There have been some really interesting discussions over the past couple of weeks, on which I have been catching up, but one comment particularly caught my eye, being something about capitalism, wrt 'public' software and FOSS. It excited an exchange of a lot of words, some of them hot.
Those who are not interested in anything outside code may stop reading here, but bear with me, for I think this is relevant. Through most of the past century, the world witnessed a struggle between two alternate economic systems, one of which included a diverse set of principles and policies lumped under the word 'capitalism', and the other called 'communism'. As it happened, most countries following what could be called capitalism also practised one form or another of democracy, whereas, and quite peculiarly, countries following communism tended to also be totalitarian in nature. This is by no means a rule: plenty of capitalistic countries were also exceedingly totalitarian, or dictatorial, while many countries practising what they called communism also claimed to be democratic, in that they held regular elections, or had the word 'Democratic' in their full names. Today, the world's leading economic power happens to be a country that professes to be communist, while in fact practising and leveraging most of the rules and processes that characterise classic capitalism, including some of its classic abuses (currency manipulation, for instance). Just yesterday, one of its leaders informed our government that they envy our leadership in the area of IT, or software (of course, perhaps his exact words were mistranslated, or am I being too cynical?) The point of this background is that labels often cover up or obscure the detailed context in which things actually happen. It is for this reason that it is in fact important to be clear while critiquing or espousing something as important to the future of free software, or FOSS, as this new concept that has been curiously entitled 'public software', exactly in which context such new licensed software will work. Some people have objected to the possible pejorative context in which the word capitalism has been used, but I put it that the pejorative nature in fact refers to specific excesses and abuses of capitalism that have led to the very creation of the free software movement, in reaction. When software was 'free', where was the need for a free software movement? Had one printer manufacturer not decided suddenly and arbitrarily to conceal the code for printer drivers, thereby making if difficult for graduate students to work with a shared printer between different floors of an academic building, why would RMS have bothered himself with reevaluating the nature of software? This is why it becomes important to us that we define the context in which we should accept or reject the concept of public software. An antagonistic or confrontational approach to an individual or group of software vendors, who have taken advantage (abused) the privileges created for the furtherance of knowledge in order to hoard and profiteer from it will not help us create an environment in which, using the principles of free software, they may yet be able to prosper and grow (who knows, ;-) they may even begin to start producing good software as well, inshallah). It is for this reason that I, too, object to the bandying about of terms such as capitalism loosely, either pejoratively or otherwise, while defining specifics of the manner in which software (by which I mean how someone gets paid for supporting its production) may be created, licensed or otherwise disseminated, for public use, for the common weal. It is much better to 1. define the licensing environment clearly, clause by clause, 2. define the terms of modification and subsequent reuse, with particular regard to software that will be distributed for general public use, just as free software often already is (in fact, I see no reason why, for such instances, the term public software may not simply be substituted by free software). I hope this helps. -- Vickram http://communicall.wordpress.com
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