I'm adding kooler to this now, coz I haven't seen the word Linux used in about 15 postings...
And therein lies the Big Lie: that humankind will do nothing of any value unless money or some equivalent compensation is involved. It's a lie that has been told so many times that even the most reasonable and otherwise open minded among us never even question its validity.
While I sort of agree with this, I know that it isn't true.
I had this argument with my brother, a film maker (and his then fiance, also a film maker) at my cousins wedding at Xmas. I tried to explain to them the way FOSS ppl feel about copyright, about giving it away. But they need money to live. Even Shakespere had (I forget the word) ppl who paid him for his work. [ According to Shakespere in Love :) ... ] He wouldn't even start work unless he got some sort od downpayment.
That Shakespeare got paid for his work is not really important. He would have had to be paid in some form or another whether or not he was an artist. His art did not require support, living did. There is a false linkage made between the two. Certainly being paid directly and specifically for one's art makes it easier to spend more time at one's art, but that nevertheless says nothing about the /motivation/ to create. People simply do not cease to create at the moment they are no longer /monetarily/ compensated to do so. They stop doing it when they no longer get personal satisfaction out of doing it.
In my opinion, if they need to be paid to perform, I don't consider them artists, and expect that they are probably neither very relevant nor competent in their "art". In other words, they are not really artists, but merely dabblers, or at best hobbyists or craftsmen. That's not a bad thing to be, but it doesn't require passion, self-sacrifice (or near-madness).
And don't confuse the ability to sell one's work as the defining factor qualifying one as a craftsman, let alone an artist. The amount of crap in the world is evidence enough of that.
Most, if not all - does AC have a dayjob ? - , FOSS developers have day jobs that pay the bills. If they had to do it full time, they would want to be compensated, becoz they have to eat. I've seen my brother live on the college diet for years (we don't have Raman noodles in Australia, but he ate the equivalent for years) and my parents gave him money, and I gave him money for him to pursue his art.
This seems to demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of the creative process and its motivation. Monetary compensation is /not/ the driving force behind an artist's passion for his work. Of course, reality intrudes into the artist's world: he still has to eat, sleep, bathe, maintain shelter. To an artist, those are necessary and annoying distractions. They are requirements made upon him by the world not by his art. Those requirements would exist whatever his vocation or interests, whether they be artistic or pedestrian.
He still needs such supplies as are required to execute his art. But an artist's greatest creations are always in his head - never on his canvas, so even those can be done without in a pinch.
But history is ripe with examples of artists who continued to create no matter how impoverished they were. It's more ripe with examples of non-artists who were truly impoverished no matter how wealthy they were.
But there is no way I could convince him to "give his copyright" away
That is a mischaracterization of copyright. Giving away one's work is not the same as giving away one's copyright. Copyright is really more about attribution, about giving proper credit than about compensation. I don't believe that copyright law is even concerned about compensation. It's about the author or artist being guaranteed that his work will be properly credited to him in its original form. That this has become about compensation is a result of the courts not the law itself. Copyright is now more a means of accumulating wealth rather than a means of protecting authorship.
We need only one word to characterize that lie: nonsense. The whole FOSS movement is all the evidence needed to refute the Big Lie. In fact, people will do what they love, or even like at the moment, for no other reason than that they get some measure of self-satisfaction from just the act of doing it.
And what is this whole new attitude today that everyone thinks their shit's stink is so unique and compelling that they aught to be paid for it? Personally, I don't think Ashely Simpson should be paid one dime. In fact, she probably should be fined every time she opens her mouth!
At what time in history, have ppl ever done anything without some sort of compensation (except slavery!). before there were dubloons, it was the barter system. And before that, I suppose the caveman just outright stole what he wanted (which is what the MPAA/RIAA calls all it's customers :)
Well, if by "time in history", you only consider the last thousand years or so, and then only in the more "civilized" parts of the world, your question and your answer might be considered "insightful". However, if you look far enough back in the totality of Human history and bother to look even today at parts of the world considered less "civilized", then you know that many societies didn't and don't even have monetary systems. In fact, the monetary system is a relatively recent concept.
Society can function perfectly well using a system of cooperation and barter rather than competition and accumulating wealth. When people needed something, they cooperated to make that happen. If there was a resource that was scarce or unavailable, then they traded with those who had that resource by giving something back that was scarce to their trading partner.
But they /did not depend on accumulating excess wealth or the hoarding of that which was scarce in order to inflate its future value/. They used what they needed and either traded away or discarded what they did not need.
And believe it or not people were quite happy with their lives. Including artists. If you travel to today's less "civilized" cultures, you'll find this is still true. At least to the extent that that culture has not been told by its more "advanced", well-meaning neighbors that they can't really be happy unless they have more Stuff(tm), or at least trade their less valuable stuff for the much more attractive and valuable Stuff(tm).
Tell you what, put a middle class Westerner and a New Guinea tribesman each into solitary confinement, and see who goes mad first.
But maybe Bob should jump in here <Tag>. :^)
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Best Regards,
~DJA.-- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
