On 12.01.2012 17:26, adam wrote:
Well I think the open source ethic is well aligned with capitalism. There is no disconnect there.
Yet, software has different economics than cultural works. Open Source developers are paid by organisations that employ such software in production, and thus the availability of open source packages reduces their production costs, allowing them to retain more earnings.
The same situation occurs only infrequently when it comes to books, there may be situations where it does, i.e. reference books or documentation. I can see these being supported by organisations that are consumers of such works, but not much else.
So, if capital will not pay creators of open works. Who will? No doubt, some fringe can be maintained by cultural grants and simular social funds, and a wider fringe can maintain itself by working for free and earning subsistence elsewhere (or simply being rich to begin with), yet this says nothing of the great majority of books, read by millions, produced today by the capitalist industry, which offers no way to make these open books.
Best, -- Dmytri Kleiner _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
