[lug] open source article (fwd)

[Wayde Allen]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 20:44:18 EST
From: TonStanco at aol.com
To: wallen at boulder.nist.gov
Subject: open source article

Hi,

I write an Internet Business Law column for Internet.com's Boardwatch 
magazine <www.boardwatch.com>. I'm writing a series of articles on open 
source and I'd like to get community feedback for my next article dealing 
with the question below. Can you post this or email your group members? If 
they want to respond or comment they can do so by emailing me at 
<tonstanco at aol.com>. I'll review responses until March 31, 2000, the deadline 
for the article. I expect the article will appear in the June magazine and 
online in July.

I've included a few snippets from my other article on open source for 
Boardwatch to be published in May and online in June. I'd include the whole 
article here but to do so now would be unfair to Boardwatch. The article 
basically argues that software should be open, but that the developers should 
get paid for the intellectual property they create. 

I'd like hear dissenting views as much as those that agree.

Best regards, 

Tony

>>>>

QUESTION:

I believe that Open Source is a very important freedom movement, because, 
like Harvard's Professor Lessig says, code is law, but with a non-human 
police force. With closed code, we'll all be prisoners in the very near 
future. So I believe that code MUST be open.

But can anyone tell me why software can't be both open and sold like Windows? 
Why is it that software has to be basically given away if it's open? I'm not 
sure that anyone in Open Source has ever answered  this question. It just 
seems to be assumed without any critical analysis. Why can't Open Source 
developers get a royalty percentage of the sale price just like writers, 
recording artists or movie actors, and the product sold just like Windows is 
through traditional channels, so that the developers get paid for their work?

>>>>
>>>>
>>>>

SNIPPETS FROM PREVIOUS ARTICLE

>>>>>
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS PERFECT FOR THE THIRD WORLD

With the timing that only good-natured intellectuals can have, they want to 
stop the game just as those they profess to help are entering the field. 
Intellectual property is exactly the perfect property for the 
disenfranchised. It requires the least amount of natural resources to 
produce. It requires some, but creating it is the least capital-intensive 
activity of all important economic activities. Also, it requires skills that 
are innately human and quickly learned. That's why a 14-year-old can create 
Microsoft.

What's great about this time in history is that the Internet has finally made 
pure intellectual thought developed alone in a bedroom valuable to the world 
economy. It has given 14-year-olds in India, China and other poor third world 
countries some chips to exchange. Just as this happens, the intelligentsia 
want to stop the game and take those few chips away from them. I say that's 
wrong. And that's why I think the free part of Open Source is wrong...

>>>>>
PROPERTY IS JUST TRADING CHIPS

Property is just societies' trading chips - a way to play in the game, a way 
of keeping track of who's producing and who's consuming as we move forward to 
the Post Economic goal line... 

Is it a perfect system? Look around. With over 5 billion people not even 
given a chance to pick up chips to participate and trade in the world 
economy, you have to be a fool to say it's perfect. But throwing out a system 
so that we have 6 billion poor instead of 5 billion (not including the 
Politburo types, of course, who will always do well) doesn't sound like a 
good idea to me...

>>>>
PROPERTY RIGHTS VERSUS POVERTY RIGHTS

Property rights, however, are still important, and should not be voluntarily 
surrendered so easily. The world should still try to increase the amount of 
available property. Without personal property, people are enslaved either by 
nature (e.g., Africa) or by others (e.g., China and the former Soviet 
Union).... The opposite of property rights is poverty rights...

>>>>>
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS

John Locke said that the fruits of one's labors are his property. Since 
thinking is quintessentially human (Descartes' I think therefore I am), 
intellectual property is quintessentially human property. In fact, 
intellectual property is the perfect property, because it admixes no capital 
with labor. Moreover, intellectual property can be viewed as an extension of 
self, because it is pure thought...

>>>
MORALLY WRONG TO STOP THE GAME EARLY

What limousine intellectuals and some techno-libertarians always want to do 
is stop the game before it ends. Yes, America is leading, so is most of the 
developed world, but if you're going to call the game, don't do it until the 
rest of the world gets a chance to score at least some points.

Yes, we in America can get rid of property rights now because there's 
probably enough property in the United States to equitably distribute among 
the 300 million people here. But was there enough property produced over the 
last 5,000 years for the other 5 billion inhabitants of the world? If there 
is, I'll join in stopping the game. But I don't think there is. So, stopping 
now is distributing the poverty, not the property. Therefore, the game must 
go on.