Besides, I know full well that the “point” of copyright is to benefit the public, not those that provide works. The point is noble but misguided. It paints human beings on the behaviorist canvas. It assumes that rewards and punishments are necessary to accomplish a human goal.

Although I do agree there is some public policy in copyright I think the economic platform of protection of easily reproducible works is ultimately two steps: 1 – protect the authors rights to control thier works in the public. 2 – the author is more willing to share his works if he has protection. We only have to view the copy protection measures of Da Vinci or Michelangelo or thier predecessors to understand the importance of intellectual property rights on the individual.

Mice

Open Source’s – the wealth of network’s – opposition to intellectual property is based on a one-size-fits all model for development where everyone is “free” to use the inventions and innovations of anyone else. OS wants to “kill the goose” and promises to deliver a larger golden egg.

This is absolutely correct. Although there may be a flourish of new products there is no guarantee those products will have any real quality. Furthermore, in the case of large Open Source projects like an O/S there is no guarantee of a planned outcome. Deficiencies may grow like a cancer without any real oversight to prevent systemic problems. The success of Red Hat and others is partly attributable to a professional workforce acting behind the scenes to manipulate the code created by the Open Source labour force. If it werent for the transfer fee the system would probably have fallen over by now. Yet now the open source community wants to remove any semblence of reward. Spoilt is one word that comes to mind.

Poptones

The value isn’t locked away in some golden vault of “intellectual property” and contracts and lawyers and torts.

Torts?? huh. Ok I know I come into your world and discuss the digital stuff so I can forgive this one.

And

they pay for it every time they contribute their own code to an open source project; they pay for it every time they hire a programmer to work on one of those free projects. You seem to be of the view it’s the commons or the corporation, when in fact the commons is attracting ever more corporations to its borders.

I think you have nipped the Open Source issue in the bud here. That is the economic advantage of open source for the community. I agree that it is a legally valid scheme and will retain a place in the greater computing industry in the future. Still my fear is for the programmers and companies that give away thier time and code in addition to paying the transfer fee. The viral licence can be insipid in that regard.

It also seems self defeating in one sense – Why should a company develop another persons product instead of creating thier own? Why should they pay IBM for a product and then be slaves to IBM in terms of thier intellectual output.

Its all very good and well to argue that we should all jump into one pond but thats where the big fish get the biggest advantage.

No software licensing costs, and free outsourcing – of course, that’s the value. It was meant to be the value. But that same value is brought to every programmer for hire. The value isn’t locked away in some golden vault of “intellectual property” and contracts and lawyers and torts.

But in that same context, we have (for example) IBM paying their own developers to port linux to the s390, then dumping that code into the “free” realm. Sure, IBM could pick up more sales of the 390, but those don’t exactly sell at the corner compumart, and there are damn few indie developers who could even use the code. And what value is brought by even making it free? The 390 is a virtualized machine already, all they needed to “port” linux was to create a proprietary sandbox where linux could live – and yet, they didn’t stop at that. Why?

I’ve never argued one size fits all. You and I agree here much more than we disagree, and I trust you know this. My disagreement with you here is not in defending a one size fits all application of ethic, but I object to the proverbial line in the sand which you seem to have drawn between “business” and “opennness,” ignoring at every turn the fact that open source is business. More impoirtantly, it is (or was) business as usual in the IT industry until only very recently.

“All those fingers typiing away outside the regular labor force” is a completely oblivious view – oblivious to the fact a great many of those fingers are a vast part of that “regular labor force.” Companies do “pay” for that “free or non existent” property – they pay for it every time they contribute their own code to an open source project; they pay for it every time they hire a programmer to work on one of those free projects. You seem to be of the view it’s the commons or the corporation, when in fact the commons is attracting ever more corporations to its borders.

no kidding. collaborative development is nothing new. sharing of ideas is nothing new. industrial cooperation long pre-dates anything called Open Source.

in certain limited circumstances it makes sense to give away intellectual property. (profit motivated) companies like IBM, Nokia, and SUN have famously made various commitments to different Open Source projects. they ain’t doing it out of altruism. for IBM et al, Open Source is the Best. Outsourcing. Ever. all those fingers typing away for free alongside the regular laborforce. all that free – or non-existent – intellectual property that they don’t have to pay to license. no software licensing costs.

but the OS model doesn’t work for everything. you would not have created a cellular radio network with OS techniques – although you did have a lot of industrial collaboration.

