It doesn't matter how much time it takes you to own certain thing. It's 100% irrelevant. Granted, you work hard, and they pay you in a generic way *dolars* because you produced something of value to other individuals, and that money entitles you to draw something from the global pool of offerings that other people's work create.
In fact, you're exchanging your time for some other guys time (except the lucky bastards that live out of rents). That's the basis of any trade economy with money as the common denominator, and it's certainly not novel. Magically measuring wages in terms of time will not change anything, though it might be a nice visualization, just as measing wages in terms of food/shelter/etc. You could also measure time against freedom. For example, the "personal freedom" ramson imposed on you may be (this depends on the subjects personal opinion) say us$ 200.000. Once you reach that amount, you are free at 5% interest rates. Because you earn about us$900 a month (and can live like a champion in many countries, without having to please any boss or doing anything other than what you want to, not what others want for you).
So, it doesn't matter how you visualize the issue. Time is not a measure of how much harm someone has done to you, "x" money is the metter of for all applicable laws.
Unless you own your shelter (home), there is no guarantee that you'll have shelter tomorrow.
But not everyone has shelter, so your solution is not working either. Could someone else live in your house? Yes. Would you die if that happened? No. What that other guy fullfill one of his "most immediate needs" this way? Yes. Will you/(I) allow that to happen? No.
So in the end, we like it because we have shelter, and things to care. But it's not inherent in any way. I'd say the only inherent things is that the human race must share earth to accomodate everyone. After all, it has been given to us all, not to some of us. As new generations are born, they have the same inherent rights to claim ownership a their share of stuff. But we'll negate that right. What if some past generations claimed all the land (say the Romans)? Well, we'd not agree on their "right" to own what they claim, and make war.
In brief, your property excludes everyone else's rights to use that piece of earth (be it land, a good). But stuff is limited on earth, it's scarce. So in fact, your right takes away someone else right (that may be a fair inherent right). In the end, you end up some people agreeing on how this fare share works, and that works in favour of the people that have more power. Untill they are overthrown and some other policy is implemented. Property rights will always be needed and abused... that's how things get when you have something that is scarce and usefull...
Yes, and property should go to the ones willing to put those resources to good use. Show me a concrete plan to mine an asteroid (ie: ship designs, facilities, lots of cash, astronauts, and a feasible medium term plan) and we (the human race) may give that company/nation the right to conditioanly own said asteroid if colonization/mining is sucessfull.
In any case, we shouldn't even need this, as the asteroid is, but nature, the property of however is mining it. If these guys could send a miner ship, they have thouthands of asteroids to choose from and NOBODY is going to prevent them from doing so. That's how countries get colonized, you just get there, and with time, the property is yours.
Private property can also lead to very bad solutions when assigning new lad. That's why Brasil/Argentina and many other poor countries failed (granted the land for free to big landlords) as opposed to the way it was split in the US. Private property must go to the people that will make the best use of that property, not to "anyone, quickly! have this land". Landgrabbing zealots set many countries fortunes, because grabbers only interest was to sell it for a profit, but poor workers where not allowed to buy, only to rent, so development did not took place for decades.
You don't have to install anything, you only need to way 10 minutes, and be done. On the other hand, on Windows you need to:
QT Movies: go to a website, and start a download, look at the instructions on how to install quicktime. AVI: hope for the best if you are not using newer versions of windows, or start downloading stuff. DVD: buy a decent DVD player like WinDVD, etc. XLS: shell out +$200, wait for a CDROM to arrive, and go through a lenghty and somewhat slow install process (compared to just installing OpenOffice binaries as in "emerge openoffice".
I would't say it's that much easier. What I will grant you, is that Windows has some really great programs that you WILL miss if you switch to other OS. And you lose official support for may things (say Gaim is not MS, nor AOL supported. But I better like using Gaim and not 2/3 instant messengers). You lose some features, and gain others. But you really need to learn about the system if you really want to be productive with Linux as a non-simple-user. It has a lot of powerfull tools that go unnoticed by usual MS users, as I once was).
