"Free market" and intellectual property

[Ovi]

I was just wondering how would a stateless market economy deal with intellectual property. How would software be developed and who would fund scientific research that has little hope to achieve any profit (say LHC), who would pay writers for their work and so on. There are 2 possibilities here:
- there is no intellectual property; as far as I know even Konkin was against it
- there is IP, backed up by private police of some sort
Assuming most agorists are against IP, how would a society deal with this in the former case?
By the way, the quotes around "free market" only signify the fact that I don't believe freedom and market have anything in common.

[Qwerty Dvorak]

I don't know why you're putting this question to anarcho-capitalists (which I presume is what you mean?) because they are a non-existant force outside, it seems, of this site (and maybe a couple of other forums).

Anyway, from my limited knowledge of intellectual property I believe free marketers would oppose intellectual property laws; if I am correct intellectual property was never really considered a "natural" right as some might consider real or personal property, but rather a state construct designed to encourage technological innovation by providing people with a motivation to design things. Thing is, now you have the rise of peer-based development models like open source software and the like, and products of that kind of development perform very well against proprietary models so one might wonder why we need state-imposed restrictions to encourage innovation when that innovation happens even in the absence of restrictive IP barriers.

The conclusion to be drawn, I think, is that in any future society IP and IP law will play a limited, and eventually no, role.

[Kovacs]

This is always good for a way of winding up right wingers, and also raises many pertinent points


A Spectre is haunting multinational capitalism--the spectre of free information. All the powers of ``globalism'' have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcize this spectre: Microsoft and Disney, the World Trade Organization, the United States Congress and the European Commission.

Where are the advocates of freedom in the new digital society who have not been decried as pirates, anarchists, communists? Have we not seen that many of those hurling the epithets were merely thieves in power, whose talk of ``intellectual property'' was nothing more than an attempt to retain unjustifiable privileges in a society irrevocably changing? But it is acknowledged by all the Powers of Globalism that the movement for freedom is itself a Power, and it is high time that we should publish our views in the face of the whole world, to meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Free Information with a Manifesto of our own.

Owners and Creators

Throughout the world the movement for free information announces the arrival of a new social structure, born of the transformation of bourgeois industrial society by the digital technology of its own invention.

The history of all hitherto existing societies reveals a history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, bourgeois and proletarian, imperialist and subaltern, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that has often ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

The industrial society that sprouted from the worldwide expansion of European power ushering in modernity did not do away with class antagonisms. It but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. But the epoch of the bourgeoisie simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole seemed divided into two great hostile camps, into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

But revolution did not by and large occur, and the ``dictatorship of the proletariat,'' where it arose or claimed to arise, proved incapable of instituting freedom. Instead, capitalism was enabled by technology to secure for itself a measure of consent. The modern laborer in the advanced societies rose with the progress of industry, rather than sinking deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. Pauperism did not develop more rapidly than population and wealth. Rationalized industry in the Fordist style turned industrial workers not into a pauperized proletariat, but rather into mass consumers of mass production. Civilizing the proletariat became part of the self-protective program of the bourgeoisie.

In this way, universal education and an end to the industrial exploitation of children became no longer the despised program of the proletarian revolutionary, but the standard of bourgeois social morality. With universal education, workers became literate in the media that could stimulate them to additional consumption. The development of sound recording, telephony, moving pictures, and radio and television broadcasting changed the workers' relationship to bourgeois culture, even as it profoundly altered the culture itself.

Music, for example, throughout previous human history was an acutely perishable non-commodity, a social process, occurring in a place and at a time, consumed where it was made, by people who were indistinctly differentiated as consumers and as makers. After the adoption of recording, music was a non-persishable commodity that could be moved long distances and was necessarily alienated from those who made it. Music became, as an article of consumption, an opportunity for its new ``owners'' to direct additional consumption, to create wants on the part of the new mass consuming class, and to drive its demand in directions profitable to ownership. So too with the entirely new medium of the moving picture, which within decades reoriented the nature of human cognition, capturing a substantial fraction of every worker's day for the reception of messages ordering additional consumption. Tens of thousands of such advertisements passed before the eyes of each child every year, reducing to a new form of serfdom the children liberated from tending a productive machine: they were now compulsorily enlisted in tending the machinery of consumption.


Link again broken cos I haven't the posting rights yet. Lord save me from this Stalinist nightmare etc etc:cool:
emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/dcm.html

[Ovi]

I don't know why you're putting this question to anarcho-capitalists (which I presume is what you mean?

I'm not. I was asking anyone who supports 'free market', whatever that means, and is against IP. This includes market anarchists.


Anyway, from my limited knowledge of intellectual property I believe free marketers would oppose intellectual property laws; if I am correct intellectual property was never really considered a "natural" right as some might consider real or personal property, but rather a state construct designed to encourage technological innovation by providing people with a motivation to design things. Thing is, now you have the rise of peer-based development models like open source software and the like, and products of that kind of development perform very well against proprietary models so one might wonder why we need state-imposed restrictions to encourage innovation when that innovation happens even in the absence of restrictive IP barriers.

I'm a big fan of free software, but that's the problem. Free software (as in freedom) is impeded from developing by the lack of funds. Who would sponsor the LHC for instance in a free market economy, or any research that doesn't guarantee to achieve something that can sell?


The conclusion to be drawn, I think, is that in any future society IP and IP law will play a limited, and eventually no, role.
That's what I wish for. However, the so called free market seems to be against progress if you ask me.

This is always good for a way of winding up right wingers, and also raises many pertinent points

Good article. However, I have no doubts that research, music and arts would flourish once capitalism is gone.

[Havet]

I was just wondering how would a stateless market economy deal with intellectual property. How would software be developed and who would fund scientific research that has little hope to achieve any profit (say LHC), who would pay writers for their work and so on. There are 2 possibilities here:
- there is no intellectual property; as far as I know even Konkin was against it
- there is IP, backed up by private police of some sort
Assuming most agorists are against IP, how would a society deal with this in the former case?
By the way, the quotes around "free market" only signify the fact that I don't believe freedom and market have anything in common.

I think software would be developed as we are beginning to see already with the internet: incrementation.

Linux is a great example of this. It was the first step forwards, and it was then released for free. Afterwards, people change and tweak things about it freely, and the ones that become more popular are the ones who remain.

Scientific research would likely be funded by great institutions who got their funds voluntarily, although a community might impose some sort of tax in order to fund these.

Writers and musicians would get payed by consumers directly. A writer/musician is actually much more likely to make more money by letting his work for free and gain a reputation and then charging for exclusive things that can't be copied, like live performances, hard-cover books, etc. Some examples already exist as well: Vernian Process band (http://www.vernianprocess.com/http%3A/%252Fwww.vernianprocess.com/discography) and Radiohead's In Rainbows album (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/10/AR2007101002442.html)

So basically what i'm saying is that I DON'T think there would be intellectual property. And if there were, either it would be against common opinion or for common opinion.

If it were AGAINST common opinion, it would fit the criteria of a statist action, and would require massive apparatus of force in order to make citizens comply, which would be hard since a stateless market society would let citizens arm themselves. Possible, nonetheless.

If it were FOR common opinion, it would just reinforce common tradition, and if people did not like that they could always leave to another community where such rule did not apply.

If the previous community forced such laws on other communities, they would be engaging in statist activity, therefore nothing wrong with kicking their ass.

[IcarusAngel]

Uhh.. Linux was created at a University. Most of the people who write software for it are at Universities, either free ones in Europe (KDE) or here in the US. Internet was from government, hence why there are 'open standards' that the market is trying to take away.

You advocate people 'voting' to choose different "free market" governments; when anarchism is about Direct democracy, people participating in the means of productions.

[Ovi]

I think software would be developed as we are beginning to see already with the internet: incrementation.

Linux is a great example of this. It was the first step forwards, and it was then released for free. Afterwards, people change and tweak things about it freely, and the ones that become more popular are the ones who remain.

So in a market economy, talented people doing useful things for everybody such as programming end up not being paid at all for their work? That sucks.


Scientific research would likely be funded by great institutions who got their funds voluntarily, although a community might impose some sort of tax in order to fund these.

That means that the 9 billion dollar budget of the LHC should have been raised by donations, which is next to impossible, or by taxes, which I don't think is a "free market technique"?


Writers and musicians would get payed by consumers directly. A writer/musician is actually much more likely to make more money by letting his work for free and gain a reputation and then charging for exclusive things that can't be copied, like live performances, hard-cover books, etc. Some examples already exist as well: Vernian Process band (http://www.vernianprocess.com/http%3A/%252Fwww.vernianprocess.com/discography) and Radiohead's In Rainbows album (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/10/AR2007101002442.html)

So who would pay your next favorite philosopher or writer? Those who donate? How about until they get famous?


So basically what i'm saying is that I DON'T think there would be intellectual property. And if there were, either it would be against common opinion or for common opinion.

If it were AGAINST common opinion, it would fit the criteria of a statist action, and would require massive apparatus of force in order to make citizens comply, which would be hard since a stateless market society would let citizens arm themselves. Possible, nonetheless.

If it were FOR common opinion, it would just reinforce common tradition, and if people did not like that they could always leave to another community where such rule did not apply.

That's like saying: if you don't like your shitty government then move somewhere else. If your job sucks, get another one; it's not a solution at all, but a lame excuse for some stupid imposed rules.


If the previous community forced such laws on other communities, they would be engaging in statist activity, therefore nothing wrong with kicking their ass.
I agree. But I still don't see how someone ends up being paid for such work in a market economy. Should the scientists at the LHC rely on people's donations to keep them researching? Don't they deserve a proper wage like everyone else?

Uhh.. Linux was created at a University. Most of the people who write software for it are at Universities, either free ones in Europe (KDE) or here in the US. Internet was from government, hence why there are 'open standards' that the market is trying to take away.

You advocate people 'voting' to choose different "free market" governments; when anarchism is about Direct democracy, people participating in the means of productions.
I use Debian GNU/Linux almost exclusively (sometimes Ubuntu). I know what free software means. But in a market economy, why should some activities get paid while others end up only as hobbies, despite the fact that the entire economy depends on them and they're just as important?

[Havet]

So in a market economy, talented people doing useful things for everybody such as programming end up not being paid at all for their work? That sucks.

They can get paid if they are hired. And they will make money if they release it for free, by building a reputation and charging for more unique content. I would recommend reading Free The Future of a Radical Price book (http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/products/[email protected]@@@1199679439.1261 [email protected]@@@&BV_EngineID=cccfadejeiijfggcefecekjdffidfig.0&productID=BK_AVEN_000001) for better understanding.


