Re: [ox-en] Alternative currencies and Oekonux (was: Re: Autonomy)
- From: "Nadav Har'El" <nyh math.technion.ac.il>
- Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 11:46:12 +0300
On Wed, Apr 05, 2006, magius wrote about "Re: [ox-en] Alternative currencies and Oekonux (was: Re: Autonomy)":
Imho you're going around the problem. i wish to put it to you
*brutally*: how do you take bread to live? finding bread is necessary.
how do you solve this problem? working in the capitalistic system.
that has probably nothing to do on how free software "works" ;-)
I'm not sure I understand your question. It is true that in a world where
food costs money, or even land to grow your own food costs money, you
need money, and you have to follow society's rules on how to get it
(namely, capitalism).
But, I don't see what this has to do with free software.
The fact you need money for food doesn't make free software, as a phenomenon,
depend on money. As I mentioned, the existance (and even success) of free
software does not need that *everyone* write free software - just that a
small percentage of the world's population write it. These people might be
hobbyists - who do various things for a living but in their spare time
program for fun (or because of their personal needs, unrelated to money).
Or, these programmers may even be people whose lives are already paid for
by others (think - teenagers, full-time students, people with rich parents,
etc.) and now can do whatever they want without bothering about money at all.
The nice thing is that if just one out of every hundred thousand (!) people
in the world would write free software independently of their "earthly"
needs, we'd have about 70,000 people writing free software - which may
actually be enough.
Sure, it would have been nice if capitalism found a way to reward and
encourage free software writers. You mentioned one way (improving your
career) and my dream is that one day we could have public software
institutions - which like Universities further the public's body of
freely available scientific knowledge, will further the public's body of
freely available software. But luckily (I think), even if none of these
things will ever happen inside capitalism, Free Software still has a
safe future. At least, that's what I think.
--
Nadav Har'El | Thursday, Apr 13 2006, 15 Nisan 5766
nyh math.technion.ac.il |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Hardware, n.: The parts of a computer
http://nadav.harel.org.il |system that can be kicked.
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