IBM, Sharp, Google and many other disagree with you. I guess you know better than them. If something is of value or not does not depend on the price tag you charge, but on the fact that that good/service allows other compaanies/individuals to provide more efficient services and higher profits.
IE has a price: you must buy Windows to have it, and must buy it regularly. You can't even install IE4 on Windows 95 if you ever wanted to (and no, it's not because it can't be done, if you install Office 2000 on Windows 95, you get IE 4. It's a real life example).
If it weren't for other companies helping in the developement of free alternatives, you'll see Microsoft abusing it's position to get money from you. Well, they already do that.
So no, I couldn't agree less with you. Microsoft has been using this bundle tactic to take money away from people, and generating monopolies that WILL be abused (and had been abused) when the time comes. And the consumer will be (was not) happy when this happened.
The other thing you are reffering to, calling dumping something is not, is also sad, and it's what economists don't like. It happens when some people figure out they can't produce efficiently, and in the name of competition, for all consumers to buy things at a higher price than the economy can produce them. And not only consumers buy these protected stuff, other bussiness do as well usually, thus making them a little more unefficient by transitivity, in a never ending chain of selfdestruction.
Last thing to note is that the US is not a free trade country. They speak about free, but anyone who has actually tryed to export anything there, knows it's all "gratious" speech.
Any first year economics student can explain precisely why dumping is good for the economy that is being dumped into in essentially every real world situation[1]
If it's a goods market, and some country has big pockets and you don't, and are being dumped, your companies in the dumped industries will collapse. It doesn't need to be a country vs country situation, it could be country vs company, company vs country. The thing to take note of is: is the other competitior really dumping, or does he has really lower costs? If it's the first, it's obvious that you will be worst that before. If it's the latter, you may stil be worst than before. Examples:
You produce wheat on a small country, and some other country, which has tons (figurative) weat start selling well below cost of production for 2 years, at a price that does not affect their global profitability. When your companies resources are drained they are either forced to sell they assest (land, machines, etc). You buy them (nobody want to enter a non-market), and then start selling wheat at a monopoly price.
They poor little country lost jobs, and now can buy less wheat with the same money, as they must pay a monopoly price. Even worst, now their basic need, wheat, depends on some other country exclusively.
Now, software is a very different beast, as it carries no cost of production at all.
First and foremost, software is different in the sense that you can never sell below cost of production. Cost of production (cp/good/good2) is $0. So they don't have that argument. On the other hand, selling cars for $0 means you are losing all the manufacturing costs, and forcing your competitors not to sell. Both are losing money, and they can try to prove your only goal is to destroy them so that you can afterwards sell at monopoly price.
Second difference is that the software itself may not be what makes you profit. So if you sell hardware and provide the software for free, or just sell sevices based on that software, and you have a revenue model, they'll have a hard time arguing you are dumping the market. You have a better revenue model. If any court in any country rules against better business practices and more efficient competition and production, they will be doomed.
Third difference is that making software is not business per se. I could create software because I like to code, and they can't restrain me from doing so. Like they can't restrain me for writing. What's next? Suing phorum posters because people read things for free on the net and not buying printed books or magazines?
The rules of the economy are changed when you start to deal incresingly with stuff that has no cost of reproduction. There's a deman, but the offer curve is vertical (infinite slope) and if the thing is free, the offer is willing to provide infinite amount of the "service" at the zero axis. Take any demand curve, and you'll end up with no market. So the only way to make a sucessfull sofware market is to provide what's not free. Alas, you either provide something that has really better quality (or that has no free alternative) than the free version, or you are doomed.
Ouch, some time ago I read the (old) thing where the letters that matter are the first and the last one, and the others can be mixed. I read a large paragraph that way. And now this? I inmediatly read:
It's called emerge, not merge. And I never said emerge world. It could be the list of most critical apps, like OpenSSH and the likes (say 20 packages that usualy have remote vulnerabilities).
Manual emerges could be run by an admin remotelly as a montly duty of... 10 minutes work.
Side note, we'd call them Malvinas. It was a war that had to do with who owns the sea. Malvinas owns a huge relationship of sea in relation to land (greater that 1000x). That's the only reason UK got in (add to that politics on both sides).
