RE: ``Nothing like a monopoly to get investors to cheer you

[Matthew Benjamin <MBenjamin@comshare.com>]

Congratulations, Brett.

You have become this list's foremost advocate that:

	1. abundance is scarcity
	2. freedom is tyranny
	3. night is day

You have no way to explain why it is that, contrary to your assertion, GPL'd
software has spurred the greatest outburst in creativity the software
industry has seen since the early 1980s--if not earlier.  

You have no way to explain why thousands upon thousands of developers are
eagerly building on the foundation of GNU software, which they find
liberating and empowering.  That there is a torrent of new GPL'd software,
building on the foundation of GPL'd software, is clear on
http://www.freshmeat.net.  That this software is innovative and useful, is
self-evident from the explosive growth of Linux.

What is more, you are also wrong--and increasingly, self-evidently so--that
free software cannot empower for-profit software companies, including and
even especially small ISVs.  My most recent examples of this:

1. COREL, which is now contributing to the development of the WINE project
to make Win32 binaries run on Linux
2. Open Link Software, which is actually COMPETING with another ISV to host
and co-maintain the FreeODBC driver project's CVS and FTP servers
3. APPLE, which has just announced it will donate ColorSync and other source
code to the Mozilla project

These companies have found that free software--and a software industry
revitalized by open source--can be leveraged to gain marketshare and
permanently associate their brand with an open product which enables their
own, proprietary products--along with a host of other products consumers
want, free and non-free.  These projects leverage two post-GNU developments:

1. Blends of GPL'd, LGPL'd, and proprietary code
2. Newer OSS licenses that protect the intellectual property of original
authors, yet make source available for new purposes (LGPL, NPL, Cygnus OSS
license, etc).

While there is plenty of room for skepticism about the future of open source
software, as I have admitted many times, the extremism of your claims brooks
no interference from reality or counter example.  

Since your audience here is fully aware of this--it has been pointed out
many times--you achieve nothing by continuing in this vein.


Matt


> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Brett Glass [SMTP:brett@lariat.org]
> Sent:	Sunday, November 08, 1998 4:14 PM
> To:	sjohnson@gwi.net
> Cc:	am-info@essential.org
> Subject:	Re: ``Nothing like a monopoly to get investors to cheer you
> 
> At 01:34 PM 11/8/98 +0000, stan johnson wrote:
> 
> >I will say that your first statement, that commercial competition is how
> 
> >innovation happens, is, IMO, based on a kind of fallacious cosmological
> 
> >principle: you are, it would appear, assuming that the details of the 
> >present   
> >situation are universal. I don't see any validity to that at all. The 
> >present   
> >commercial, mercantile, capitalistic society is a relatively new 
> >development,   
> >*long* preceded by many major intellectual and inventive creations. 
> 
> 99.9% of which were also done for profit. The situation is not new.
> People expend the effort, time, and money to innovate when they think
> it'll get them a leg up. To deny this is to deny human nature.
> 
> >You can't have it both ways. Either OSS is a poorly-creative 'me too'
> kind 
> >of weakling, or it's a powerful competing force [to name just the
> extremes].  
> 
> False dilemma. It could be either, depending on the circumstances, or
> something
> in between. But in no case is it very creative at all.
> 
> >It's my understanding that you view freeBSD as a powerful and stable OS,
> and   
> >that your real objection is not to open source, but to the GPL's refusal
> to 
> >allow conversion of open source into proprietary software.  
> 
> Absolutely. GPLed software takes away -- by competing unfairly with
> commercial
> software. But it doesn't give back by allowing creative individuals to
> build
> on it. The effect (as intended by Richard Stallman) is to undermine
> commercial
> endeavors and hence creativity.
> 
> >If open source is so poorly innovative, what's being lost to the
> proprietary   
> >developer? Some wishy-washy non-innovative code, clearly of no real
> value?
> 
> The non-creative foundation on which creative works can be done. Why
> burden
> someone who is creating something new with having to rewrite the wheel?
> 
> --Brett
>