On 27/11/2007, vijay chopra <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > On 27/11/2007, Nick Reynolds-A&Mi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Let me play devil's advocate for a moment. > > > > Making more things free and open only benefits a small group of > > technologists who are clever enough to know how to use the results. > > > > I see no problem with this, in fact it's a good thing, it incentiveises > intelligence. A technocracy is much better than the idiocracy that we > currently live in. >
I find it midly amusing that most of the things that the idots like is created by us technoloists. I almost want to go "hurah" to the idea of a technocracy, but I am haunted by that Simpson's episode with Stephen Hawking in it... http://www.snpp.com/episodes/AABF18 The general mass of the population still want finely crafted mass > > entertainment and other products of a high quality and gloss. Making > > everything free and open destroys the funding model that makes this happen, > > which includes copyright and other intellectual property rights. > > > > The general public like fast food too, that doesn't mean that a McDonalds > a day is good for them, most people (myself included) are stupid and don't > know what's good for them in areas outside of their expertise. I let > nutritionists and dietitians recommend what I should eat, I don't see why > software engineers, IT consultants etc. shouldn't be able to recommend free > software as the best alternative (where and when it is) regardless of the > wider consequences to various funding models. That's not their problem, > they're being paid to deliver $project on time not worry about copyright law > reform. > I'm not sure if what you say is actually true. "Like" is not really the right verb, "sold" is a better one. But Fast Food Nation covers that subject much better than I could. Me, I don't even go into McDonalds to use the toliet. Haven't done for over a decade. It's not hard. Nutritionists and Dietitians are just "artisans" of couse, whereas we programmers are computer scientists, no? But yes, we are much better qualified than all these (a-hem) greedy arts graduates. I suspect that many of us probably don't have a huge regard (or even interest) in economics, but we are better qualified to understand the technolgical issues. And, of couse, the law could be changed to benefit the people - demoncracy is supposed to be about options, and many people seem to feel that they are none. Just because most people are so stupid to think that what they buy will change the world and defines them as a person, doesn't mean that it is remotely true. There's a trade off between making everything open and quality and reach. > > > > Why? Take Firefox for example, it's open, it has reach and it's a quality > product. there's no "trade off" in fact I can think of quite a few quality > open products, reach is a problem to be solved not something that has to to > be traded away. > Let's see .. the camera, the best example of an "open system" .. seems to be quite popular still. And there is the little matter of TCP/IP of course.... You could argue that news for example should adopt a completely free and > > open model. But who is going to make the investment to ensure that some > > stories are still told? Investigative journalism is expensive and often > > dangerous. Money needs to be spent to do it. > > > > Free and open doesn't necessarily mean that there is no cash involved, > look at the companies that sell support for free products or the way Firefox > gets money from Google. as examples. I'm sure news organisations will > continue. I read plenty of news on the web every day for free it's mostly ad > funded. And i don't see anyone stopping buying newspapers just because they > can read it online either. > Erm, I think that if you look at the figures, there are plenty of people not buying newspapers. While in my heart I'm much taken by the idea of making everything open, I > > smell a whiff of elitism about some of these arguments (i.e. "I want > > everything free because that's convenient for me and I don't care about > > anybody else") > > > > elite > -noun > the choice or *best of anything* considered collectively, as of a group or > class of persons.[1] > > I see no problem with elitism if it means we get the "best of anything". > > [1]paraphrased from http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=elite&x=0&y=0 > -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth http://www.ukfree.tv