OT (On topic): I don't think they have to know how the thing they are trying to use works. I'd rather
say the thing they are trying to use must how the user works or would like to work.
OT (Off topic): You provably don't know how to grow the very crops that you eat everyday, you don't know how to build a working version of a car, you don't know how the account deparments process your salary so that they are fine with the law requirements. Even if you know some of these, you provably don't, and can't know, even a mere 1% of how things work, but other people know.
Your point is very centric assuming everyone has to know the one field you think it's the base and final goal of human life. If you relax the asumption, you'd know your just being pedantic.
"Don't care to learn? that would make you an idiot."
Look at how many things you don't know, and I am pretty sure you'll have a slight perspective on how idiotic everyone is.
(note: I don't care if you care. I just want to clarify your point, that is a very common)
Whoah, GREAT insight into the problem. First you drop all properly package managed distros like Gentoo and Debian, and then you bitch about having trouble to maintain the systems or teach things to users.
Mhh, I'd suggest you go in other direction. For example, why not install Debian or Gentoo on a friends computer, and then teach them to use apt-get or emerge. Or maybe, tell him to give you a call if he ever has a new need (game, whatever). Then you can tell him: type "emerge doom3" or "emerge whatever". Of course, you'd leave sshd installed and will cron update on already installed packages.
You don't even need to explain anything to the user. Really. Now if you only had mentioned Slackware or the likes, yes, that one I will only install on some servers and make sure they are lightweight, and vulnerabilities do not pop-up. These babies work GREAT, but must be babysitted (though I've found I really know what's going on and no side effects will be expected).
I believe that if the company uses it for internal stuff (no external calls) then different laws apply. Yes, it could still be illegal, but company2company comunications are a different beast than public VoIP. IBM has it's own 100% private network for all corporate stuff, there is no chance of communications beign intercepted by third parties.
PHP is pretty stable on Apache 2, at least for me. I was a bit scared at first, but after running a relatively large and badly written PHP site with not problems at all for about 3 month, I feel confident now. But yes, better wait for PHP to declare it stable.
In some way I think we're missing an important requirement that a product or company must fullfil to the considered a Monopoly. Monopolies can be easily manupulated because you can control the price of the product and can enforce higher prices to be paid.
Now, Apache is free, not only in the sense that you don't have to pay for it, but in the sense that the source is open and you can twidle it for your needs.
In others words, Apache can never abuse it's monopoly position, because everyone owns Apache in some sense, they just need to download the sources and be done. And they can't affect market prices, because the sell it for $0 to whoever wants to use it.
Seems to me Apache is as a monopoly just as much as H2O has the monopoly of breathable stuff. It's free. Monopolies are bad when there is induced lack of competition and abuse of market position geared towards setting prices at will.
A bit long my response, and reinterative, but please, bear in mind Apache has no monopoly over anything, because their products are and will remain free and open.
No, you don't have other problems, you probably have $350 x seat. And you don't need to live in the US, so maybe $350 earns you months of programmers or sysadmins time.
Are you against Portege like systems or just Gentoo? If you have lots of machines you don't need to compile the software on every one of them, you could use a dedicated machine to serve as a compile station. It will also serve as your personal mirror of course.
If you do things the right way, an "emerge world" could last 10 minutes or less, provided you sync and build all targets beforehand on a central place.
And you avoid the risk of getting your version unsopported. Gentoo like systems have a risk, "discontinued project", not discontinued version, so it's black or white. If it's a community project, you'll see it slowing down way before th explosion reaches you.
The government should best! because the mayority voted them. Socialism is not the goverment knowing best, but doing more bussiness that are normaly left to private parties.
But there are a few rich people who make a lot of money.
If they where a few, then they shouldn't have so much trouble with piracy. Politely ask these few rich people to pay for software and be done. But that's not the case.
You could look at it this way: buy 2 MS Office licenses or hire s slave for a year?... (and that's at average salaries. If you only need a basic slave, you could as well buy it for 1/2 licenses).