That means that the 9 billion dollar budget of the LHC should have been raised by donations, which is next to impossible, or by taxes, which I don't think is a "free market technique"?

Its not really next to impossible. In China alone, they were able to raise (http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/09040XijinZhou.html) the equivalent of 15.7 billion dollars in donations for victims of snow storms and earth quake disasters.


So who would pay your next favorite philosopher or writer? Those who donate? How about until they get famous?

The people who consumed their work. Most writers real money is in conferences and speeches, and possible job offerings as advisers or something else, not really the sales of their books.


That's like saying: if you don't like your shitty government then move somewhere else. If your job sucks, get another one; it's not a solution at all, but a lame excuse for some stupid imposed rules.

It might sound like that, but its not. The difference between a government as we know it and those types of communities is that the others would tolerate their existence in an atmosphere of plurality. In our state of governments, government has throughout history imposed its will, sometimes to help, others to screw people. Going back, it is likely the bad communities would be taken over by the others ones in case something started to go wrong.

I think your analogy of leaving jobs and leaving communities is wrong because you would be in fact free to leave the community and create another one, whereas in jobs there is an artificial scarcity which limits supply and increases the costs of finding a new one and keeping it.


I agree. But I still don't see how someone ends up being paid for such work in a market economy. Should the scientists at the LHC rely on people's donations to keep them researching? Don't they deserve a proper wage like everyone else?

You can pay them a ''proper wage'' if you want.

[Ovi]

They can get paid if they are hired. And they will make money if they release it for free, by building a reputation and charging for more unique content. I would recommend reading Free The Future of a Radical Price book (http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/products/[email protected]@@@1199679439.1261 [email protected]@@@&BV_EngineID=cccfadejeiijfggcefecekjdffidfig.0&productID=BK_AVEN_000001) for better understanding.

Is there a simple answer to: how would a programmer get payed for his work? Yes, you can get payed for technical support, but that is some other labor, that you might or might not want to do.


Its not really next to impossible. In China alone, they were able to raise (http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/09040XijinZhou.html) the equivalent of 15.7 billion dollars in donations for victims of snow storms and earth quake disasters.

In that case, much of the research would stop to a halt. Not to mention that it would require massive advertising, meaning a lot of money, to start such a project in the first place. Plus it would no longer be regarded as something "productive", but some useless stuff that we should or not support which I don't think is the case.


The people who consumed their work. Most writers real money is in conferences and speeches, and possible job offerings as advisers or something else, not really the sales of their books.

That would still leave their years longs work completely worthless since nobody is paying them for that.


It might sound like that, but its not. The difference between a government as we know it and those types of communities is that the others would tolerate their existence in an atmosphere of plurality. In our state of governments, government has throughout history imposed its will, sometimes to help, others to screw people. Going back, it is likely the bad communities would be taken over by the others ones in case something started to go wrong.

The "take it or leave it" doesn't sound very different to what we have today. The only difference is that today, the only alternative is death. Even if there would be one, it wouldn't make governments and employers any more justified.


You can pay them a ''proper wage'' if you want.
Who me? Why me? I'm not the only one benefiting from such work. It's not "second class" work nor is it useless, quite on the contrary. The only problem is that there isn't anything to sell.

[Havet]

Is there a simple answer to: how would a programmer get payed for his work? Yes, you can get payed for technical support, but that is some other labor, that you might or might not want to do.

1. He can be hired by a company and agree to produce programs for that company exclusively

2. He can start his own company and distribute his own programs. One of the ways he can make money is by creating a website distributing for free his programs. When he starts getting a lot of traffic, advertising companies will want to place ads in his website, and he can charge them for that.


In that case, much of the research would stop to a halt. Not to mention that it would require massive advertising, meaning a lot of money, to start such a project in the first place. Plus it would no longer be regarded as something "productive", but some useless stuff that we should or not support which I don't think is the case.

Why would it stop to a halt? Donation was just one of the possibilities I mentioned. Nothing is stopping you from organizing with your rich buddies and convincing them to fund scientific research.

You can also set up small local increases in prices with several companies in order to fund this. For example, a local grocery store could agree to raise every product they have by 5 cents and then put those extra 5 cents in a special account destined for research funds.

To the extent that research is productive, then it should be supported, but I don't agree that you should force people into supporting.


That would still leave their years longs work completely worthless since nobody is paying them for that.

How do you know that? Most good writers manage to find a niche market in their early years, and after that is when they start building momentum for their real success. If they have trouble going by, they can always ask for help of family members or resort to special "artistic" charities that help these kinds of projects.


The "take it or leave it" doesn't sound very different to what we have today. The only difference is that today, the only alternative is death. Even if there would be one, it wouldn't make governments and employers any more justified.

So you're saying that communities aren't justifiable either? That we must all be forced into having "your way"?


Who me? Why me? I'm not the only one benefiting from such work. It's not "second class" work nor is it useless, quite on the contrary. The only problem is that there isn't anything to sell.

Yes you. If the scientists agreed to distribute their research for free, but you feel that they are not being rewarded, you are free to pay them. Just as you are free to convince others to pay them.

Besides, they will be payed anyway, just not by their content alone, but by speeches, conferences and expositions where they explain what they actually discovered and attract investors.

[Ovi]

1. He can be hired by a company and agree to produce programs for that company exclusively

2. He can start his own company and distribute his own programs. One of the ways he can make money is by creating a website distributing for free his programs. When he starts getting a lot of traffic, advertising companies will want to place ads in his website, and he can charge them for that.

So there's no way someone can get a fair pay for his work is it? I think I once read a post of yours where you said that in a free market economy, revenues will tend to be proportional to the amount of work one does. Relying on donations and advertising for funds is anything but that. That is probably the reason why companies like Red Hat, Novell and others use technical support, certifications and courses instead of ads and donations for funding.


Why would it stop to a halt? Donation was just one of the possibilities I mentioned. Nothing is stopping you from organizing with your rich buddies and convincing them to fund scientific research.

You can also set up small local increases in prices with several companies in order to fund this. For example, a local grocery store could agree to raise every product they have by 5 cents and then put those extra 5 cents in a special account destined for research funds.

To the extent that research is productive, then it should be supported, but I don't agree that you should force people into supporting.

Why would a small grocery store support nuclear physics at a particle accelerator? What rich people? There are no rich people in anarchy. And since the vast majority of research is supported not by donations, but by governments, then even governments are a better way to funding research than donations are. Destroying them and coming up with no alternative is no where to go.




How do you know that? Most good writers manage to find a niche market in their early years, and after that is when they start building momentum for their real success. If they have trouble going by, they can always ask for help of family members or resort to special "artistic" charities that help these kinds of projects.

So the scientists at the LHC should depend on charities to continue research? That would be the end of it no doubt.


So you're saying that communities aren't justifiable either? That we must all be forced into having "your way"?

Quite on the contrary. Nobody should restrict my freedom as long as I don't restrict yours. Once that's gone reverting to capitalism is the next step.


Yes you. If the scientists agreed to distribute their research for free, but you feel that they are not being rewarded, you are free to pay them. Just as you are free to convince others to pay them.

Why? You use a web browser to write these posts, along with every operating system applications it has simply to support that. All of these took thousands of years of human work. Don't you think those people deserve something for their work? Why should something, like a market economy decide what is productive and what is not? In this case the decision is either completely wrong, having people working full time for nothing and everyone benefiting from that work, or restricting people's freedom using copyrights. 2 rotten solutions.


Besides, they will be payed anyway, just not by their content alone, but by speeches, conferences and expositions where they explain what they actually discovered and attract investors.
In that case how come the vast majority of free software is done by volunteers, people that don't get any material benefit for their work? They don't have marketing skills? Of course not! They're programmers and that's what they should be payed for. So in the end, a free market either supports statist actions such as patent and copyright lawsuits and personal freedom violation or fails to give a fair remuneration to a part of the hard working people?

[Havet]

So there's no way someone can get a fair pay for his work is it? I think I once read a post of yours where you said that in a free market economy, revenues will tend to be proportional to the amount of work one does. Relying on donations and advertising for funds is anything but that. That is probably the reason why companies like Red Hat, Novell and others use technical support, certifications and courses instead of ads and donations for funding.

Define fair pay


Why would a small grocery store support nuclear physics at a particle accelerator?

Why would a small-income family support charity?


What rich people? There are no rich people in anarchy. And since the vast majority of research is supported not by donations, but by governments, then even governments are a better way to funding research than donations are. Destroying them and coming up with no alternative is no where to go.

Yes in a market anarchist society there can be rich people, though the difference is that they wouldn't have become rich through exploitation and they wouldn't be able to get THAT MUCH rich as some people are now. Example: soccer players


So the scientists at the LHC should depend on charities to continue research? That would be the end of it no doubt.

We were talking of writers, but it seems you got tired of them. I'm not going to answer this since you don't even argue your stance. You just spout a statement.


Quite on the contrary. Nobody should restrict my freedom as long as I don't restrict yours. Once that's gone reverting to capitalism is the next step.

Well that's good. How does me being in a community with freedom to trade restricts the freedom of other neighboring communities?


Why? You use a web browser to write these posts, along with every operating system applications it has simply to support that. All of these took thousands of years of human work. Don't you think those people deserve something for their work? Why should something, like a market economy decide what is productive and what is not? In this case the decision is either completely wrong, having people working full time for nothing and everyone benefiting from that work, or restricting people's freedom using copyrights. 2 rotten solutions.

Yes those people deserve something. And they get something (http://kiamo.co.uk/2009/02/where-does-mozilla-get-its-money-from/).


In that case how come the vast majority of free software is done by volunteers, people that don't get any material benefit for their work? They don't have marketing skills? Of course not! They're programmers and that's what they should be payed for. So in the end, a free market either supports statist actions such as patent and copyright lawsuits and personal freedom violation or fails to give a fair remuneration to a part of the hard working people?

I don't see the problem with people giving away things for free. Should youtube users get material benefit from their work? No. Many just want to share their videos with their friends for free, others want to advertise their work in hopes for an income, and others self-employ themselves through youtube.

It seems that your argument boils down to: people who do things for free should always receive something in return, even if they don't want to. I'm pretty sure you're clever enough to realize what is wrong with this argument.

