Re: [LI] Message from RMS.

[Raj Mathur <raju@xxxxxxx>]

Uh-huh, you got it all wrong.  Sharing wealth which diminishes (or
remains static) by sharing is communism.  Sharing wealth which
increases by sharing is called being a good citizen of the world.  If
I have a hundred rupees and give you fifty, the total amount of wealth
in the world doesn't increase.  On the other hand, if I have a program
which saves me 2 hours a day in managing my appointments and share it
with you, I increase the amount of wealth in the world by 2 man-hours
per day without dimishing anything.  See?

-- Raju

>>>>> "Arun" == Arun Sharma <adsharma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

    Arun> On Sat, Dec 04, 1999 at 12:43:03PM +0530, Raj Mathur wrote:
    >> Next, it /is/ true that software is wealth, and making
    >> proprietary software is tantamount to reducing the amount of
    >> wealth in the world.

    Arun> That is communism in my book. In your view of the world,
    Arun> software, which you define as wealth should be free for
    Arun> all. In other words, having property is illegal. If this is
    Arun> not communism, what else is ?

    Arun> I would like to be in control of my wealth. If I please,
    Arun> I'll donate some of my wealth to others. But no one can
    Arun> force me to do that.

    >> Purely from a moral point of view, then, all software should be
    >> free.

    Arun> Impractical.

    >> If you make proprietary software, you are a hoarder,

    Arun> Let me ask you this - do you have a bank account ?

    >> and I for one will not encourage you in your selfish objectives
    >> by giving you the means to incorporate my code into your
    >> software.

    Arun> Who said anything is wrong with being selfish ? That's what
    Arun> drives capitalism.

    >> All code I write is GPL'd, and if you don't like the GPL you
    >> are free to use a (perhaps better, perhaps worse)
    >> implementation which follows a less (more?)  restrictive
    >> license.

    Arun> (a) Sure I don't like GPL. But to be practical - Linux is
    Arun> the OS that best suits my needs today and from a practical
    Arun> point of view, it makes sense to contribute to it.

    Arun> (b) Even RMS admits that GPL is a *more* restrictive
    Arun> license. He just insists that it is more "free", for his
    Arun> definition of "free".

    >> Now comes the question of how programmers are to make money.  I
    >> don't know whether anyone on this list has noticed, but the
    >> world is changing.  MS, for example, has publicly announced
    >> their intent to completely change the focus of their company
    >> from software to services in a few years.

    Arun> MS still owes most, if not all of their money to closed
    Arun> software and will continue to make most of their money that
    Arun> way.

    Arun> I as a programmer, would like to design new things and
    Arun> implement them.  That's what I'm good at and what I'd like
    Arun> to get paid for. I don't see anything immoral about it. If
    Arun> RMS has a problem with what I do, he can continue blowing
    Arun> his horn (which is drying up whatever respect he had, due to
    Arun> his technical excellence) and I'll write BSD licensed code
    Arun> and will tell others, using whatever forum is available to
    Arun> me to do the same.

    >> I don't know of any large computer hardware vendor who is not
    >> focussing on services to drive their revenues (IBM, of course,
    >> has been doing that for years).  The cost you pay for
    >> commercial software is split about 20-80 between the cost of
    >> developing that software and supporting it.

    Arun> Sure. We can all put on the consultant hat and continue to
    Arun> become service engineers. Who's going to write the software
    Arun> ? Where is the incentive ?

    Arun> And continuing the RMS philosophy, service engineers have
    Arun> knowledge.  Knowledge is wealth. If you get paid for
    Arun> service, you're hoarding your knowledge. You selfish service
    Arun> engineer!

    >> In other words, if you don't recognise that fact that the
    >> economy of tomorrow will be driven by services rather than by
    >> products, you will find yourself shut out of a, ahem, new world
    >> order.

    Arun> Something like the Post PC era that's been coming for how
    Arun> many years now ?

    >>  Given this, proprietary software will only play a small part
    >> in the IT revenues of the world.  Most of the money will be
    >> made by people like Atul, Kishore and Gopi, who are offering
    >> services only, or primarily (can someone enlighten us on the
    >> split between service and product revenue of Exocore and/or C&B
    >> Consulting in the past year?)  In past avatars I've earned tons
    >> of money (atleast by my standards :-) from writing, porting,
    >> packaging and supporting free (GPL'd) software, and I would be
    >> doing it today if I didn't have committments to my job.
    >> 

    Arun> Ok. You can lecture me on how to make money using
    Arun> services. I'm *not* interested in being a service
    Arun> engineer. I'd like to do new things.  In your scheme of
    Arun> things, I should be a service engineer by the day and a free
    Arun> software developer by the night ?

    Arun> I might as well write commercial software by the day and
    Arun> write free software for entertainment purposes.

    >> There is no dearth for money to be made and no need for
    >> programmers to starve.  Even if you find that you are rotten at
    >> client interaction and cannot get directly into services, or
    >> you are only a hard-core programmer, resources like
    >> cosource.com and [what's the other one, forgotten it's name :-)
    >> ] will act as a mediator where people will pay you for the GPL
    >> software you develop to their specifications.

    Arun> Again the GNU agenda. Let me repeat GPL != free
    Arun> software. SourceXchange is headed by one of the Apache
    Arun> founders. If you see the Apache license (and the fact that
    Arun> apache.org runs on FreeBSD) you can get his inclination.

    >> Given all this, I see no reason to avoid the GPL virus.  If you
    >> have faith in your capabilities to deliver quality products and
    >> services, if you read the papers and magazines, if you believe
    >> that the world should be a better place to live in for
    >> everyone,

    Arun> For everyone - including those of us, who believe in and
    Arun> work in proprietary, closed source software companies. GPL
    Arun> doesn't accommadate us.

    >> if you have ever used a proprietary software and wondered,
    >> ``Why doesn't this do X the way I want X done?'',

    Arun> It's easy to shoot down Windows (the prime example of
    Arun> proprietary software) in a Linux crowd.  Seriously, do you
    Arun> believe that it's going away in the next decade ?  It has
    Arun> it's place. That's reality.

    Arun> NT just got a C2 certification, it beats Linux in
    Arun> performance benchmarks and usability. It's just that the
    Arun> code is owned by a overly agressive company and as a student
    Arun> of computer science, NT is not very interesting because of
    Arun> its closed nature.

    Arun> Technically, you can create a debian distribution around the
    Arun> NT kernel and Win32 GUI. It's just too expensive,
    Arun> uninteresting and un-heroic to do so.  Cygnus almost does
    Arun> it.

    >> if you don't want to rely on any single organisation for your
    >> software support needs, then the GPL is the way to go.

    Arun> GPL is not a necessary condition. You can get support for
    Arun> Apache from many consultants for example.

    >> Any license with different objectives will only dilute the
    >> effort that all of us are making and lengthen the shift.

    Arun> A different license without the objective of "destroying
    Arun> closed source" is exactly what is needed.

    Arun> 	-Arun

    Arun> PS: Before we go too deep into this, can someone verify that
    Arun> this is not a hoax ? I couldn't see the RMS posting on
    Arun> debian-user archives.