They just won't agree to such trade, it seems like a ripoff to them. You can try to sell an office suite for 6 month of work, but it will not work out as expected. The original comparisons are fine and apply. The goverment also has to draw money from that average income and it's in the same situation so mandating OSS is logical if they can't pirate expensive software. Or, in the other hand, MS could realize they are charging a fixed tax to the world, and change the polity to a variable tax. After all, nobody is complaining that labour taxes are $10 a year in vietnam and $10000 in the US, because taxes are % based (it's a hipotetical example).
Side comment, you NEVER save cash, you become more efficient, delivering results with less effort. The phrase "save cash" is unfortunate because it suggests you are slowing down a market or similar thoughts. Again, you don't save chash, you spend it differently (example: paying higher salaries to teacher, lowering taxes so that companies can sell cheaper, etc.).
The reasons the United States has trade deficits with Viet Nam, China, Japan, Taiwan, and a host of other places, include simple economics (the United States is rich and things are relatively expensive
It's not expensive because it's rich, it's expensive because they protect their industries even though they are inefficient (cat fish, steel, etc - LARGE list), their employees (by not letting people living outside "the paradise" offer their services in your country) and because of higher taxes.
Now you don't even want to let your companies hire some people from abroad because of nationality. Great for you, your morals and your ideals.
And the ONLY reason the US is not falling appart is because you can borrow at the lowest rates in the world the largest amounts of money. That alone compensates for the loss of productivity due to high paid workers that do NOT know any better than people abroad.
But what strikes me most is your complaining about the cat fish of your poor adopted little country and complaining about India, when it's also known that's one of the poorest countries on earth.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't matter how much time it takes you to own certain thing. It's 100% irrelevant. Granted, you work hard, and they pay you in a generic way *dolars* because you produced something of value to other individuals, and that money entitles you to draw something from the global pool of offerings that other people's work create.
In fact, you're exchanging your time for some other guys time (except the lucky bastards that live out of rents). That's the basis of any trade economy with money as the common denominator, and it's certainly not novel. Magically measuring wages in terms of time will not change anything, though it might be a nice visualization, just as measing wages in terms of food/shelter/etc. You could also measure time against freedom. For example, the "personal freedom" ramson imposed on you may be (this depends on the subjects personal opinion) say us$ 200.000. Once you reach that amount, you are free at 5% interest rates. Because you earn about us$900 a month (and can live like a champion in many countries, without having to please any boss or doing anything other than what you want to, not what others want for you).
So, it doesn't matter how you visualize the issue. Time is not a measure of how much harm someone has done to you, "x" money is the metter of for all applicable laws.
Unless you own your shelter (home), there is no guarantee that you'll have shelter tomorrow.
... that's how things get when you have something that is scarce and usefull...
But not everyone has shelter, so your solution is not working either. Could someone else live in your house? Yes. Would you die if that happened? No. What that other guy fullfill one of his "most immediate needs" this way? Yes. Will you/(I) allow that to happen? No.
So in the end, we like it because we have shelter, and things to care. But it's not inherent in any way. I'd say the only inherent things is that the human race must share earth to accomodate everyone. After all, it has been given to us all, not to some of us. As new generations are born, they have the same inherent rights to claim ownership a their share of stuff. But we'll negate that right. What if some past generations claimed all the land (say the Romans)? Well, we'd not agree on their "right" to own what they claim, and make war.
In brief, your property excludes everyone else's rights to use that piece of earth (be it land, a good). But stuff is limited on earth, it's scarce. So in fact, your right takes away someone else right (that may be a fair inherent right). In the end, you end up some people agreeing on how this fare share works, and that works in favour of the people that have more power. Untill they are overthrown and some other policy is implemented. Property rights will always be needed and abused
Yes, and property should go to the ones willing to put those resources to good use. Show me a concrete plan to mine an asteroid (ie: ship designs, facilities, lots of cash, astronauts, and a feasible medium term plan) and we (the human race) may give that company/nation the right to conditioanly own said asteroid if colonization/mining is sucessfull.
