. The best way to grow is to actually produce something useful.
Do we need to carry on that "risk of default"-bullshit? The US never were in any economical risk of default, given their top credit rating. Debt/GDP ratio has been worse in history and is worse in countries working just fine right now. The only risk ever was from the obstruction tactics of the tea party - and even if they kept it up, it would not have lead to a default in the strict sense. It might still lead to a downgrading of credit rating, as they amply demonstrated that a significantly influential group of the US political system can't be expected to act as adults these days - which scares off potential sources of credit.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
People not spending money on commercial software doesn't mean that money just up and dissapears from the economy. Those people use that money for daily life necessities like food, utilities and transorrtation so the money goes back into the system but is taken throuhg a different industry.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Open-source can also stimulate economic activity through sales of support contracts, new equipment, etc. What a recession does is it keeps people where they are, regardless of the sort of license they have -- they know what they have, they don't want to spend money learning something new, and the license they bought two years ago is still just as good today as it was when they were rich.
Open Source actually stimulates economic activity inherently - it makes people more productive. If people are using open source software, it (in most cases) is doing something that they want done, thus freeing up their time for other pursuits, or allowing them to be more productive in the same amount of time.
Free Software effect on the economy isn't that straight forward. What you loose in money flow you gain in your business ability to grow, and expand.
What free software did do, is make it hard for Software Companies to product new Software. Not all software business models work on the RMS Approved way of making money with Free Software. If your product is easy to use yet powerful, consulting services is out of the question, If your product is small in size, charging for shipping and material doesn't work as well. Some software business will work best if they focus on building the software and someone pays money for the right to use it. But the problem with free software alternatives is that these companies will need come up with a huge advantage over the alternative for it to succeed.
But as I said before that is too simplistic of a view... Because such software companies can alter their program to be one of those newfangled "Cloud" programs where people will just pay for the rights to use it, with using existing free software they can do this much more quickly.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Exactly. The only ones who directly benefit from a higher "velocity of money" are the tax-collectors, as taxes are imposed whenever money changes hands regardless of whether the exchange is productive. Everyone else benefits most from saving their money until they can make a productive trade, not from compulsively spending it as quickly as possible.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Absolutely.
When the economy collapses, the first thing everyone will do is run out to become a computer expert so they can install and run linux. Corporations will replace their entire IT staff with people who know linux, and the average person on the street will suddenly realize that what they really need to do to cope with a failed economy is LEARN A NEW OPERATING SYSTEM!
Or, you know, people might just keep using what they're using while they hope things get better. Because that will leave them time to work enough jobs to buy food.
So, Google would have used SunOS, and MS Windows Server licenses, to run the servers they salvaged from the junkyard.
I believe they could have acheived the same computing power growth, at thousands of dollars per server, when starting the company.
And it's not like companies like GOOG do generate any (direct and indirect) economic activity.
I would argue, that as opposed to going into a bank account, money saved by most consumers is going into debt payoff. I know in my family (and several of my friends/kids' school families) this is the case. Skimped expenses are being used to build some infrastructure (home repairs, improvements, a garden, etc.) and the rest is being sent in to creditors.
I am very rusty on my econ 101, but IIRC (likely not) debt paydown is not considered savings (though has a similar result on the overall balance sheet).
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Just in case people don't get the reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Wasn't there a guy just recently that "robbed" a bank of $20 and waited for the cops or something?
-nB
I think you mean this guy. He robbed the bank for $1 and surrendered, in order to get free health care in prison.
Jokes aside, the idea that robbing banks can help the economy sounds suspiciously like the broken window fallacy.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Fanboys like to brag about 10% marketshare and they have a platform that was fully formed 7 years before the first line of the Linux kernel was written. Apple also effectively had a 10 year head start on Microsoft in terms of ease of use technology. Apple was competing against MS-DOS with a far better system.
"fracturing" has nothing to do with anything. PCs and Android phones are a great counterexample.
Market success is about marketing success. You have superbowl ads, effective TV ads, and your own stores.
Despite all of this, the best that Apple fanboys can brag about is finally breaking the 10% mark and how it's been 20 years coming.
Torpedoed by what Microsoft had to offer in 1991...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Actually, this depends heavily on the political climate. In most countries, there was a time of two or three decades after the Second World War when wealth flowed downwards overall. It was a slow movement to be sure, but when you look at indicators like inequality, or the share of national income that goes towards wages (as opposed to rents) the trend was clearly in favor of the "small guy".
Then the politics changed, and for the last few decades we have seen the same movement but in reverse.
What this boils down to is that there is nothing inevitable about a flow upward. It comes down to political choice - though one thing that I would agree with is that a government that does not enforce strong regulations tends to favor flows that go upwards.
And it's not like companies like GOOG do generate any (direct and indirect) economic activity.
Do you remember what it was like trying to search for anything before Google? Everything else was useless by comparison. Let us not take for granted how easy Google made it to locate useful and relevant information quickly. Sure, they are now essentially an advertising company, but their positive effect on the productivity of hundreds of millions of people has been huge.
(Said the guy surfing Slashdot).
You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house.
I'd argue that people do not save money because there is no point in saving something that is constantly being debased and inflated and devalued.
Definition of money is store of value, unit of account and medium of exchange. They removed one important aspect of it: store of value with fiat that is backed by nothing, thus people do not save.
I know I don't save fiat, I spend it immediately and to store value I buy metals and mining stocks, which from my POV counts as savings (for metals) and investment (for stocks).
People do have savings when money is not being destroyed by the government. Savings are what makes credit possible.
Credit is not supposed to come out of thin air and printing presses. Eventually somebody must produce something and have the value of that production stored and not spent, which then makes this value transferable and available as credit for for investment.
So from my POV, having a product that is of low cost or even, as in case with free/Free software can be had without cost of any license is a good thing, as it allows building up more savings, which can be used for investment, which is the only legitimate way to improve the economy.
You can't handle the truth.