I am in on position to comment on Mr. Stallman's technical work, but I regard his thinking on the obligations of information creators as completely boneheaded. I admire the GNU model. I (am currently trying to) use some GNU software. But Mr. Stallman seems to be of the opinion that the producer of an intellectual work only has a right to compensation if the work was produced on commission, and then only from the party who commissioned it. In other words, if you want to get paid for your work consistently, you'd better be selling distinctive physical objects, because the fruit of thinking is "socialized".

I wonder if Mr. Stallman feels the same way about microchip production processes, and machine tool design. Let's see how much innovation we have when patents are abolished in *that* realm.

-- Ed

Ed,

I agree. At the end of the day, I believe that the reason to choose Open Source is a practical one, not a moral one. The creator of a work has the right to give it away or to sell it, to share its intellectual content or to keep it proprietary. For that matter, as artists have always done, the creator even has the right to destroy his or her work (although we always cry out in anguish when such a thing happens).

Those of us on the practical side of the fence want to use Open Source to make our products better, to build communities of users that can help each other, and to spread the word. If keeping something proprietary does a better job of meeting your needs, that seems fine to me. After all, the market will tell you if you're right.

To me, if Open Source is "right" it's right like gravity is right. The truth will come out in the end.

The reason for activism, of course, is that there are companies that aren't willing to accept the judgement of the free market of ideas, for the best products to win, but instead try to use their market power to suppress other technologies, or to take the work of others and twist it in a way that denies its full usefulness to its customers. This is a form of expropriation of other people's work, which is completely different from what you choose to do with your own work.

In short, I don't think proprietary business models are bad. I think predatory business models are bad.

The computer industry has profited enormously from Open Source technologies like the Internet. When companies try to take something that was community-developed and make it proprietary, that's bad, just like clearcutting in national forests is bad. It's taking advantage of something that doesn't really belong to you. But something you've created yourself--it's your right to share or to exploit, as you see fit.

--Tim

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