In any case, we shouldn't even need this, as the asteroid is, but nature, the property of however is mining it. If these guys could send a miner ship, they have thouthands of asteroids to choose from and NOBODY is going to prevent them from doing so. That's how countries get colonized, you just get there, and with time, the property is yours.
Private property can also lead to very bad solutions when assigning new lad. That's why Brasil/Argentina and many other poor countries failed (granted the land for free to big landlords) as opposed to the way it was split in the US. Private property must go to the people that will make the best use of that property, not to "anyone, quickly! have this land". Landgrabbing zealots set many countries fortunes, because grabbers only interest was to sell it for a profit, but poor workers where not allowed to buy, only to rent, so development did not took place for decades.
As an example:
QT Movies: emerge mplayer (or emerge xine)
AVI: emerge mplayer (or emerge xine)
DVD: emerge mplayer (or emerge xine)
XLS: emerge openoffice (or emerge crossover if you want office)
You don't have to install anything, you only need to way 10 minutes, and be done. On the other hand, on Windows you need to:
QT Movies: go to a website, and start a download, look at the instructions on how to install quicktime.
AVI: hope for the best if you are not using newer versions of windows, or start downloading stuff.
DVD: buy a decent DVD player like WinDVD, etc.
XLS: shell out +$200, wait for a CDROM to arrive, and go through a lenghty and somewhat slow install process (compared to just installing OpenOffice binaries as in "emerge openoffice".
I would't say it's that much easier. What I will grant you, is that Windows has some really great programs that you WILL miss if you switch to other OS. And you lose official support for may things (say Gaim is not MS, nor AOL supported. But I better like using Gaim and not 2/3 instant messengers). You lose some features, and gain others. But you really need to learn about the system if you really want to be productive with Linux as a non-simple-user. It has a lot of powerfull tools that go unnoticed by usual MS users, as I once was).
IBM, Sharp, Google and many other disagree with you. I guess you know better than them. If something is of value or not does not depend on the price tag you charge, but on the fact that that good/service allows other compaanies/individuals to provide more efficient services and higher profits.
IE has a price: you must buy Windows to have it, and must buy it regularly. You can't even install IE4 on Windows 95 if you ever wanted to (and no, it's not because it can't be done, if you install Office 2000 on Windows 95, you get IE 4. It's a real life example).
If it weren't for other companies helping in the developement of free alternatives, you'll see Microsoft abusing it's position to get money from you. Well, they already do that.
So no, I couldn't agree less with you. Microsoft has been using this bundle tactic to take money away from people, and generating monopolies that WILL be abused (and had been abused) when the time comes. And the consumer will be (was not) happy when this happened.
The other thing you are reffering to, calling dumping something is not, is also sad, and it's what economists don't like. It happens when some people figure out they can't produce efficiently, and in the name of competition, for all consumers to buy things at a higher price than the economy can produce them. And not only consumers buy these protected stuff, other bussiness do as well usually, thus making them a little more unefficient by transitivity, in a never ending chain of selfdestruction.
Last thing to note is that the US is not a free trade country. They speak about free, but anyone who has actually tryed to export anything there, knows it's all "gratious" speech.
Any first year economics student can explain precisely why dumping is good for the economy that is being dumped into in essentially every real world situation[1]
If it's a goods market, and some country has big pockets and you don't, and are being dumped, your companies in the dumped industries will collapse. It doesn't need to be a country vs country situation, it could be country vs company, company vs country. The thing to take note of is: is the other competitior really dumping, or does he has really lower costs? If it's the first, it's obvious that you will be worst that before. If it's the latter, you may stil be worst than before. Examples:
You produce wheat on a small country, and some other country, which has tons (figurative) weat start selling well below cost of production for 2 years, at a price that does not affect their global profitability. When your companies resources are drained they are either forced to sell they assest (land, machines, etc). You buy them (nobody want to enter a non-market), and then start selling wheat at a monopoly price.
They poor little country lost jobs, and now can buy less wheat with the same money, as they must pay a monopoly price. Even worst, now their basic need, wheat, depends on some other country exclusively.
