"Nick Arnett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>And yes, there is collaboration in the marketplace, just as there was
>competition in feudal times. But medieval society did not regard
>competition and feedback as a legitimate source of authority and I think we
>tend to give short shrift to collaborative efforts (the open source
>movement
>comes to mind) by damning their failure to show a profit.
I presume we're talking about this at a meta-level, right? No-one (well,
almost no-one, and no jibes from the peanut gallery) outright damns open
source's failure to show a profit; instead, the lack of profit (based on our
ostensibly free market) damns the open source movement by virtue of not
giving it the necessary funds to thrive.
Hmmm, this suddenly sounds like an experiment involving competing evolvons
in a resource-limited environment. Given limited resources called "money"
and "mindshare", and given enzymes like "marketing" to turn one into the
other, what's the most successful or stable strategy?
In that sense, you can even bypass the "blame the greedy ape" tact and blame
the deep fundamental concept of evolution (successful things thrive)
directly, unless you take away concepts like "money", "mindshare" and
"profit".
Banning advertising might be an approach, but disrupting network effects
(like Windows) would be impossible without also banning free speech and free
association since they have strong cultural components.
Joshua
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