[Ovi]

Define fair pay

Fair pay? Getting nothing while working full time on something that many people need is not fair. I don't think it requires any definition.


Why would a small-income family support charity?

Exactly. Who would donate to people working in areas that don't sell anything: research, culture and programming?


Yes in a market anarchist society there can be rich people, though the difference is that they wouldn't have become rich through exploitation and they wouldn't be able to get THAT MUCH rich as some people are now. Example: soccer players

That's your view of an anarchist society, not mine.


We were talking of writers, but it seems you got tired of them. I'm not going to answer this since you don't even argue your stance. You just spout a statement.

The idea was this: how would people gain any income without intellectual property, whether they are physicists, writers or programmers?


Well that's good. How does me being in a community with freedom to trade restricts the freedom of other neighboring communities?

The freedom to restrict others is not a freedom. Freedom to employ others is not a freedom; the freedom to tell me how I can listen to my music is not a freedom either.



Yes those people deserve something. And they get something (http://kiamo.co.uk/2009/02/where-does-mozilla-get-its-money-from/).

I already said the vast majority don't. Some, such as those who work at Mozilla or Red Hat do but that doesn't disprove anything.


I don't see the problem with people giving away things for free. Should youtube users get material benefit from their work? No. Many just want to share their videos with their friends for free, others want to advertise their work in hopes for an income, and others self-employ themselves through youtube.

I was talking about something completely different; do you really want me to name a dozen open source projects that lack enough funds, despite being quite popular? It's for real. And without governments investing billions in research, that would be mostly absent.


It seems that your argument boils down to: people who do things for free should always receive something in return, even if they don't want to. I'm pretty sure you're clever enough to realize what is wrong with this argument.
Yes. It has nothing to do with this thread. Scientists at the LHC need some revenue to continue researching, programmers at the FSF would love to be paid full time for the things that they do. But they're not. They're forced into having other jobs and do this programming as a spare time activity, despite the fact that millions benefit from it.

[Havet]

Fair pay? Getting nothing while working full time on something that many people need is not fair. I don't think it requires any definition.

So how much is a fair pay?


Exactly. Who would donate to people working in areas that don't sell anything: research, culture and programming?

Yet people still donate (http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/09040XijinZhou.html). How do you explain that?


The idea was this: how would people gain any income without intellectual property, whether they are physicists, writers or programmers?

I already explained how they can get an income, but you don't seem to be paying attention: they can be hired or self-employ themselves.


The freedom to restrict others is not a freedom. Freedom to employ others is not a freedom; the freedom to tell me how I can listen to my music is not a freedom either.

Freedom to employ others is freedom provided people have a choice to choose not to be employed.

Freedom to tell you how you should listen to your music is freedom. Freedom to force you into listening to your music in a manner i like IS NOT freedom. Do you understand the difference?


I already said the vast majority don't. Some, such as those who work at Mozilla or Red Hat do but that doesn't disprove anything.

Show me the proof backing this up, please.


I was talking about something completely different; do you really want me to name a dozen open source projects that lack enough funds, despite being quite popular? It's for real. And without governments investing billions in research, that would be mostly absent.

I do not deny that governments have invested billions in research, but that does not legitimize their existence or the way they get the money to fund those researches.


Yes. It has nothing to do with this thread. Scientists at the LHC need some revenue to continue researching, programmers at the FSF would love to be paid full time for the things that they do. But they're not. They're forced into having other jobs and do this programming as a spare time activity, despite the fact that millions benefit from it.

Nobody is stopping them from submitting their programs under government patent laws and intellectual property laws, yet they choose not to do so. How do you explain that? They could get a "fair pay" under those laws, according to you, as everyone who wanted to take advantage of what they created would have to pay in order to do so.

[Ovi]

So how much is a fair pay?

As (I think) you said, people doing equal amounts of labor should be paid similar.


Yet people still donate (http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/09040XijinZhou.html). How do you explain that?

That's just dumb. Most don't get paid. How do you explain that?


I already explained how they can get an income, but you don't seem to be paying attention: they can be hired or self-employ themselves.

And I already told you that most people don't get any money out of free software developing and are forced to have other jobs as well. Whatever you propose, it doesn't work


Freedom to employ others is freedom provided people have a choice to choose not to be employed.

That is where the difference between anarchism and capitalism lies. A huge difference, anarchists acknowledge that private property means exploitation and that there's nothing voluntary in getting a job and capitalists on the other hand which believe in freedom for the rich. I'm not sure where you stand though.


Freedom to tell you how you should listen to your music is freedom. Freedom to force you into listening to your music in a manner i like IS NOT freedom. Do you understand the difference?

So it's perfectly fine for corporations to install rootkits (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_rootkit) on my computer to restrict what I can do, It's okay to buy a music cd and yet not be allowed to listen to that music on my mobile phone? No it's not. That's a violation of my personal freedoms, the same kind that you blame the state for doing, but it's perfectly okay for a corporation to do it.


Show me the proof backing this up, please.

You might as well check every project. Look at debian: over a thousand developers, yet most (if not all) are only volunteers; even the project leader (http://einval.com/%7Esteve/)has a "real" job and only works on debian in his spare time (debian being the number 1 server distro of the year for many years now).


I do not deny that governments have invested billions in research, but that does not legitimize their existence or the way they get the money to fund those researches.

Microsoft also should not be legitimized to restrict people's freedom when using their products, but since people are buying their products, it clearly shows that these full time software developer jobs are needed. It doesn't justify the means to get those funds, the same way the state is not justified, but in the end both of the results are needed. The "free market" is not justifiable, the same way the state isn't either.


Nobody is stopping them from submitting their programs under government patent laws and intellectual property laws, yet they choose not to do so. How do you explain that?

Welcome to free software! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software)


They could get a "fair pay" under those laws, according to you, as everyone who wanted to take advantage of what they created would have to pay in order to do so.
Sure they could. But some people despise proprietary software the same way I despise everything that has to do with capitalism. They enjoy doing something they like and work together with others to accomplish something. Sharing, cooperation and organization are the building blocks of anarchism. Not everyone's happiness is measured in money by the way.

[Havet]

As (I think) you said, people doing equal amounts of labor should be paid similar.

How much?


That's just dumb. Most don't get paid. How do you explain that?

No its not dumb. People don't donate because they get something in return, but for some other reasons: helping others, seeing scientific knowledge increase, etc.


And I already told you that most people don't get any money out of free software developing and are forced to have other jobs as well. Whatever you propose, it doesn't work

Well then, if they have the choice to make money out of free software (as i've said) but they end up having other jobs to support their "hobby", then it is because they didn't choose do get money out of programming in the first place.


That is where the difference between anarchism and capitalism lies. A huge difference, anarchists acknowledge that private property means exploitation and that there's nothing voluntary in getting a job and capitalists on the other hand which believe in freedom for the rich. I'm not sure where you stand though.

There's certainly nothing voluntary about getting a job under this current system. But that doesn't mean that under a different system having a job couldn't be something volunary, as long as people could retain the choice of doing something else to survive.


So it's perfectly fine for corporations to install rootkits (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_rootkit) on my computer to restrict what I can do, It's okay to buy a music cd and yet not be allowed to listen to that music on my mobile phone? No it's not. That's a violation of my personal freedoms, the same kind that you blame the state for doing, but it's perfectly okay for a corporation to do it.

Obviously you did not understand one single word of what I said. I should retain the freedom to tell you what music you should listen to, but I should not retain the freedom to force you to listen to a certain music.

So OBVIOUSLY it's not perfectly fine for corporations to install rootkits on employees computers because this is NOT a voluntary system.

And please stop pretending like a give a flying fuck about corporations, because I don't.


You might as well check every project. Look at debian: over a thousand developers, yet most (if not all) are only volunteers; even the project leader (http://einval.com/%7Esteve/)has a "real" job and only works on debian in his spare time (debian being the number 1 server distro of the year for many years now).

Except you forget that Debian was a non-profit organization (http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-nonprofit/) since the very start.


Microsoft also should not be legitimized to restrict people's freedom when using their products, but since people are buying their products, it clearly shows that these full time software developer jobs are needed. It doesn't justify the means to get those funds, the same way the state is not justified, but in the end both of the results are needed. The "free market" is not justifiable, the same way the state isn't either.

Who forces people to buy microsoft's products? Sure, microsoft is a corporation who wouldn't have become as big as it is without government special privilege, intellectual property laws, etc. Yet people still buy microsoft's products when there is choice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_systems#Examples_of_operating_systems). How do you explain that?


Welcome to free software! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software)

You actually didn't explain anything. What is stopping people from submitting their works to government patents and intellectual property laws in order to secure their "fair pay" ?


Sure they could. But some people despise proprietary software the same way I despise everything that has to do with capitalism. They enjoy doing something they like and work together with others to accomplish something. Sharing, cooperation and organization are the building blocks of anarchism. Not everyone's happiness is measured in money by the way.

I agree with you here.

[Ovi]

How much?

As much as anyone would be.


No its not dumb. People don't donate because they get something in return, but for some other reasons: helping others, seeing scientific knowledge increase, etc.

Well then, if they have the choice to make money out of free software (as i've said) but they end up having other jobs to support their "hobby", then it is because they didn't choose do get money out of programming in the first place.

How can you choose to work as much as you can on something and get nothing in return? You don't. You love what you do and money is not the reason you do it. However in the current economical system it is crucial that you get paid for something, so why not for something that you're good at, it's useful and you love to do? Nobody has chosen not to be paid, but it's something that they would do whether they are paid or not. There's nothing wrong with working on something that you actually like. Quite on the contrary. If they could work as much as they would like these FOSS projects would progress much faster.





Except you forget that Debian was a non-profit organization (http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-nonprofit/) since the very start.

No I haven't. Non profit software developing these days is synonymous for software free as in freedom. That's the whole problem! Not forcing people to pay for your intellectual property is the same as being non profit. That's the whole point of this thread!




Who forces people to buy microsoft's products? Sure, microsoft is a corporation who wouldn't have become as big as it is without government special privilege, intellectual property laws, etc. Yet people still buy microsoft's products when there is choice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_systems#Examples_of_operating_systems). How do you explain that?

No there isn't. Microsoft windows is the only operating system that can run...all windows software. Really it is. I have friends who work in autocad and the only reason they use windows is because it only works on windows. There are things like WINE, however not everything works well under that and a compatibility layer for another OS is not the best solution for a workstation. It's the same thing with games and many other software products. Trying to get it to work under a different OS is anything but straightforward: you need to copy the API of a proprietary OS and even if you make it work you most likely won't get any sort of support although you paid for it.