Now, software is a very different beast, as it carries no cost of production at all.
First and foremost, software is different in the sense that you can never sell below cost of production. Cost of production (cp /good /good2) is $0. So they don't have that argument. On the other hand, selling cars for $0 means you are losing all the manufacturing costs, and forcing your competitors not to sell. Both are losing money, and they can try to prove your only goal is to destroy them so that you can afterwards sell at monopoly price.
Second difference is that the software itself may not be what makes you profit. So if you sell hardware and provide the software for free, or just sell sevices based on that software, and you have a revenue model, they'll have a hard time arguing you are dumping the market. You have a better revenue model. If any court in any country rules against better business practices and more efficient competition and production, they will be doomed.
Third difference is that making software is not business per se. I could create software because I like to code, and they can't restrain me from doing so. Like they can't restrain me for writing. What's next? Suing phorum posters because people read things for free on the net and not buying printed books or magazines?
The rules of the economy are changed when you start to deal incresingly with stuff that has no cost of reproduction. There's a deman, but the offer curve is vertical (infinite slope) and if the thing is free, the offer is willing to provide infinite amount of the "service" at the zero axis. Take any demand curve, and you'll end up with no market. So the only way to make a sucessfull sofware market is to provide what's not free. Alas, you either provide something that has really better quality (or that has no free alternative) than the free version, or you are doomed.
Oh, you mean IABNMIHAL.
:-(
Ouch, some time ago I read the (old) thing where the letters that matter are the first and the last one, and the others can be mixed. I read a large paragraph that way. And now this? I inmediatly read:
Oh, you mean IAMHANIBAL.
It's called emerge, not merge. And I never said emerge world. It could be the list of most critical apps, like OpenSSH and the likes (say 20 packages that usualy have remote vulnerabilities).
... 10 minutes work.
Manual emerges could be run by an admin remotelly as a montly duty of
Side note, we'd call them Malvinas. It was a war that had to do with who owns the sea. Malvinas owns a huge relationship of sea in relation to land (greater that 1000x). That's the only reason UK got in (add to that politics on both sides).
OT (On topic): I don't think they have to know how the thing they are trying to use works. I'd rather
say the thing they are trying to use must how the user works or would like to work.
OT (Off topic): You provably don't know how to grow the very crops that you eat everyday, you don't know how to build a working version of a car, you don't know how the account deparments process your salary so that they are fine with the law requirements. Even if you know some of these, you provably don't, and can't know, even a mere 1% of how things work, but other people know.
Your point is very centric assuming everyone has to know the one field you think it's the base and final goal of human life. If you relax the asumption, you'd know your just being pedantic.
"Don't care to learn? that would make you an idiot."
Look at how many things you don't know, and I am pretty sure you'll have a slight perspective on how idiotic everyone is.
(note: I don't care if you care. I just want to clarify your point, that is a very common)
Whoah, GREAT insight into the problem. First you drop all properly package managed distros like Gentoo and Debian, and then you bitch about having trouble to maintain the systems or teach things to users.
Mhh, I'd suggest you go in other direction. For example, why not install Debian or Gentoo on a friends computer, and then teach them to use apt-get or emerge. Or maybe, tell him to give you a call if he ever has a new need (game, whatever). Then you can tell him: type "emerge doom3" or "emerge whatever". Of course, you'd leave sshd installed and will cron update on already installed packages.
You don't even need to explain anything to the user. Really. Now if you only had mentioned Slackware or the likes, yes, that one I will only install on some servers and make sure they are lightweight, and vulnerabilities do not pop-up. These babies work GREAT, but must be babysitted (though I've found I really know what's going on and no side effects will be expected).
"I would love to see one internet based community developed meta-distrution of Linux, with one comprehensive package repository."
You mean like Gentoo? Or you mean like something else?
>their brains are the hardware of the Matrix
Hyperon/Endimion SPOILER (beware)
Your are quoting Rise of Endymion on this one, right? It's exactly why the Techno Core needs those hundred petahumans.
Woah, God needs a human to kill some virus that is infecting heaven =) ... Come on.
