[BadVista Advocate] Free software community

[Michael Fötsch]

Hi Russ,

Russ Karlberg wrote:
> If you give away
> software or music to your friends, eventually it will spread and then the
> author will not make any more money.

Mike Masnick recently suggested quite the contrary: http://techdirt.com/articles/20070503/012939.shtml

> How about games?  I
> enjoy computer games, as do millions of other people.   Those companies
> invest millions in them, do you expect them to give everything away?

Mike Masnick dubbed this the "the $200 million movie question,
wondering how the same kind of huge blockbuster movies can be made
without scarcity, or how rockstars will reach rockstar status." See http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20061206/011155.shtml and http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060515/0321220.shtml

> Just because it's not a material good

> doesn't mean it didn't take a lot of effort to create.

It might have been a lot of effort, yes, but, as Richard Stallman notes, copyright (at least in the U.S.) wasn't created as a *reward* to authors for their efforts, but merely as an *incentive* for them to create more works (although some people doubt that the incentive is necessary, or that it even works):

"When the U.S. Constitution was drafted, the idea that authors were entitled to

a copyright monopoly was proposed—and rejected. The founders of our country

adopted a different premise, that copyright is not a natural right of authors, but an

artificial concession made to them for the sake of progress. [...]"

"If copyright were a natural right, something that authors have because they

deserve it, nothing could justify terminating this right after a certain period of time,

any more than everyone’s house should become public property after a certain lapse

of time from its construction."
(From "Misinterpreting Copyright—A Series of Errors", published in "Free Software Free Society, http://www.gnu.org/doc/book13.html)

You might know this quote from Thomas Jefferson already:

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an
idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps
it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the
possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of
it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less,
because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea
from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who
lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."

 
So maybe here's the key point, and the source of our disagreement...

> Huh?  If somebody invents something new, they have the right to it.


I, for one, do not agree that anyone should have *exclusive* rights to an idea, and I assume many people here will agree. If someone has a great idea,
cool. That person should be entitled to use it to its full potential, and to exploit it financially all they want. But
why should the rest of society not be able to benefit from the same
idea? After all, no inventor comes up with anything *in isolation*.

If anyone wants to take my ideas, or the software for which I own the copyright, or the articles that I wrote, or the book that I co-authored (if only the publisher wouldn't own the copyright; so much about incentives to *authors* :-), I wish them all the best; they can do anything they like with it.

The real issue here is *not* that I think I could gain practical benefit from modifying, say, the source code of Microsoft Windows. (I, like you, believe in the benefits of division of labor.) The reason why I promote free software is that proprietary software is the antithesis to the society in which I want to live, namely a society in which ideas flow freely. Even if that means I have to mow my own lawn or repair my own car, for the time being...

Kind Regards,
M.F.





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