2008/9/22 Roberto A. Foglietta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > 2008/9/22 Roberto A. Foglietta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >> 2008/9/22 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >>> On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 10:32 AM, Roberto A. Foglietta >>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> most important thing, and somebody else think it depends... For me it >> depends... If I have enough money to live and buy a pc with a internet >> connection then free software is nothing. For those who does not >> depends... the debate is sterile. > > If I *cannot* have enough money to ... >
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics Please note that economics is not money-based but it is a science which study the exchange of finite (rare) goods. For example food is finite (rare) and because this has an exchange value not zero (much rare much costly). Money are a way to give a number to that value and currency is a standard that let people to exchange goods in a better way: * while the crop are grown up you can ask to the bank (stakeholders) some money to buy the food you need * you can sell something to someone and buy something else to somebody else * you can exchange goods even when they are not disposable yet * etc. etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_economics Copyright, patents, OGM seeds and others things like these makes idea and software rare because they tend to control their spread. Infact once a software have been written an infinite amount of copies could be done with a very little expense (compared with the effort to write it from scratch). Copyleft turn back ideas and software to their natural context: infinite and always disposable goods. However when a person is seeking a job is seeking a company which pays for his skills and time. Skills in order to be achived require studies and money because when you study you still have to eat and you cannot work (crops growing). So skills and time are rare goods and they belong to traditional economics not to the information economics. The same skills and time could be used to write software libre for free (as beer). How the sl developer's salary could be different than zero for such goods which are free (infinite after they have been written)? Copyright is an answer but if you do not like this answer then you should relay on skills and time to get some value. If I develop a software I can choose what kind of software developing and when do that. A company impose to its employees its schedule and its priorities (what and when). So a job in software libre context is a skills-full time selling. I could accept some constrains (what and when) in order to have back some value. May I try to maximize this value in order to buy food, a house or carrying on a family? Yes. Must I? Yes. Why I have to try to maximize my incoming (in a honest way, obviously)? Because as much valuable this service is, as much the related skills are valuable too. Being proud to make (honestly) money with software libre means spread the voice that the related skills are valuable. So others software libre developers are going to sell their time and skills too. This makes the software libre market grown and do not destroy the philosophy behind it because the software still free but the people time and skills get value. Do you need a counter example? Consider those goods which are self depend like car and oil. If the oil is sold out for few money buying a car cost a lot because you can use it a lot. If the oil is very highly priced the cars start to became cheaper and few. In the same manner if the cost of a copyright software will increase the workforce start to get underpaid. How this happens? A big company give out for nothing prior version of visual b-language. People starts to use it. Learn it. Develop with it. People create values. After the big company start to collect the great part of this value using copyright and people start to work underpaid. This phenomena is called lock-in. With software libre this could not happen. People are paid because they are skilled and their time is finite. I like to develop software libre and when I do it for free I choose to develop that software which are 'commodities' and/or within a schedule which is not company-like. I tend to develop software which is useful for community not for company because I am part of a community. Companies need commodities (standard) and need to develop software for a peculiar use or niche. They adopt commodities (standard) because they are always disposable and pretty cheap. They need to compete on high value niche software and related services in order to collect value (sell and earn money). I follow a university master based on open source and free software in which they teach me economics and information economics. Who designed this master is a old-way hacker and I am pretty convinced that his aim is to put value in the software libre market. A market in which people are free to be part of a community and could looking for a job but never going to be underpaid or underserved. However some hackers still think that earning money is like refuse the philosophy of software libre. Unfortunately the pattern behind them is often they will not accept to sell their time because they like to do what they want when they want. They are free to do this but unfortunately time are a scarce good and if you spend all the time in doing what you want you end to not have any money back. The real issue is how to force people, who use software libre to sell their time and skills, to contribute back to the community? The answer stay in the GPL which allow people to sell they time but enforce them to give back their code to community. The community grown and its value too. Any hacker who sell his/her time is respectful until he/she respect the GPL and force the copyright. Why respect and force the copyright is a good thing for a community? Because if company and people are obliged to respect copyright would find more convenient use software libre, contribute back to community and pay for time and skills. Much stronger (costly) the copyright is, much more strong (valuable) the copyleft is. Note that costly and valuable is not the same thing when we speak about software but I hope everybody will agree that much more a person skills are valuable much more money can rise. Because the difference between his/her value and his/her incoming is a surplus in a the company earning. The companies should create value because joining and organizing the skills of the employees (which is necessary to research new ideas/products and to pay back the stakeholders). The existence of a company should not be in order to make the stakeholders rich (they are necessary too because any business require some kind of investment) but to allow people to have a job, pay their bill, etc. etc. This is the progress. Make billions of nothing (like in the sub-prime or new economy bubbles) does not make any sense. Economy and money are tools which people could use in order to improve society, science and culture or to betray others people.The tools are not evil or good, they are tools which empower people but the people decide how use these tools. I hope this helps to open a non sterile debate. ;-) Ciao, -- /roberto Diffusez cette liste aupres de vos relations :) Linux Azur : http://linux-azur.org L'auteur du post est responsable de ses écrits ! *** Pas de message SMS, HTML ni de PJ SVP ***