I believe that if the company uses it for internal stuff (no external calls) then different laws apply. Yes, it could still be illegal, but company2company comunications are a different beast than public VoIP. IBM has it's own 100% private network for all corporate stuff, there is no chance of communications beign intercepted by third parties.
PHP is pretty stable on Apache 2, at least for me. I was a bit scared at first, but after running a relatively large and badly written PHP site with not problems at all for about 3 month, I feel confident now. But yes, better wait for PHP to declare it stable.
Don't know what other people experiences are...
F
In some way I think we're missing an important requirement that a product or company must fullfil to the considered a Monopoly. Monopolies can be easily manupulated because you can control the price of the product and can enforce higher prices to be paid.
Now, Apache is free, not only in the sense that you don't have to pay for it, but in the sense that the source is open and you can twidle it for your needs.
In others words, Apache can never abuse it's monopoly position, because everyone owns Apache in some sense, they just need to download the sources and be done. And they can't affect market prices, because the sell it for $0 to whoever wants to use it.
Seems to me Apache is as a monopoly just as much as H2O has the monopoly of breathable stuff. It's free. Monopolies are bad when there is induced lack of competition and abuse of market position geared towards setting prices at will.
A bit long my response, and reinterative, but please, bear in mind Apache has no monopoly over anything, because their products are and will remain free and open.
No, you don't have other problems, you probably have $350 x seat. And you don't need to live in the US, so maybe $350 earns you months of programmers or sysadmins time.
Are you against Portege like systems or just Gentoo? If you have lots of machines you don't need to compile the software on every one of them, you could use a dedicated machine to serve as a compile station. It will also serve as your personal mirror of course.
If you do things the right way, an "emerge world" could last 10 minutes or less, provided you sync and build all targets beforehand on a central place.
And you avoid the risk of getting your version unsopported. Gentoo like systems have a risk, "discontinued project", not discontinued version, so it's black or white. If it's a community project, you'll see it slowing down way before th explosion reaches you.
The government should best! because the mayority voted them. Socialism is not the goverment knowing best, but doing more bussiness that are normaly left to private parties.
But there are a few rich people who make a lot of money.
... (and that's at average salaries. If you only need a basic slave, you could as well buy it for 1/2 licenses).
If they where a few, then they shouldn't have so much trouble with piracy. Politely ask these few rich people to pay for software and be done. But that's not the case.
You could look at it this way: buy 2 MS Office licenses or hire s slave for a year?
They just won't agree to such trade, it seems like a ripoff to them. You can try to sell an office suite for 6 month of work, but it will not work out as expected. The original comparisons are fine and apply. The goverment also has to draw money from that average income and it's in the same situation so mandating OSS is logical if they can't pirate expensive software. Or, in the other hand, MS could realize they are charging a fixed tax to the world, and change the polity to a variable tax. After all, nobody is complaining that labour taxes are $10 a year in vietnam and $10000 in the US, because taxes are % based (it's a hipotetical example).
Side comment, you NEVER save cash, you become more efficient, delivering results with less effort. The phrase "save cash" is unfortunate because it suggests you are slowing down a market or similar thoughts. Again, you don't save chash, you spend it differently (example: paying higher salaries to teacher, lowering taxes so that companies can sell cheaper, etc.).
The reasons the United States has trade deficits with Viet Nam, China, Japan, Taiwan, and a host of other places, include simple economics (the United States is rich and things are relatively expensive
It's not expensive because it's rich, it's expensive because they protect their industries even though they are inefficient (cat fish, steel, etc - LARGE list), their employees (by not letting people living outside "the paradise" offer their services in your country) and because of higher taxes.
Now you don't even want to let your companies hire some people from abroad because of nationality. Great for you, your morals and your ideals.
And the ONLY reason the US is not falling appart is because you can borrow at the lowest rates in the world the largest amounts of money. That alone compensates for the loss of productivity due to high paid workers that do NOT know any better than people abroad.
But what strikes me most is your complaining about the cat fish of your poor adopted little country and complaining about India, when it's also known that's one of the poorest countries on earth.