You actually didn't explain anything. What is stopping people from submitting their works to government patents and intellectual property laws in order to secure their "fair pay" ?

Actually I did. It's called free software (http://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software)

Currently, many people use proprietary software that denies users these freedoms and benefits. If we make a copy and give it to a friend, if we try to figure out how the program works, if we put a copy on more than one of our own computers in our own home, we could be caught and fined or put in jail. That’s what’s in the fine print of the license agreement you accept when using proprietary software.
The corporations behind proprietary software will often spy on your activities and restrict you from sharing with others. And because our computers control much of our personal information and daily activities, proprietary software represents an unacceptable danger to a free society.
Software (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/software-literary-patents.html) patents (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fighting-software-patents.html)

Patents cover ideas; each patent is a monopoly on practicing some idea, which is described in the patent itself. Here's one example of a hypothetical literary patent:

Claim 1: a communication process that represents in the mind of a reader the concept of a character who has been in jail for a long time and becomes bitter towards society and humankind.
Claim 2: a communication process according to claim 1, wherein said character subsequently finds moral redemption through the kindness of another.
Claim 3: a communication process according to claims 1 and 2, wherein said character changes his name during the story.

If such a patent had existed in 1862 when Les Misérables was published, the novel would have conflicted with all three claims, since all these things happened to Jean Valjean in the novel. Victor Hugo could have been sued, and if sued, he would have lost. The novel could have been prohibited—in effect, censored—by the patent holder.

Software patents are the software project equivalent of land mines: each design decision carries a risk of stepping on a patent, which can destroy your project.
Developing a large and complex program means combining many ideas, often hundreds or thousands of them. In a country that allows software patents, chances are that some substantial fraction of the ideas in your program will be patented already by various companies. Perhaps hundreds of patents will cover parts of your program. A study in 2004 found almost 300 US patents that covered various parts of a single important program. It is so much work to do such a study that only one has been done.
If free software would restrict users with IP laws and patents, it would no longer be called free software (free as in freedom, not in price).

[Ultra_Cheese]

I don't advocate a free market, but I have some ideas on how that would play out. I think software development would flourish without intellectual property laws even under capitalism. Without IP laws, the majority of software development would move to the free software model. A large community will develop software without pay, and a large community will use it without paying.
As for profiting from software without IP laws, companies like Microsoft will probably resort to some form of vendor lock-in and extensive DRM measures. After several months of this, Cory Doctorow will organize a rebel fighting force and attack Microsoft HQ in Redmond. Meanwhile, General Stallman will organize a coordinated strike against several key IBM buildings (Their headquarters in Armonk, the research centers in Almaden, Austin, and Yorktown, and the CEO's home in Southport.). FSF headquarters will be bombed in retaliation, and all major Linux Kernel developers will be executed.

tl;dr: I estimate the death toll to be in the millions.

[IcarusAngel]

"Free-speech" is not copyrighted, why then is the media controlled by a few corporations? Generally it would be easier to create alternative media institutions than it would be to create alternative software institutions. It's important to note what you're advocating: corporations will probably find another way to control software without IP laws, probably making software even more oppressive.

The idea that stallman is revolutionizing anything is pretty ridiculous; he just advocates University standards for the market. He is also a liberal, and his only concern is free-software.

[Havet]

As much as anyone would be.

If you can tell when one wage becomes "fair", then please tell me the objective amount at which you consider a wage to become "fair". Stop avoiding the question. Either you know, and its objective, either you know and its subjective, or you don't know at all.


How can you choose to work as much as you can on something and get nothing in return? You don't. You love what you do and money is not the reason you do it. However in the current economical system it is crucial that you get paid for something, so why not for something that you're good at, it's useful and you love to do? Nobody has chosen not to be paid, but it's something that they would do whether they are paid or not. There's nothing wrong with working on something that you actually like. Quite on the contrary. If they could work as much as they would like these FOSS projects would progress much faster.

Well NOTHING is preventing those people that love programming to start making money out of it. NOTHING. And some of them do choose to make money out of it. I don't see what is the confusion in understanding this.


No there isn't. Microsoft windows is the only operating system that can run...all windows software. Really it is. I have friends who work in autocad and the only reason they use windows is because it only works on windows. There are things like WINE, however not everything works well under that and a compatibility layer for another OS is not the best solution for a workstation. It's the same thing with games and many other software products. Trying to get it to work under a different OS is anything but straightforward: you need to copy the API of a proprietary OS and even if you make it work you most likely won't get any sort of support although you paid for it.

Well that sounds reasonable. Be aware though, that the reason for all this power by microsoft has been their lobbies over the united states governments and international copyright laws.


Actually I did. It's called free software (http://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software)
Software (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/software-literary-patents.html) patents (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fighting-software-patents.html)
If free software would restrict users with IP laws and patents, it would no longer be called free software (free as in freedom, not in price).

Look I already know all of this. You've kind of proving me right. People choose NOT to submit their work to become proprietary software because there are OTHER benefits of it being free software. There are still real, physical restrictions which prevent people from increasing the current free software's quality even more, but we were talking of a "free market" and I do not think there will be the same kind of restrictions as today.

[IcarusAngel]

The free-market is preventing from getting paid, because all the market share is dominated by big corporations like Apple and MS. Since all the APIs and all the hardware specs are closed off it also takes longer to develop free-software.

I just incorporated this:

http://www.hallvord.com/pc/java/DecimalNumber/

library into one of my Cell phone applications for myself.

Here's another one:

http://www.dclausen.net/projects/microfloat/javadoc/index.html


Who paid these people? They SHOULD HAVE BEEN PAID, because they're providing a service that Sun Microsystems should have included as a library in the first place.

In a free-society, in socialism, they would get a lot of resources for doing just that, especially a place to live for free so they can continue developing instead of having to work for the government/corporations.


*****.

[Ovi]

If you can tell when one wage becomes "fair", then please tell me the objective amount at which you consider a wage to become "fair". Stop avoiding the question. Either you know, and its objective, either you know and its subjective, or you don't know at all.

What? Working x hours on project y should be paid comparably to someone working in a different domain the same amount of time. Not being paid at all is bad. What do you want more?


Well NOTHING is preventing those people that love programming to start making money out of it. NOTHING. And some of them do choose to make money out of it. I don't see what is the confusion in understanding this.

You still haven't understood the point of this thread. It's like this: without IP, patents and other nonsense restrictions, software developers won't be paid at all for their work. How could these people earn a living by programming?




Well that sounds reasonable. Be aware though, that the reason for all this power by microsoft has been their lobbies over the united states governments and international copyright laws.

The only thing forcing people to buy ms windows are copyright laws. What forces people into using ms windows is its share market. It's a type of network effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect), where the value of a product depends on the number of users. This kind of domains almost always lead to monopoly, since the number of users that would use such a product depend on the number of people already using it.


Look I already know all of this. You've kind of proving me right. People choose NOT to submit their work to become proprietary software because there are OTHER benefits of it being free software. There are still real, physical restrictions which prevent people from increasing the current free software's quality even more, but we were talking of a "free market" and I do not think there will be the same kind of restrictions as today.
Again, how would developers be paid for their work if they can't force others to?

[Havet]

What? Working x hours on project y should be paid comparably to someone working in a different domain the same amount of time. Not being paid at all is bad. What do you want more?

So if I work x hours on lifting heavy weights at a factory i should be payed the same of a guy that works x hours distributing pamphlets, even though both our jobs are valued differently?

You still haven't answered the question. HOW MUCH is a "fair pay"? Say it in either dollars or euros or whatever, but it has to be a quantity. How can you alone judge what a "fair pay" is?


You still haven't understood the point of this thread. It's like this: without IP, patents and other nonsense restrictions, software developers won't be paid at all for their work. How could these people earn a living by programming?

The point of this thread is to discuss this matter, not to automatically assume you are right, even though you provided no reasonable evidence.

The following people made money without resorting to patents and IP laws:

- Radiohead Band upon their release of In Rainbows (http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2007/09/30/new-radiohead-album-coming-out-october-10th/)

- The Vernian Process upon the release of Behold the Machine (http://www.vernianprocess.com/http%3A/%252Fwww.vernianprocess.com/discography)

- Randall Munroe upon his XKCD comics (http://xkcd.com/)

- Big Head Press comic distribution, upon releasing their comics for free, weekly (http://www.bigheadpress.com/comics).

There are thousands more examples, and a quick search at linux's forums would reveal many tips on how linux programmers can make money out of their skills (http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-316588.html).


The only thing forcing people to buy ms windows are copyright laws. What forces people into using ms windows is its share market. It's a type of network effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect), where the value of a product depends on the number of users. This kind of domains almost always lead to monopoly, since the number of users that would use such a product depend on the number of people already using it.

good then, lets get rid of copyright laws so that more competition is allowed and microsoft's share of the market dramatically decreases.


Again, how would developers be paid for their work if they can't force others to?

By convincing them to pay them... See above for examples

[Ovi]

So if I work x hours on lifting heavy weights at a factory i should be payed the same of a guy that works x hours distributing pamphlets, even though both our jobs are valued differently?
You still haven't answered the question. HOW MUCH is a "fair pay"? Say it in either dollars or euros or whatever, but it has to be a quantity. How can you alone judge what a "fair pay" is?

Fortunately due to mechanization, nobody needs to lift heavy weights anymore. And what you're saying here is on a completely different subject, whether people should be paid the same for equal hours worked. That's not the point of this thread. In dollars? That's irrelevant. Can I judge what a fair pay is? Maybe, maybe not. But I can judge that being paid nothing for your work is not fair, that having to have an extra job in order to do another for free isn't either.




The point of this thread is to discuss this matter, not to automatically assume you are right, even though you provided no reasonable evidence.

The following people made money without resorting to patents and IP laws:

- Radiohead Band upon their release of In Rainbows (http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2007/09/30/new-radiohead-album-coming-out-october-10th/)

- The Vernian Process upon the release of Behold the Machine (http://www.vernianprocess.com/http%3A/%252Fwww.vernianprocess.com/discography)

- Randall Munroe upon his XKCD comics (http://xkcd.com/)

- Big Head Press comic distribution, upon releasing their comics for free, weekly (http://www.bigheadpress.com/comics).

There are thousands more examples, and a quick search at linux's forums would reveal many tips on how linux programmers can make money out of their skills (http://ubuntuforums.org/archive//t-316588.html).

