Re: [ox-en] Centralized peer production
- From: Stefan Meretz <stefan meretz.de>
- Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2010 12:24:07 +0200
On 2010-07-11 01:47, Diego Saravia wrote:
But every other copy is decentralized because the software is
protected by the GNU GPL which requires anyone receiving that
instance has access to the Virtual Sources needed for
modification.
that is exactly the meaning of a free good!
not a public good (controlled by state, or limited: army, public
space)
not a common good (limited: fishery, common ancestral land property)
not a private/club good,(only accessible to owners)
its free, everyone could copy/reproduce/modify/use/distribute it
once developed, its free, you can have/produce infinities copies of
it, and the possessor of that copy could do whatever he/she wants
with it.
Nope, that's simply wrong. Free software is _not_ a "free good", it
comes with certain rules codified by a license, and the possessor can
not do whatwever s/he wants. S/he can only do what does not violate the
freedoms of others (given by the four freedoms of free software).
This is the common confusion of res nullius ("no man’s land") with res
communes (a commons based on a common pool ressource). The first is
unregulated while the latter is regulated (here: GPL).
This confusion was prominently given by Garret Hardin in 1968 with his
influencial paper "The Tragedy of the Commons". Instead of a commons, he
uses an unregulated "free good", a "no man's land", which indeed falls
into the tragedy. Many of the liberal economic theorists (except Elinor
Ostrom) are following this tremendous fault until today, because they
can argue: A good must be privatly or state owned, otherwise it will be
subject to a tragedy as Hardin showed.
Please do not repeat this confusion again and again.
Ciao,
Stefan
--
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