economic disadvantage of closed-source software/ intellectual property

[Mashi]

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[professor_chaos]

I hate popups.
Kind of underhanded attempt to force something on someone. Let the user choose.

I didn't make it past the second slide.

[KiwiNZ]

I agree suppress the pop ups they distrct from the content and are really annoying , I gave up on slide 4

[Kvark]

I read through it all despite the popups.

One thing is missing there just as in most texts which are arguing that intellectual concepts should not be property. Proving that something is bad is not constructive unless you suggest an alternative.

So suggest an alternative economical model that provides a reasonable amount of funds for development. We need a lot of people to work full time to keep up the development rate we have today. Those people needs food on the table.

Ubuntu for example is payed for by a rich guy who felt for the 'humanity to others' concept. The bounties for helping ubuntu with specific problems are often payed for by google who feels like supporting open source. Changing without an alternative and becoming dependant on charity to survive is something the development sector as a whole will never do.



As for the uneven distribution of wealth, the main cause of that is the fact that you can get a part of the pay for work someone else does. If you own half of a company that has 20k employees, then you get a portion of the pay for the work all those employees do. If you could get payed only for work you do yourself and not for work others do, then you couldn't soak up welth from the economy at large.

There are many examples of successful business today that distributes the pay fairly. For example the dominating dairy supplier here is owned by the diary farmers, how much of the company a farmer owns is determined by how much milk he/she supplies. Thus nobody else then the farmers gets payed for the farmers' work.

This model is actually very effective, the cash that doesn't go to stock holders anymore goes to higher wages, improved quality and lower prices.

[poptones]

The whole presentation seems to hinge on a flawed primary thesis: that an "uneven distribution of wealth causes poverty."

Look - money is just a unit of exchange. In our case it isn't even tied to a real, physical commodity any more, we dropped all that after the turn of the last century. Now our "money" is worth what it is simply by agreement - and when we need more of it we make more of it. If the GNP isn't rising quickly enough to cover up the greater productivity demands that can lead to all sorts of bad things because the greater supply of money means it's actually worth a bit less. But when it's all rolled to the bottom of the hill, it's not like these few people have "all the money." There simply isn't "all the money." This isn't a monopoly game; you don't "win" by hoarding all the hundreds under the board.

Poverty can be caused by greed but it's not the only source. Your presentation seems to be about blaming the big guy for being big and not giving it all back to the little guy. Right on page 2 or 3 you talk about pricing the software based on "what it is worth" but then go on to SHOUT VERY LOUDLY that labor should be priced according to what it is "worth" exclusive of demand and supply. Ummm.. so how do you determine what it is "worth" if you set prices exclusive of supply? If I tell you I want a million dollars to fix your car are you obligated to pay it rather than just go buy another car or take it to a different, more reasonable mechanic?

It's all based on units of exchange, and much as you may insist to the contrary there really is an infinite supply. For example, Photoshop itself is also a unit of exchange: it is a means of exchanging the labor of an employee for pay - just like the dollar. The Gimp could also be a unit of exchange, but because Photoshop is presently a more settled "standard" that makes it worth more to the businesses that need to buy it. The Gimp may be free, but its actual cost may really be much higher if your use of it means you have a substantially smaller pool of labor to choose. In the grander scheme of any business, even a thousand dollars a seat for software is nothing compared to the overhead of the employee's salary.

Page 8 is really wack. If a worker emplys another person, then he has become part of this corrupt system just the same as his own boss. And the fact is we ALL have bosses, even Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. Those overpaid CEOs you are railing against are hired guns like any other - they just have managed to convince others they really are million dollar mechanics.

[Mashi]

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