Again, the top GNU/Linux distro is a nonprofit organization, not because that's what they dream, but because that's market economy. Most of the GNU developers aren't paid either for their work, although the entire GNU/Linux and free software movement was started by people like them and they are the most known free software organization. And no, almost nobody gets paid for their coding skills for free software in this market economy. Those who do manage do get some money accomplish it using multiple licenses, for instance a free software one for free software developers and a proprietary one for proprietary software developers (but again this means using IP laws so it's a non solution) or software support (this is not being paid for your coding skills, but for some extra work, that you might want to do or not).




good then, lets get rid of copyright laws so that more competition is allowed and microsoft's share of the market dramatically decreases.

And how will microsoft developers get paid then?

So as far as I understand, market economy is unable to provide earnings for everyone since it's based entirely on the idea of selling something tangible to others, an idea that no longer satisfies the needs of the current world. I assume that makes it primitive.

[Havet]

Fortunately due to mechanization, nobody needs to lift heavy weights anymore. And what you're saying here is on a completely different subject, whether people should be paid the same for equal hours worked. That's not the point of this thread.

Then why bring it up? To quote you: "Working x hours on project y should be paid comparably to someone working in a different domain the same amount of time"

The only difference is that I replaced the abstract "y" for two different jobs.


In dollars? That's irrelevant. Can I judge what a fair pay is? Maybe, maybe not. But I can judge that being paid nothing for your work is not fair, that having to have an extra job in order to do another for free isn't either.

No its not irrelevant. Its at the very basis of what you are saying. Even if you could judge what a "fair pay" is, its still a subjective preference, and you have no rational argument to justify imposing your preference on others.

How do you objectively know that being paid NOTHING for your work IMMEDIATELY is not fair?

How can you not understand the concept of long-term investments? I put something for free now, and receive a compensation in reputation so that later on my work is more easily advertised or i receive a better monetary trade for it.


Again, the top GNU/Linux distro is a nonprofit organization, not because that's what they dream, but because that's market economy. Most of the GNU developers aren't paid either for their work, although the entire GNU/Linux and free software movement was started by people like them and they are the most known free software organization. And no, almost nobody gets paid for their coding skills for free software in this market economy. Those who do manage do get some money accomplish it using multiple licenses, for instance a free software one for free software developers and a proprietary one for proprietary software developers (but again this means using IP laws so it's a non solution) or software support (this is not being paid for your coding skills, but for some extra work, that you might want to do or not).

How is software support not being paid for your coding skills? You make a software, distribute it for free, and then charge help if people require it. Of course if you just put a very faulty software so as to make more people rely on you for assistance, then less people are less likely to have a go at it in the first place.

NOBODY is forcing software developers to distribute their work for free. They can patent it and use whatever intellectual property laws they want, but many don't do so, and THAT is precisely what you can't explain.


And how will microsoft developers get paid then?

Same as linux programmers.

More evidence (not that you will probably even care to look at):

Here (http://davestechsupport.com/faq/do_linux_programmers_make_money.html)

Here (http://www.builderau.com.au/strategy/businessmanagement/soa/How-to-make-money-from-Open-source/0,339028271,339191343,00.htm)

and Here (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000842.html)

Something to highlight on this last one:


If you wanted to become obscenely rich by starting an open source software company, I'm sorry, but you picked the wrong industry. You'll make a living, perhaps even a lucrative one. But you won't become Bill Gates rich, or Paul Allen rich, by siphoning away the exorbitant profit margins commercial software vendors have enjoyed for so many years.

There are real millionaires-- even billionaires-- who built companies on open source software. Just ask Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Or the YouTube founders. The real money isn't in the software. It's in the service you build with that software.

[Muzk]

Something to highlight on this last one:

What if every stupid shit opened his own youtube? Yeah, right. Now gtfo using single shit to tell us how capitalism rox my sox and everyone can get super rich

btw if people get rich by advertising propaganda on a webpage it doesnt mean they are smart it just means billions of people are stupid as fuck

[Ovi]

Ok, I see this isn't going anywhere. Again, the point of this thread is this: most open source programmers are not paid for their work in a market economy. How do you solve that?

Then why bring it up? To quote you: "Working x hours on project y should be paid comparably to someone working in a different domain the same amount of time"
The only difference is that I replaced the abstract "y" for two different jobs.

I think I once read this in one of your posts, that in the end earnings in a market economy tend to be equal for equal work. I was quoting you and asking you why doesn't programming count? Isn't that "real" work?



No its not irrelevant. Its at the very basis of what you are saying. Even if you could judge what a "fair pay" is, its still a subjective preference, and you have no rational argument to justify imposing your preference on others.

This thread is not about how much programmers should be paid, but why aren't they paid at all! Why are programmers forced to have second jobs so that they can do another? I don't care about dollars. If you need a second job so that you afford to work on the GIMP then there's a problem.


How do you objectively know that being paid NOTHING for your work IMMEDIATELY is not fair?

Would you work on something full time that you like but pays nothing? You wouldn't because you had to pay your bills and eat!


How can you not understand the concept of long-term investments? I put something for free now, and receive a compensation in reputation so that later on my work is more easily advertised or i receive a better monetary trade for it.

Even if it would be so that: 1. has nothing to do with this thread. Whether 5 years from now some company will hire you is irrelevant. You're still being paid nothing for what you work today. 2. That same company is not going to do well with software developing without IP.


How is software support not being paid for your coding skills? You make a software, distribute it for free, and then charge help if people require it. Of course if you just put a very faulty software so as to make more people rely on you for assistance, then less people are less likely to have a go at it in the first place.

I have bad english. I suck at software support, yet I'm a brilliant programmer. Why do I need a second job (software support) to get a living while I work or would like to work full time on developing?




NOBODY is forcing software developers to distribute their work for free. They can patent it and use whatever intellectual property laws they want, but many don't do so, and THAT is precisely what you can't explain.

:bored:. You haven't understood the point of this thread. There is one type of philosophy called free software, free as in freedom. Here's something from the FSF (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)

Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program's users have the four essential freedoms:


The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Can people make money out of software using IP laws? Yes, and lots of them. I'm not arguing that. What I'm asking is 1. why should free software programmers be paid nothing for what they work today in capitalism. 2. why should they take the same bullshit after a revolution? How is market anarchism supposed to pay software developers for their work? There are no IP laws so there's nothing to sell. What now?



Same as linux programmers.

More evidence (not that you will probably even care to look at):

Here (http://davestechsupport.com/faq/do_linux_programmers_make_money.html)

Here (http://www.builderau.com.au/strategy/businessmanagement/soa/How-to-make-money-from-Open-source/0,339028271,339191343,00.htm)

and Here (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000842.html)


You forgot this part

But remember that most of the people who contribute to the Linux project and the Free Software Foundation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation) overall do so voluntarily because they enjoy it.Yes they enjoy it and there's nothing wrong with enjoying what you do!

So in summary, most Linux programmers do make money, but not necessarily from working on Linux development.E.g. linux programmers do make money, obviously, otherwise they'd be dead already, but not on programming linux.

Right now about 40 paid programmers work for Canonical Ltd. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_Ltd.), which is responsible for coordinating with thousands of other volunteer programmers and developers from around the world.How does ubuntu work? Simple: every release is a modified version of Debian Sid, a distribution developed by thousands of volunteers, canonical uses those 40 paid ubuntu developers to apply some changes and brand it as ubuntu and voila. However, most of the work done on ubuntu is not done by ubuntu itself but by the much larger debian project, who by the way aren't paid for working on debian. Ubuntu officially supports only a fraction of the software debian does (e.g. security updates), only uses a fraction of its developers and yet it's not a profitable business. Canonical isn't making any money out of it. It's purely a rich guy passionate about computers sponsoring some free software project. That's how software developing should go? Most not paid at all, while some lucky enough get paid by some rich guy kind enough to give a hand?

[IcarusAngel]

I have bad english. I suck at software support, yet I'm a brilliant programmer. Why do I need a second job (software support) to get a living while I work or would like to work full time on developing?

Cool. What kind of applications do you program?

[Ovi]

Cool. What kind of applications do you program?
I wasn't talking about myself specifically, though there is something real in my case. A few years ago, me and a few others decided that in order to have any serious campaign to create a movement any time soon we need funding. And since we were skillful at programming, creating some sort of game was the idea. Why not? It was fun though it would require a lot of work but if we would succeed we would have enough funding for any campaign we could wish for. The problem was licensing; I refused to work on anything proprietary, I wanted to work on an open source project. But how could we earn any money with that? We couldn't and that's the end of it.

[Havet]

Ok, I see this isn't going anywhere. Again, the point of this thread is this: most open source programmers are not paid for their work in a market economy. How do you solve that?

Already said so


I think I once read this in one of your posts, that in the end earnings in a market economy tend to be equal for equal work. I was quoting you and asking you why doesn't programming count? Isn't that "real" work?

What I said was:

"The differences in natural ability are not, in freedom, great enough to injure any one or disturb the social equilibrium."

and

"with equal opportunity to produce, the division of product will necessarily approach equitable distribution"

Now, on this last one, of course nobody is going to have EXACTLY the same things, but the differences that will eventually arise will not harm the social equilibrium, to the point where we see today.


This thread is not about how much programmers should be paid, but why aren't they paid at all! Why are programmers forced to have second jobs so that they can do another? I don't care about dollars. If you need a second job so that you afford to work on the GIMP then there's a problem.

I already explained that if they wanted to get paid by their programming, they could. Nothing is stopping them. But since they don't, then it means that they chose NOT to. HOW can you NOT understand this?


Would you work on something full time that you like but pays nothing? You wouldn't because you had to pay your bills and eat!

Do Linux programmers work on programming full time? Some do, some don't. Accept that.


Even if it would be so that: 1. has nothing to do with this thread.

Yes it does. Just because it hurts your argument doesn't mean its not real.


] Whether 5 years from now some company will hire you is irrelevant. You're still being paid nothing for what you work today. 2. That same company is not going to do well with software developing without IP.

Its not about a company hiring. its about a (future) product being sold better in the future.


I have bad english. I suck at software support, yet I'm a brilliant programmer. Why do I need a second job (software support) to get a living while I work or would like to work full time on developing?

Because you haven't bothered doing basic research on how to make a living by working full time on your brilliant programming skills. I even gave you some links. If you want I can propose some ideas to you, but I would not quit your current job until you start making revenue from your hypothetical programming enterprise (so as to have a backup plan if something goes wrong).


