Re: Tax writeoff for Open Source Developers?

[Sujal Shah <sujal@worldnet.att.net>]

Brett Glass wrote:
[SNIP]
> Because it puts valuable innovators, workers, and businesses OUT of
> business while giving nothing back.

You might argue (in fact many people do) that having clean air (the
traditional economics example of a public good) puts "valuable" but
polluting companies out of business, and eliminates the need for certain
companies (for example anyone who has dreams of selling air filters to
the masses ;-).

I just don't see the difference.  Infrastructure programming could be
supplanted by public goods.  Remember that one of my assumptions is that
the GPL will not be the only or the dominant licensing scheme out
there.  However, I do see people protecting their work and their IP
rights by preventing others from profiting from it.  Therefore,
companies such as Netscape, Sun, IBM, and others who have looked to Open
Source will incur the same imaginary problems you've outlined, i.e.
competitors having to "reinvent the wheel" as time goes on.  I don't see
that problem going away.

Additionally, I don't see the current closed model being any different.

[SNIP]
> No, he's the most brilliant person I know. He has a keen perception
> of the landscape and can recognize unfair competition and predatory
> tactics, whether they're executed by a large company like Microsoft
> or by a loosely connected group of individuals.

Since we're talking about this friend, who I don't know, I'll take your
word for it.  However, his statement about plumbing seems highly
illogical, if not downright idiotic, especially since the motivation for
that statement seems to have come from the King of commercialization,
Microsoft.  

Predatory tactics implies that this is the intent of the programmers. 
The closest you've come to proving this type of intent is with RMS,
himself.  People who use the GPL/LGPL licenses don't seem to believe
this, though.  Instead, they're looking for a way to protect their work
from being absorbed by someone else.  This is a valid and currently
acceptable excercise of their intellectual property rights.

[SNIP]
> In short, you're telling him that he may not be an author, build up
> intellectual capital in a product, and sell it. Instead, you would
> like to put him on the frustrating treadmill of consulting or reduce
> him to the level of a service technician. No wonder he wants to get
> out of the field.

That's unfair.  I'm NOT a technician, but an author, as well as a
technician.  When I walk into a room with a potential client, I bring
technical skills, but also a business sense which helps to understand
them and their technical problems.  To use the jargon of the industry, I
try to find their IT pain, and alleviate it for them.  I don't find
consulting to be a "frustrating treadmil" nor do I consider myself a
service technician.  Heck, I don't even know what part of consulting is
a "treadmill" or appears to be like a treadmill?  I mean, different
clients, different technologies, what else can bring more variety? 
Programming in C/C++, for Windows, day-in, day-out?  Give me a break.

Additionally, we have research divisions which push the technology
frontier by generating tools which we can give to clients to allow them
to work better and faster.  
Why work on Word when there are bigger and better things to work on?

> Again, jobs for technicians, not creators.

A) They're still jobs (i.e. your argument that we'll all starve is
silly, as you've just admitted).

B) I disagree that they're "jobs for technicians, not creators" for the
reasons I've outlined above.  It's just as creative.  It's just not a
consumer product industry.

> 
> >You've never answered that,
> 
> I sure have. You're simply blinded by denial and have refused to
> listen.

Wha??  Denial?  Of what?  Show me the emails where you've said or shown
that more jobs are in the consumer/pay-for software industry than in the
consulting/service oriented business sector!

I admit I've never heard/read your facts to the contrary, but I resent
the attack embodied in your statement above.  I've been listening... 
Please, show me what I've missed.

[SNIP]
> Not if they must start from scratch. Again, they should be allowed
> to use open source as a foundation and to spare them from reinventing
> the wheel when they could be innovating. The GPL seeks to keep them
> on a treadmill, redoing what's already been done.

You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who will say that today's software
market isn't successful at creating jobs and protecting our high
salaries, even though it's primarily a closed-source, you reinvent the
wheel type of market.  I mean, is there any real, purposeful difference
between Word, WordPerfect, Star Office, Applixware, AbiWord, etc., etc.,
etc., as far as simple word processing is concerned?  How much repeated
code do you think is involved there?

The treadmill is already there.  The GPL seeks to change the nature of
the game.  In addition, it ISN'T THE ONLY LICENSE OUT THERE!!!!!! 
Yeesh.  Read what I'm saying, not what you're imagining:  Open Source
(not GPL only) products can easily co-exist with commercial software.

[SNIP]
> I guess Web browsers are passee', then, as soon as Microsoft dumps one
> to put Netscape out of business.

Again, Brett, try to be fair... that's not what I meant (in fact, it
isn't what I said, either).  You misinterpreted what I meant by free.

Products that are developed via the Open Source collaborative model,
i.e. like Linux, or BSD, or Apache, make pay for options passee.  My
thinking is that if a bunch of people working primarily in their spare
time can create a product which competes favorably on a feature basis
with a commercial product, the company who made the pay-for product made
a stupid business decision, or needs to advance the technology of their
product to something new.  Period. 

Netscape truly did make an innovative product.  So did Microsoft, in IE
4 (I didn't like or use it, but that doesn't mean it didn't have new
things, like ActiveX... innovation doesn't necessarily have to be *good*
:-).  Both have pushed browser technology (and browser bloat) forward. 
The pricing issue is, of course, one of the issues in the DOJ case, so I
need not explain that to you.  Another fact:  I can't think of a
collaboratively developed Open Source web browser out there that
competes favorably on a feature basis with Netscape or IE.  Not a one.

So, by the definition I provided in my original message, Netscape did
innovate (and could still be making a profit had it not been for
Microsoft, as no free product exists, nor do I believe could exist
without a few years of lead time.  This is, of course, a moot point now
because of Microsoft's actions, and subsequently Netscape's creation of
Mozilla.org.

> 
> >The company needs to innovate, not get fat off of a zero
> >margin product.
> 
> I see: Netscape obviously didn't innovate. Not at all. Right. Sure.

You don't seem to realize how stupid this makes you look, right? :-) 
Please respond to my statement instead of being silly.  An example of a
company getting fat of a zero margin product would be, for example,
IBM's mainframe division, which makes a TON of money off of license
renewals for their old Mainframe products.  If someone got bored, maybe
they could write a replacement (unlikely, I guess).  Point is that if a
free replacement existed, would it be a bad thing?  Another example,
more appropriate, would be the market for simple web servers (not
applications servers or e-commerce servers, but plain vanilla web
servers).  Apache serves web pages just as well as anything else.  In
fact, it supports a majority of the features that people want.  People
still buy Netscape, or use IIS, or buy WebSite Pro because they offer
innovative (and quite different) features above and beyond the plain-old
same-old page serving.

Finally, I didn't say that Netscape didn't innovate.  See above.

Sujal

> 
> --Brett

-- 
------ Sujal Shah ---- sujal@worldnet.att.net

       http://home.att.net/~sujal/
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