Yolanda pippi wrote:
> And if someone wants to hack win 3.1 so it will run better on
> old hardware, I am all for it.
Part of me agrees, but Bill Gates' lawyers might disagree...
> It is but part of a trend, to
> treat ideas not as private personal property, but as part of
> the commons of all mankind.
[That last bit sounds like a fairly good approximation to the
"Scientific Method".]
I applaud the folks behind GNU and the Free Software movement, but I
recall an article in the British print magazine "New Scientist",
titled "The Tragedy of the Commons", circa 1968. The fundamental problem
is:"That which belongs to everyone belongs to no one." And then no one
cares.
One example was the communal farm under the former Soviet Union. Often,
the small "private" family garden plots would produce more, bigger, and
better produce than the large, heavily mechanized communal farm where the
men worked. Wife & kids with hoes in their "spare" time versus men on
tractors. The difference was incentive. The wife & kids got to keep
any profit. The men got the same wage whether the crop failed or not.
Idealism, or a strong system of belief, can be sufficient incentive for a
workable system - for example, monks in a medieval monastery, but money
appeals to a broader group of people. It seems that GNU/FSF has a
sustainable business plan whereby it is possible to make money writing
free software.
I don't think a hacked version of win 3.1 qualifies.
see http://www.gnu.org
and http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Boyd Ramsay
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