What I'm asking is 1. why should free software programmers be paid nothing for what they work today in capitalism.

Some are paid, others don't, because they choose to (there IS choice).


2. why should they take the same bullshit after a revolution? How is market anarchism supposed to pay software developers for their work? There are no IP laws so there's nothing to sell. What now?

Oh really? There are no IP laws therefore nothing to sell?

How do you explain that THESE (http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2007/09/30/new-radiohead-album-coming-out-october-10th/) guys (http://www.vernianprocess.com/http%3A/%252Fwww.vernianprocess.com/discography) managed (http://xkcd.com/) to (http://www.bigheadpress.com/comics) sell something WITHOUT IP laws?

In the case of XKCD comics, Randall Munroe just put them for free on a website, and makes a living of his XKCD store (which sells a book, posters of some of his comics and t-shirts).

Same thing goes for programming. You distribute it for free, gain reputation, and then charge for exclusive content which cannot be pirated (services, exclusive contracts with a company, etc).

To quote a sentence which nails it down pretty well:

"The real money isn't in the software. It's in the service you build with that software. "


linux programmers do make money, obviously, otherwise they'd be dead already, but not on programming linux.

Yes, linux programmers make money on programming linux...(those who want to, at least)

Here (http://www.anonym.to/?http://davestechsupport.com/faq/do_linux_programmers_make_money.html)

Here (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.builderau.com.au/strategy/businessmanagement/soa/How-to-make-money-from-Open-source/0,339028271,339191343,00.htm)

and Here (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000842.html)


How does ubuntu work? Simple: every release is a modified version of Debian Sid, a distribution developed by thousands of volunteers, canonical uses those 40 paid ubuntu developers to apply some changes and brand it as ubuntu and voila. However, most of the work done on ubuntu is not done by ubuntu itself but by the much larger debian project, who by the way aren't paid for working on debian. Ubuntu officially supports only a fraction of the software debian does (e.g. security updates), only uses a fraction of its developers and yet it's not a profitable business. Canonical isn't making any money out of it. It's purely a rich guy passionate about computers sponsoring some free software project. That's how software developing should go? Most not paid at all, while some lucky enough get paid by some rich guy kind enough to give a hand?

The programmers could make a living of their skills if they really wanted to.

These kind of projects need not be dependant of individual rich guys. Nothing is stopping people from organizing, pooling resources, and sponsoring similar kinds of projects.

[Havet]

What if every stupid shit opened his own youtube? Yeah, right. Now gtfo using single shit to tell us how capitalism rox my sox and everyone can get super rich

What's wrong with them trying? You dogmatically assume you are right, but you aren't, and that is laughable. You think the same strawman of pretending that I am defending capitalism is going to work? Think again ignorant.


btw if people get rich by advertising propaganda on a webpage it doesnt mean they are smart it just means billions of people are stupid as fuck

No, it means you are stupid for believing that advertise is not useful. It was probably through advertise that you found this forum.

[Ovi]

I already explained that if they wanted to get paid by their programming, they could. Nothing is stopping them. But since they don't, then it means that they chose NOT to. HOW can you NOT understand this?

This is probably one of the last posts I'll make in this thread since you're completely ignoring everything I say. I pointed out the fact that the vast majority of free software programmers are not paid for their work, while those who work on proprietary software do get paid because of IP laws. How should FOSS programmers earn a living with FOSS programming? You point out the fact that programmers can use IP laws to make money. Yes, they can! This whole thread was about making a living without IP laws.


Do Linux programmers work on programming full time? Some do, some don't. Accept that.

Many don't because they can't afford it. Accept this!



Its not about a company hiring. its about a (future) product being sold better in the future.

What can I, as a free software developer sale? Other than mc donalds burgers and use that money so that I can afford programming.


Because you haven't bothered doing basic research on how to make a living by working full time on your brilliant programming skills. I even gave you some links. If you want I can propose some ideas to you, but I would not quit your current job until you start making revenue from your hypothetical programming enterprise (so as to have a backup plan if something goes wrong).

You don't get it. The vast majority of free software developers don't get a dime on their work and their forced to have other jobs. That's the whole point. Yes some are paid by canonical, a non profit company, some earn money by selling books on programming or teaching at universities. However most don't earn shit for their work. If I wanted to work full time on some FOSS project it would be impossible today. However using IP laws, I could sell that work and get loads of money. But not without IP.


Some are paid, others don't, because they choose to (there IS choice).

Nobody chooses not to get paid for their work and have to get a second job so that they can afford another.


Oh really? There are no IP laws therefore nothing to sell?

How do you explain that THESE (http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2007/09/30/new-radiohead-album-coming-out-october-10th/) guys (http://www.vernianprocess.com/http%3A/%252Fwww.vernianprocess.com/discography) managed (http://xkcd.com/) to (http://www.bigheadpress.com/comics) sell something WITHOUT IP laws?

I am not talking about musicians, surely they make enough money out of concerts. How about FOSS programmers again?


In the case of XKCD comics, Randall Munroe just put them for free on a website, and makes a living of his XKCD store (which sells a book, posters of some of his comics and t-shirts).

Same thing goes for programming. You distribute it for free, gain reputation, and then charge for exclusive content which cannot be pirated (services, exclusive contracts with a company, etc).

So basically it's like this: you do some work for free and hopefully some company will hire you in the future to work for them. You're still not being paid for your time working now.

"
Yes, linux programmers make money on programming linux...(those who want to, at least)

Here (http://www.anonym.to/?http://davestechsupport.com/faq/do_linux_programmers_make_money.html)

Here (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.builderau.com.au/strategy/businessmanagement/soa/How-to-make-money-from-Open-source/0,339028271,339191343,00.htm)

and Here (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000842.html)

And you completely ignore the most important parts of those pages

But remember that most of the people who contribute to the Linux project and the Free Software Foundation (http://www.anonym.to/?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation) overall do so voluntarily because they enjoy it.
So in summary, most Linux programmers do make money, but not necessarily from working on Linux development.
Right now about 40 paid programmers work for Canonical Ltd. (http://www.anonym.to/?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_Ltd.), which is responsible for coordinating with thousands of other volunteer programmers and developers from around the world. Even if the vast majority of the work done on ubuntu is not done by programmers paid by canonical, ubuntu is still not making any money out of it.



The programmers could make a living of their skills if they really wanted to.

These kind of projects need not be dependant of individual rich guys. Nothing is stopping people from organizing, pooling resources, and sponsoring similar kinds of projects.
Right, that's why it's not happening. So how should the 1000+ debian developers get paid for their work on debian? Who's supposed to sponsor them again?

I was asking how to "fix" this problem using market economy but the problem is that you don't see any problem whatsoever. The vast majority of FOSS programmers don't get paid, yet you continuously shout that some do. But most don't! That's the problem. You point out the exception.

[Muzk]

No, it means you are stupid for believing that advertise is not useful. It was probably through advertise that you found this forum.

now hes basically saying,

"people are not manipulated into buying useless shit"

[Havet]

This is probably one of the last posts I'll make in this thread since you're completely ignoring everything I say.

You claim I am ignoring, but i think its precisely the opposite.


How should FOSS programmers earn a living with FOSS programming? You point out the fact that programmers can use IP laws to make money. Yes, they can! This whole thread was about making a living without IP laws.

Programmers could make a living through IP laws, but they don't

Programmers could make a living without IP laws, but they don't

Now its either they are forced to accept this, or because there is choice and they choose not to.

AND THERE IS CHOICE. As I have shown, there are tons of ways programmers can make a living through free software without using ip laws.

You are commiting a fallacy in that you take the factual data (many do not make a living on their skills) and assume it must be some outside act which forces them to do it when its not, because there are plenty of example ans ways that show how they could do it.

Now, either they are not aware of this (which is inexcusable, given the massive amount of information available on the internet on this subject) or they know but decided, themselves, not to do it.


What can I, as a free software developer sale?

Study the market. Create a product. Create an unique service and distribution mechanism around it. Charge for the service. charge for the traffic that you will receive (to advertising companies).


The vast majority of free software developers don't get a dime on their work and their forced to have other jobs

Who is forcing them? What person?


If I wanted to work full time on some FOSS project it would be impossible today

No, it would not. I already shown several ideas that you could use to accomplish that goal, but you simply refuse to believe in them.

Honestly, give it a try. I can help you through the process if you require assistance. I do not mind helping if it will convince you that I am right.


Nobody chooses not to get paid for their work and have to get a second job so that they can afford another

For that claim to be valid you need a fairly large sample and statistical evidence. Otherwise its just empty words. Give me some sort of inquiry that was made to programmers to back this assertion up, or don't mention it next time.


So basically it's like this: you do some work for free and hopefully some company will hire you in the future to work for them. You're still not being paid for your time working now.

Working for a company is just one of many possibilities open. You can self-employ yourself, or start your own business, or join up with others and create a cooperative of research. The most obvious ones that come to mind are:

- Make a website, give the code for free and make money by the traffic that you will receive
- Look for jobs on programming and show your code as proof of your skills
- Write books and sell them (also without using ip laws), charge for conferences and seminars
- Get a job as a teacher
- make a website, give the code for free and make money on services around that code.
- Make unique products which run on your code (perhaps some basic robotic appliances) and commercialize them.


Even if the vast majority of the work done on ubuntu is not done by programmers paid by canonical, ubuntu is still not making any money out of it.

How does "Not making money on programming" imply that "they are forced not to make money"? It does not automatically follow the conclusion from the initial premisse, so you need data to back this up.


So how should the 1000+ debian developers get paid for their work on debian? Who's supposed to sponsor them again?

Independent institutions (http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Comp/comp.sys.oric/2008-10/msg00001.html), fair events, advertisers, absolutely nothing is stopping them from organizing and pooling money to fund these resources.

The reason why you don't see that happening a lot in the real world is because most of this cooperative efforts is being done in the internet, on forums, on message boards, on private chatting meetings, because it saves time and they can share what they do pretty much instantly.


I was asking how to "fix" this problem using market economy but the problem is that you don't see any problem whatsoever. The vast majority of FOSS programmers don't get paid, yet you continuously shout that some do. But most don't! That's the problem. You point out the exception.

And the exception is precisely to show that IF THEY WANTED TO, THEY COULD GET PAID AS WELL. But most don't, because they prefer it that way.

