Hi,
Well I was speaking about cultural production in a broader sense,
not necessarily related to free culture.
Because IMHO free culture is like an avant-garde niece to more
conventional cultural production;
in the sense of experimenting with new models etc.
To me the interesting point is when a crossover can start, when
conventional companies start to also partly use the development and
licensing models of free culture;
And when free culture initiatives start getting the same amount of
public attention as conventional institutions.
I also think that would be the situation where the end-user would
really start benifitting…
Red Hat and all the other GPL software companies demonstrate that free
software businesses can be profitable, and anyone who looks at how
they do what they do can see Step 2.
Yeah, but they have their GPLness as one of their main selling points.
I don’t think this translates well to companies who never identified
themselves with FOSS
Which obviously includes all the traditional type foundries.
I mean, it would be great if licensing in general becomes more liberal,
Not only for ‘free font’ foundries, no?
PS I do pay for this though http://safaribooksonline.com/Corporate/Index/
,
so they managed to actually come up with a business model for e-
culture in
so far as: their supply meets my demand, I pay for it.
Non-free technical manuals? :-(
But should everything be free?
For me it is more important that individuals are free than that the
books they write are free.
a) author wants to write a book b) o’reilly wants to publish the book,
pays the author c) i want to read the book, and would like to support
the author and the company by paying for it.
They publish books onder free licences, too: http://oreilly.com/openbook/
IMHO think authors (in the broad sense of the word) should be free to
license their work whichever way they see fit;
For me it does not magically belong to everybody the instant something
is published.
What I am mainly opposed against is any form of ‘hoarding’ of culture
by those not directly involved in its production.
And I feel strongly about work that is created with public means
(which means most science and visual art here in the Netherlands),
That the authors should be aware of the fact that this brings a
certain obligation to make it as accesible as possible.
But in the end you can’t force anything upon anyone, and you shouldn’t
want to imnsho…
pluralism & redundancy ftw :-)
best,
Eric
