Free Software and payment (was: Re: [ox-en] Fwd from Martin Hardie)
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 18:04:06 +0200
Hi Markus and all!
First I'd like to ask you two things. If there is no reason to
full-quote please don't do. This is an archived mailing list and
nobody needs an unchanged full quoute in a reply. Also please choose
an appropriate subject when you post to this list. An appropriate
subject helps people going through the archive to find interesting
threads. Thanks.
3 days ago Markus wrote:
certainly, there will
always be people who believe in extremes and dogmas and believe open
source should be free of money. i, for one, want open source to prevail
(in the marketplace) and to deliver outstanding quality for the benefit of
most people. and im convinced that money is a core element to achieve all
this.
I'm really curious if you can give us reasons for your conviction.
It is a fact that Free Software became successful before money started
to play a role in some projects. I mean in the time before 1998 Free
Software was completely without money. It was this time where the
foundations of the success of Free Software were laid. Also at this
time a full-blown capitalist software market already existed. So Free
Software to my knowledge is the only type of non-capitalist product
which managed to "compete" with capitalist products even after a
complete market exists.
If you want to understand that phenomenon the natural question is:
What is so special in Free Software that it were able to have (until
this time) this historically new effect? I think - and indeed it is
one of the fundamentals of Oekonux thinking - it was exactly *because*
Free Software worked without money. The high quality of Free Software
is a direct result of this very special and non-capitalist way of
production seen in Free Software. And this is not only theoretical but
also a practical observation: If you ever produced software in
capitalist mode you know why Free Software comes to higher quality...
Now, you say you want Free Software to prevail in the marketplace. My
first question would be: Why does it need any help at all? Free
Software is still doing well in the marketplace and it continues to do
so - regardless of how many people say repeat that now this time is
over.
Above you accept that Free Software delivers outstanding quality. Why
do you think this is so? I gave the Oekonux reason above, what is
your's?
Finally why do you think that money can help for delivering
outstanding quality? In the past money were not necessary for this and
I think the very reason for this is that Free Software is special
*because* money does not introduce alienation in people's activity and
*therefore* they can live their Selbstentfaltung and produce software
with outstanding use value. Money can only destroy this. If money
would be useful for highly useful software then Free Software would
have had no chance against Microsoft.
And to me it doesn't matter much whether the money is distributed by
some committee or by the market. The effect on the Free Software
project is always the same: Projects don't do what is best for the use
value but what is best to receive money. It introduces alienation in
effect killing quality.
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
--
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