Comment by carapace

2 years ago

I honestly do not get the Open Source movement.

> It is quite literally a free lunch at the expense of hard-working individuals.

Yes! This. That's the point.

I'm a Free software developer and that's why I give my code away: to solve someone's problems with software. I can do that. I'm not particularly good at most things, but when it comes to writing software I'm very capable. In other words, I am a "free lunch" generator.

To me the entire point of computers and software (where these intersect with economics) is to change the structure of the economic system itself to a more humane system (that works in harmony with the global ecology, but that's a tangent to my main point today.) "Let the robots do the work and we'll take their pay."

Science and technology have won the day. We have the knowledge and resources to take care of everybody on Earth without "disadvantaging anybody" (as Bucky Fuller liked to say.) You don't have to "earn a living" anymore. We won history.

Software is just the clearest, cleanest example of the general phenomenon of science and technology obviating the physical bounds that held us back until now.

Getting back to software development: technology should be deployed so that folks only have to work a few hours a week to pay for their living expenses (e.g. $300 per month should cover food, housing, clothing, health care, etc., and over time that number should decrease!)

In that milieu people can develop software and give it away without the extra constraints of having to make it profitable in and of itself.

This is the whole point of technology in general and computers and software in particular: change the structure of the economy so that we can all "live happily ever after".