Open Source’s – the wealth of network’s – opposition to intellectual property is based on a one-size-fits all model for development where everyone is “free” to use the inventions and innovations of anyone else. OS wants to “kill the goose” and promises to deliver a larger golden egg.

You still don’t get it, do you?

They’re the same.

Intel uses “free” cores in their chips; Microsoft uses “free” technology in their gaming platform – hell, had it not been for BSD Microsoft wouldn’t even have had a network stack in Windows 98, or it would have been Windows 99 or Windows 2000 because they would have had to innovate that bit on their own instead of just lifting the free code and algorithms from BSD. Novell, long every bit as proprietary as Microsoft, is now one of the largest commercial providers of free software around, even funding development of gnome and mono, the free implimentation of Microsoft’s .NET technology (which is, itself, basically just Microsoft’s attempt at creating a “non free” competitor to java).

The F/OSS “community” is “the commercial community.” Redhat and Mandriva and Ubuntu and Novell are only the most obvious; there is also Tivo, which builds a “proprietary” home user product around commodity parts and a free operating system. Thee is also Linksys, Zoom, and untold others selling consumer oriented network products by the truckload – all built around free software.

By the way: F/OSS is a clunky expression not commonly used. Since we’re whipping them out and comparing sizes here, I’ll point out that “open source innovation” results in 159.000 results. What does it prove? Nothing. But since we seem to be playing that game…

Here is a very interesting result from that search:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7644

a google search of “F/OSS innovations” returns 6 hits.

a google search of “microsoft innovations” returns over 38,000 hits.

not scientific. but still.

“the benefits of proprietary [software] competitive advantage“

Please teach me. I suggest you write an article expounding your points. The proprietary software world needs it. They are well behind in terms of published articles/books that defend the practice of hoarding software.

Compare result 1 – with result 2.

There are also dozens of fine books out there defending free software and speaking on its behalf. Can you name a book that defends published proprietary software?

The only “advantage” I see anyone arguing for is “close contact with real-world customers”. I have been trying to figure out what that means for over 2 years now and how it relates to software. I don’t need “close-contact”. I just need communication for I am dealing with an intangible, virtual product. I don’t care if the person helping me is half-way around the globe using VoIP to talk me through a process or sitting right next to me.

“It’s likely that I misunderstood you, but the statement I was referring to is: “It seems to me that people miss the essential point of copyright which is to provide a benefit to those that produce works“

You have definitely confused me with – I think – ACS. Besides, I know full well that the “point” of copyright is to benefit the public, not those that provide works. The point is noble but misguided. It paints human beings on the behaviorist canvas. It assumes that rewards and punishments are necessary to accomplish a human goal. It’s actually a rather sick and twisted view of human nature though the goal of benefitting the public is noble and just.

“free software exists because – according to the history we don’t know – richard stallman became upset with the fact he could not obtain a new printer driver“

Free Software as an organized movement exists primarily because of RMS. However, free software actually existed long before that. Software was freely passed around by computer scientists to other computer scientists long before anyone came up with the absurd idea of placing source code under All Rights Reserved copyright.

Basically, the entire world of prorpietary software is riding on the back of the work of scientists who never claimed ownership on their work. The GPL and other free software licenses are simply pragmatic measures intended to combat the insanity of copyrighted software which destroyed the free software community. Such licenses did not come about to ride on the work of the proprietary world. They are a hearkening to the days when cooperation reigned.

As far as I can tell, the entire proprietary software world owes its existence to the work that computer scientists did simply for the love of it. Those who shared freely were the innovators. It’s ironically sad that many in the proprietary world now see free software as an organized movement as the enemy.