(fwd) article on open source

[Derek Martin]

Today, Robert L Krawitz gleaned this insight:

[Lots of snip-snipping]

> 1) Any time somebody submitted a patch, I would face a conflict of
>    interest 

> 2) Coders would have a great incentive to pad out their code to as
>    great a degree as possible.

> 3) People would lobby hard to have their code included in projects,
>    rather than the code deemed to be best by the maintainer and/or the
>    rest of the project team.

> 4)  In some cases, people explicitly want to get out of the rat race
> or may have non- or anti-capitalist motivation. Must everyone be
> forced into an explicitly capitalist model [...]

> 5) Large and medium corporations and governments would have
>    considerable incentive to avoid open source software

> I don't want to be a "new nobility" at all.  I like developing
> software, but I don't like the sound of "nobility".  A pure
> meritocracy, like a pure just about any political system, tends to be
> harmful in its own way.

Horah!!!  Lots of exellent points.  It isn't always about getting paid.
Not everything we do has to concern itself with increasing our wealth.
Too often, people overlook that.

> My only comment about "capitalism works best..." is that capitalism !=
> free market.  

Ah, well, this is an entirely different argument.  You are talking about
Capitalism in practice VS. Capitalism the ideal.  I subscribe to the
opposite philosophy:  Most political systems are just fine in principal,
but it's people and corruption that screw up the implementation.

But perhaps that's a topic for another forum...


> I certainly don't object to developers being paid, but I don't think
> that a piecework model applies very well to software.  Lines of code
> are not fungible in the way that sweaters are.  But that's not even my
> most serious objection -- the real core (as John Abreau notes in his
> reply to this piece) is that this proposal essentially suggests
> eliminating free software, and indeed the concept of community where
> everyone shares in the outcome, altogether.

Right.  I agree with you both... which is why I read the responses rather
than responding immediately with my own comments.  The open source
community does not have financial gain as its goal.  It has the betterment
of society, in some sense, as its goal, rather.  In our largely
greed-driven society, many often fail to understand this.  

This is not to say that greed has no place in the world...  I like getting
paid as much as the next guy.  One does have to eat after all, and it's
nice to be able to relax in a bit of comfort at the end of the day. But
once that's taken care of, why not give to your fellow man?  The open
source community gives, and the gift it gives is the gift of knowledge,
and quality software.


-- 
PGP/GPG Public key at http://cerberus.ne.mediaone.net/~derek/pubkey.txt
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Derek D. Martin      |  Unix/Linux Geek
derekm at mediaone.net  |  derek at cerberus.ne.mediaone.net
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