[IcarusAngel]

The problem is the free-market cannot deal with abundance. There are tons of things you can do with programming languages - it is like human language, numerous possibilities. The free-market is a system that deals with scarcity and when scarcity threatens it, it buys surpluses and creates the scarcity it needs to function. The free-market does this by giving resources to too few individuals and then everybody else must "run ads on their website" to make money. This is abundance drives prices towards zero, an intolerable situation in capitalism, so you see restrictive laws implemented that allow the monopolization of resources. If people are doing useful things for society and cannot get paid for equal work, then there is obviously a problem. Instead, free-markets need to be replaced with cooperative models that give resources to people based on contribution to the public good, which would be democratically determined. Otherwise, you are just creating a tyrannical scenario equivalent to kings and queens.

This is why no capitalist has ever figured out to sale error. However, given the high levels of pollution created by deregulation and ignoring externalities, they may be able to sell face masks that allow us to breathe.

The free-market creates scarcity in other ways too, by creating shoddy products that eventually have to be replaced. Just try finding a nice stereo with high quality metal parts or a refrigerator that lasts as long as the old ones do. Or look at men's shaving blades. We have the technology and the science to create razor blades that last half of your life. Do we do it? We do not, because it threatens the profits of the corporations.

And then of course corporations "combine" with one another to artificially limit supply.

Of course, with software, MS only updates when a new intel processor comes along, which slows innovation and creativity.

That is the success of the "free-market": providing shoddy and low quality products to consumers for years, all while claiming the "right" to own the resources.

[Skooma Addict]

The problem is the free-market cannot deal with abundance. There are tons of things you can do with programming languages - it is like human language, numerous possibilities. The free-market is a system that deals with scarcity and when scarcity threatens it, it buys surpluses and creates the scarcity it needs to function. The free-market does this by giving resources to too few individuals and then everybody else must "run ads on their website" to make money. This is abundance drives prices towards zero, an intolerable situation in capitalism, so you see restrictive laws implemented that allow the monopolization of resources. If people are doing useful things for society and cannot get paid for equal work, then there is obviously a problem. Instead, free-markets need to be replaced with cooperative models that give resources to people based on contribution to the public good, which would be democratically determined. Otherwise, you are just creating a tyrannical scenario equivalent to kings and queens.

This is why no capitalist has ever figured out to sale error. However, given the high levels of pollution created by deregulation and ignoring externalities, they may be able to sell face masks that allow us to breathe.

The free-market creates scarcity in other ways too, by creating shoddy products that eventually have to be replaced. Just try finding a nice stereo with high quality metal parts or a refrigerator that lasts as long as the old ones do. Or look at men's shaving blades. We have the technology and the science to create razor blades that last half of your life. Do we do it? We do not, because it threatens the profits of the corporations.

And then of course corporations "combine" with one another to artificially limit supply.

Of course, with software, MS only updates when a new intel processor comes along, which slows innovation and creativity.

That is the success of the "free-market": providing shoddy and low quality products to consumers for years, all while claiming the "right" to own the resources.

A standard microeconomics textbook would do you a world of good. You also speak of "the market" as though it is a living breathing entity. It's not. The market is only a process brought forward by individuals operating under the division of labor. There are just too many flaws in your post which makes it not worth responding to in detail.

[Havet]

We have the technology and the science to create razor blades that last half of your life. Do we do it? We do not, because it threatens the profits of the corporations.

We should definitely make razor blades out of diamonds...

[Muzk]

We should definitely make razor blades out of diamonds...

We should definatly wear them around our necks, because it's much more useful.

[Decolonize The Left]

We should definitely make razor blades out of diamonds...

This is a verbal warning for spam and nonsense. The quote you were responding to was a completely valid point. What does your response have to do with anything? Now you've nudged Muzk into more spamming.

Please keep posts on topic and productive unless it's in Chit Chat.

- August

[Havet]

What does your response have to do with anything?

It has everything to do with it. Obviously corporations DONT use "better" technology to make razor blades because nobody would be willing to bear the cost when buying them, ie: nobody would buy them if they were made of diamonds because they would be expensive.


Now you've nudged Muzk into more spamming.

That's his fault, not mine. I am not his daddy, he is responsible for his own actions.

[Decolonize The Left]

It has everything to do with it. Obviously corporations DONT use "better" technology to make razor blades because nobody would be willing to bear the cost when buying them, ie: nobody would buy them if they were made of diamonds because they would be expensive.

I'm not here to debate this perverted sense of capitalism with you, at the moment. Corporations make products which will fall apart after a certain amount of time because consumers will have to buy more.

A straight razor is not expensive to make, not to the point that people wouldn't buy it. Your response which you received a warning for was at best nonsense, as you illustrated nothing, and at worst troll-baiting, as you took a sound argument and dismissed it with an absurd response.


That's his fault, not mine. I am not his daddy, he is responsible for his own actions.

I know. But you are responsible for making responsible posts, and when you make random one-line spam posts, it encourages others. That's all I was saying.

- August

[Havet]

A straight razor is not expensive to make, not to the point that people wouldn't buy it. Your response which you received a warning for was at best nonsense, as you illustrated nothing, and at worst troll-baiting, as you took a sound argument and dismissed it with an absurd response.

Well, many members also like to do that, and they get away with it. Why are OIers unfairly discriminated?

Besides, I barely make any sort of empty comments. My comments usually include plenty of quotes and links, so I guess you shouldn't fall down that hard on me, but I understand, so long as you promise to keep an eye on other members (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1646069&postcount=33) as well.


I know. But you are responsible for making responsible posts, and when you make random one-line spam posts, it encourages others. That's all I was saying.

Gotcha

[IcarusAngel]

A standard microeconomics textbook would do you a world of good. You also speak of "the market" as though it is a living breathing entity. It's not. The market is only a process brought forward by individuals operating under the division of labor.

The "market" creates the division of labor. Obviously, writing computer programs is more productive for society than asking for advertising space, and yet this is what many programmers do to get the money they need to continue developing. The "division of labor" does not result from a state of nature, nor is it natural. It comes from the free-market which is set up by the government, not by the state of nature.


There are just too many flaws in your post which makes it not worth responding to in detail.

You're not even studying economics nor do you have any statistical experience. You are a Misean.

I have several friends at a University who are working on their Ph.Ds.

There is nothing in economics that says that the division of labor must exist, that markets create exactly what people want, etc. etc. etc. The burden of proof is on YOU to provide evidence, which you cannot do.

[IcarusAngel]

It has everything to do with it. Obviously corporations DONT use "better" technology to make razor blades because nobody would be willing to bear the cost when buying them, ie: nobody would buy them if they were made of diamonds because they would be expensive.

I didn't say corporations should use the most expensive product available. I was talking about ABUNDANCE and shoddy products that could be made better. We know that refrigerators could be made better and last longer, because they used to be made to last longer. We know that razor blades could be made better. We know that we could have cars that get over 30 MPG by now (in fact the CEO of GM even said 50 years ago that cars would be getting 50 MPG). It has nothing to do with what the consumer "wants," but what will provide corporations with the most money.

We know that computers could be made better, and computer programs could be made better. Obviously if MS was forced to open up its APIs Linux by now would be far ahead, even on the desktop market, because the foundations are overall superior. (you might say it's unfair to have open standards, but I'd point out open standards is what made computeres possible to begin with.)

This is why the free-market should be eliminated and these decisions, esp. cars, which affect everybody, are deciding by the community at a whole.

You created a straw man argument, so your warning was fair. TBH, Olaf, who has passed himself off as an economist without any knowledge besides Mises forum.org, would also receive a warming for dishonesty and continued failure to provide sources other than high schools students at Mises.org.


Besides, I barely make any sort of empty comments. My comments usually include plenty of quotes and links, so I guess you shouldn't fall down that hard on me, but I understand, so long as you promise to keep an eye on other members (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1646069&postcount=33) as well.

Your "sources" are almost always links to other left Libertarian websites, and most of the time they're to your own writing, i.e., other arguments you've made in the past, not to anything serious. Much like Mises forums, the Libertarian Left only link to other articles on their own domain.

You provide no sources that anybody could take seriously like a published paper or the writings of a famous academic (such as Marx).

You've already embarrassed yourself enough in this thread by claiming its "fair" to force programmers to spend their lives seeking out advertisements and working as "teachers" in order to supplement their serious work.

[Havet]

We know that razor blades could be made better.

Well i'm not aware that in the past razorblades used to be "better". Please provide evidence of this.


Your "sources" are almost always links to other left Libertarian websites, and most of the time they're to your own writing, i.e., other arguments you've made in the past, not to anything serious. Much like Mises forums, the Libertarian Left only link to other articles on their own domain.

When i'm talking of political arguments, yes I use others that have been posted or sometimes my own, because i believe they are so well written (in that time) that they make the point across far easier than I could on my own again.

Outside of political arguments, i regularly use historical data, statistics, and other kinds of evidence (sometimes I even include these on political arguments).


You provide no sources that anybody could take seriously like a published paper or the writings of a famous academic (such as Marx).

Is proudhon not a famous academic? and Voltairine de Cleyre? And Benjamin Tucker? And many others? Just because they are less famous than (and with opposing views) Marx does not invalidate them.


You've already embarrassed yourself enough in this thread by claiming its "fair" to force programmers to spend their lives seeking out advertisements and working as "teachers" in order to supplement their serious work.

You're free to provide more data to back your usually empty assertions.

[IcarusAngel]

Well i'm not aware that in the past razorblades used to be "better". Please provide evidence of this.

One thing is the handles. Entire razor blades from the olden days (I've got one) used to be made out of metal instead of plastic. it has not rusted, and it's easier to reuse because plastic breaks easily. You'd have to show that there isn't enough metal to go around for razor blades and other commonly needed items, which is why economists explain these things away in terms of behavior and social science, not actual hard data.

Cars as well used to design their automobiles with steering wheels that impaled the driver and it wasn't until the government cracked down on the automobile industry did they begin to fix them.

This is why markets are a failure because voting with your dollars, where large corporations do most of the voting among themselves, is flawed.

MS regularly leaves security holes in its products to the point where MS is infamous for insecurity; they are too busy filing for another patent or doing god knows what.

What I would do is take good ideas from the companies and expand on them with free and open standards, but I would apply this to the entire economy, not just Windows.

I've already given you a lsit of market failures and you were unable to justify them.


Is proudhon not a famous academic? and Voltairine de Cleyre? And Benjamin Tucker? And many others? Just because they are less famous than (and probably with opposing views) Marx does not invalidate them.

