Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again)
To   : comp.programming
From : Joe Butler
Date : Mon Sep 26 2005 06:49 pm


"Willem" <willem@stack.nl> wrote in message
news:slrndjg3sb.e0b.willem@toad.stack.nl...
> Joe wrote:
> ) There's a effect where chimpanzies will make a "I've found food!"
> ) exclamation when they find food - nearby chimps will hear this and come
to
> ) the location of the food.  Now, for the _individual_ chimp that found
the
> ) food, it is invariably better if that chimp could eat as much of the
food as
> ) it wanted before calling out - but it's an inbuilt behaviour that the
chimp
> ) cannot control.  Naturalists have observed chimps putting their hands
over
> ) their mouths when they cry out.  I.e. there is a conflict in the chimps
> ) brain when it finds food:   inbuilt behaviours that have evolved
naturally
> ) and have given the chimp species a particular advantage, over the wants
of
> ) an individual from that species.
> )
> ) So, to consider what is better for the buyer alone is to ignore a bigger
> ) picture.
>
> Well then, could you make a case why closed source is better in the bigger
> picture ?

If closed source were no good, it would have died out.  A lot of free open
source persists, simply because it is free.  Of course, some of it persists
because it is better than the dominant closed source alternative.

>
> Besides the fact that 'locking in' your buyers is good for a vendor ?

At this point, we haven't yet established if 'locking in' isn't a myth
persisted by the OSS 'community'.

>
> Monopolies are also good for the vendors, but it is widely accepted that
> it is not good for the big picture.  Closed Source could just as well be
> argued to not be good for the big picture.

Monopolies.  Where did that come from?

>
> Here's a random argument:  Open Source Software means that the vendor has
> to deliver quality support, because otherwise other companies would step
> in and deliver better support.  This means that the overall quality of
> support will be better, which is a good thing.

What I can never understand about this argument is that if the product was
any good, you wouldn't be able to make any money out of support, period -
because the user would not have any reason to want support.  I guess also,
it's a weird concept: Let's not make any money out of the product itself,
let's make money out of _supporting_ the product - we've kind of shot
ourselves in the foot here, but if we provide the _best_ support, we can
have a monopoly on the _support_, not on the _product_.

> (This is the old 'competition is good, monopoly is bad' argument.)
>
> So, why is Closed Source better for the 'Big Picture' than Open Source ?

Closed source has evolved and survived (so far).  It has been able to
sustain itself.  Open source (with the GNU licence) seeks to change the
'eco-system' in a forced, unatural way.  It's 'unatural', because it wants
to compete in the eco-system, but on its own terms (i.e. it doesn't say,
"Anyone at all can use this source - even if you make your customers pay for
it - after all, it is OPEN source.", it says, "Only entities in the
eco-system that won't eat can play") - in the evolutionary model, if open
source was viable, free open source software would survive even if there
were payed-for alternatives of the very same open source product.  The
problem for open source is that most payed-for software is far more user
friendly than free software and this divide is only increasing.

.