Re: Tocqueville on open source development

["Eric M. Bennett" <ericb@pobox.com>]

Brett Glass wrote:

>Sure he does. We've already seen, as referenced in earlier messages, that
>Stallman advocates taxing the public and using the money to fund the
>development of free software -- which, in turn, he belives will put
>an end to the existence of commercal software.
>
>Tax software companies to fund the development of products that will
>compete unfairly with theirs and put them out of business? I think not.

In the document I just checked, he seems to be relying mostly on voluntary
contributions from users, much as public television does.

See the section "Funding Free Software" on this page:
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html



I still think he is overly idealistic in expecting most people to give
freely, but his rhetoric about government involvement is not as bad as I
had remembered it being.



--
Eric Bennett (http://www.pobox.com/~ericb/)
Cornell University, Field of Biochemistry
377 Olin Chemistry Lab

TIP: Buy Apple Computer
WHY: According to Microsoft, the big, bad, scary Macintosh-maker threatened
Bill Gates's poor little company in 1997.
-Advice from the dilbert.com financial pages