Re: Open Source or not? (Was: Unidentified subject!)
On Fri, Feb 08, 2002 at 02:07:13PM +0100, Dominic Rudisch wrote:
> "Paul E Condon,,," wrote:
>
> > [...] There is a conflict between ideas of property rights on software and
> > rights of individual humans to 'do their thing'. It will be interesting
> > to see how it comes out. [...]
>
> Actually, I do have a problem with people who oppose free software and
> see proprietary software as the only good thing. OTOH, I also have a
> problem with people with a "Free Software and nothing else"-attitude.
> I just hate extremists, they just turn good ideas into bad ones by
> thinking and talking in black-and-white terms _only_.
> Actually, I guess the best way is a peaceful coexistence of free and
> non-free software. People could follow their ideals and/or people could
> make a living, and the one getting the most out of it is the one who
> should: Joe Eight-Bit, the ordinary user.
>
> So the crowd I'm in must be pretty much the same as yours, I guess (the
> "do your thing and let everybody do his" one). So that means we can all
> join in to the huge, world-wide group-hug. Now isn't that nice? :-)
>
I don't believe at all that EVERYONE should be allowed to do his thing.
There are some people who promote REALLY BAD IDEAS, e.g. slavery as an
institution. Richard S. sees closed software as a RBI. He can be annoying,
but he is good. Bill is Bill. He will say what it is to his advantage to say.
I am confident that Richard will win, and Bill will lose, but it may take
some time. And part to the outcome may be that people who built their
professional lives on the expectation that they would gain significant
monetary rewards from writing software may be very dissapointed.
We, civilized society, need some way to compensate authors of real inovation
for their inovation, and not hold ideas hostage to owners of copyrights.
But I don't know how.
--
Paul E Condon | Failure is not an option.
pecondon@quiknet.com | It's bundled with the software.
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