I don't think any of them actually contributed to the social sciences but I was talking about things that could support your argument besides ideology. I don't think you're even ideologically in step with Tucker, de Cleyre, or especially Proudhon in the first place. For example, Tucker opposed all landed monopolies and Proudhon opposed capital altogether, seeing it as a form of government. He also never made the argument for the division of labor (to my knowledge he condemned it) and the idea that people should vote with their dollars.

You even admitted once you didn't 'study much politics.'



You're free to provide more data to back your usually empty assertions.

So you want me to prove that programming is more useful than advertisements?

What has contributed more to the economy, computers or Nordstrum's, Tim Horton's and Walmart's advertising agency?

I can't even take your arguments seriously, but the burden of proof is on YOU for making assertions like it's natural and free to have programmings take seconds jobs etc. to contribute to the economy.

If that's the case, why does the government/university system turn out so many productive innovations in computing?

[Skooma Addict]

The "market" creates the division of labor. Obviously, writing computer programs is more productive for society than asking for advertising space, and yet this is what many programmers do to get the money they need to continue developing.I should not have to explain this to you. The "market" does not create the division of labor. The division of labor, combined with the inherent inequalities of individuals is what gives rise to the market. Did you mean to say that programming is more productive than advertising? If so, that is not always true. Your claim that programming is more useful than asking for advertising space doesn't even make sense.


The "division of labor" does not result from a state of nature, nor is it natural. It comes from the free-market which is set up by the government, not by the state of nature.The division of labor is just as natural as social cooperation. people engaged in the division of labor when they realized that it allows for everyone to greatly improve living conditions. The worlds population could not even be sustained if it were not for the division of labor. You do know the division of labor emerged before governments did, right?



You're not even studying economics nor do you have any statistical experience. You are a Misean.

I have several friends at a University who are working on their Ph.Ds.

There is nothing in economics that says that the division of labor must exist, that markets create exactly what people want, etc. etc. etc. The burden of proof is on YOU to provide evidence, which you cannot do.There is nothing in economics that says that the division of labor must exist, but economics does explain why it is beneficial. As for evidence, for starters I will point to Ricardo's law of association. As I said, read a basic micro textbook and you will learn this stuff. No wonder your so confused.


You created a straw man argument, so your warning was fair. TBH, Olaf, who has passed himself off as an economist without any knowledge besides Mises forum.org, would also receive a warming for dishonesty and continued failure to provide sources other than high schools students at Mises.org.Lie 1: I passed myself off as an economist.

Lie 2: I have used high school students at Mises.org for sources.

Lie 3: I don't have any knowledge of econ besides the mises.org forum

You must blatantly lie because you know you cannot give any good arguments. Now, the funny thing is that you said Hayenmills warning was fair because he created a straw man argument. Yet in the very next sentence you do the same thing! So, if you cannot back up your assertions (which you can't, since they are lies), then by your own standards you should receive a verbal warning.

[IcarusAngel]

I should not have to explain this to you. The "market" does not create the division of labor. The division of labor, combined with the inherent inequalities of individuals is what gives rise to the market.

The "market' is created by government rules and regulations, corporations, and so on, it is not created "naturally" and there is no economic textbook that says that it is. It is artificial which is why analyzing it is always an exercise in social science, since it is a human created system.

If you had evidence to the opposite you'd have posted it by now.


Did you mean to say that programming is more productive than advertising? If so, that is not always true. Your claim that programming is more useful than asking for advertising space doesn't even make sense.

It does make sense because computers have helped the economy far more than advertising ever has.


The division of labor is just as natural as social cooperation. people engaged in the division of labor when they realized that it allows for everyone to greatly improve living conditions.

Show me an economist who says it's natural that isn't a right-wing kook. The division of labor was condemned even by Adam Smith and other classical liberals. The division of labor is artificially implemented in capitalism by the means I've explained above, such as the consolidation of resources. Obviously if the market is failing labor could be put to better use.

Since you fail to provide any real world examples or any sources again you are merely stating an opinion, not a fact.


The worlds population could not even be sustained if it were not for the division of labor.

More claims without evidence and the world population isn't being "sustained" now.; if it was millions of people wouldn't die from curable diseases, poverty, lack of water, etc. You must have a very bizarre definition of sustained.

I define "sustained" as the ability of people to live out their lives naturally; by your standard as long as people are alive the planet is 'sustaining' them, which is ridiculous.


Lie 1: I passed myself off as an economist.

You have repeatedly claimed that economics has proven this or that principle, without a SINGLE source, so it's difficult for us to know even what you're referring to.

You have made claims here that are unverifiable given: such as that the earth sustains the entire population.


Lie 2: I have used high school students at Mises.org for sources.

the point was Mises.org has no verification process. Anybody can put anything up on that website; some people's "credentials" are nothing more than Mises University.

Since you cited an article from a college student his highest credential he could legally claim was "High school graduate."


Lie 3: I don't have any knowledge of econ besides the mises.org forum

You must blatantly lie because you know you cannot give any good arguments.

That you also cannot provide sources for your highly debatable points proves you're just shoving an ideology, not trying to post anything relevant.

My points in this thread were obvious to anybody; I merely stated a few problems with market ideology (such as market failures) that EVERY economist agrees with, even Libertarian ones much of the time.

As for computer programs, I've already written a history of them for Hayenmill, who, after having read the history and admitting it "seemed accurate," went back to lying and claiming the market did everything in programming (not Universities or the government). Dishonesty is rampant in free-market ideology.

[Skooma Addict]

Responding to all of your points is a waste of time. Read an econ book.


You have repeatedly claimed that economics has proven this or that principle, without a SINGLE source, so it's difficult for us to know even what you're referring to.

You have made claims here that are unverifiable given: such as that the earth sustains the entire population.

You said I passed myself off as an economist. I did not. By your own standards, you should receive a verbal warning. I recently just cited Ricardo's Law of Association.


the point was Mises.org has no verification process. Anybody can put anything up on that website; some people's "credentials" are nothing more than Mises University.

Since you cited an article from a college student his highest credential he could legally claim was "High school graduate."

Wrong. There is a verification process. Stop lying. I also did not source a high school student. So in order not to be a hypocrite, I expect you to admit that you deserve a verbal warning.


That you also cannot provide sources for your highly debatable points proves you're just shoving an ideology, not trying to post anything relevant.

My points in this thread were obvious to anybody; I merely stated a few problems with market ideology (such as market failures) that EVERY economist agrees with, even Libertarian ones much of the time.


Red herring. You made an assertion about me which was false. Stay on topic.

[IcarusAngel]

There isn't much of a verification process if "Mises University" and "High school graduate" are accepted as writeres. The nature of economics isn't to prove that the capitalist division of labor is somehow superior to cooperative production; if that were true it would always be true and I've provided examples it isn't true. The nature of economics is to determine cost etc. mathematically, not to prove bizarre social theories.

[Skooma Addict]

There isn't much of a verification process if "Mises University" and "High school graduate" are accepted as writeres. The nature of economics isn't to prove that the capitalist division of labor is somehow superior to cooperative production; if that were true it would always be true and I've provided examples it isn't true. The nature of economics is to determine cost etc. mathematically, not to prove bizarre social theories.

Remember, you said there was no verification process. I agree, the nature of econ is not to prove that the capitalist method of production is better. The nature of econ is to study human exchange. By the way, are you willing to admit that you deserve a verbal warning if you consistently apply your own standards?

In the future, try to avoid insulting people if all your going to do is lie.

[Ovi]

Working for a company is just one of many possibilities open. You can self-employ yourself, or start your own business, or join up with others and create a cooperative of research. The most obvious ones that come to mind are:

- Make a website, give the code for free and make money by the traffic that you will receive

So let's say I develop a game. How do I make money out of it without IP laws?


- Look for jobs on programming and show your code as proof of your skills

It's irrelevant again. How am I supposed to make money out of programming without IP laws? Get a job as a programmer? How does that fix anything?


- Write books and sell them (also without using ip laws), charge for conferences and seminars

Great! But that would mean getting paid for writing the book, not developing software, exactly the problem I'm trying to point out since last year. You still haven't understood this.


- Get a job as a teacher

Same thing.


- make a website, give the code for free and make money on services around that code.
- Make unique products which run on your code (perhaps some basic robotic appliances) and commercialize them.

Again not all free software developers build robots; it might come as a surprise.


The reason why you don't see that happening a lot in the real world is because most of this cooperative efforts is being done in the internet, on forums, on message boards, on private chatting meetings, because it saves time and they can share what they do pretty much instantly.

So that means they don't deserve to get paid for their work?



And the exception is precisely to show that IF THEY WANTED TO, THEY COULD GET PAID AS WELL. But most don't, because they prefer it that way.



Independent institutions (http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Comp/comp.sys.oric/2008-10/msg00001.html), fair events, advertisers, absolutely nothing is stopping them from organizing and pooling money to fund these resources.


We should definitely make razor blades out of diamonds...
All I can say is that you're so indoctrinated in market economy that you fail to see real life. You're like those annoying stalinists claiming that they are everything of stalin without the bad parts and never look outside of their cage for anything that might disturb their fairy tale. Sure you might be smart but be sure that those thousands of free software developers who developed the greatest web server (http://www.apache.org/) there is, organized the efforts of thousands to create an OS (http://www.debian.org/security/) and issue security updates for it in a matter of hours or days, instead of months as it is so common in the "superior' corporate software, created the most used secure shell client (http://openssh.com/faq.html), an advanced molecular editor (http://avogadro.openmolecules.net/wiki/Main_Page) that outmatches many software that cost thousands of dollars are not dumb either. In your free market wonder world everything is possible but somehow millions are homeless in developed countries, FOSS developers are not generally paid for their work, huge projects like the LHC, the place where much of future physical theories will be developed would not exist in a completely free market economy since they don't bring much hope of a quick buck, or even that it will make the investment worthwhile. Yet they are of great value to all of us. Why? Because not everything can be measured in dollars and not everything that has value needs to be in a form that can be sold.

[Havet]

One thing is the handles. Entire razor blades from the olden days (I've got one) used to be made out of metal instead of plastic. it has not rusted, and it's easier to reuse because plastic breaks easily. You'd have to show that there isn't enough metal to go around for razor blades and other commonly needed items, which is why economists explain these things away in terms of behavior and social science, not actual hard data.


It might have been that your old razor blade is more valuable and better than the newer ones, but that's because the old ones cost more to produce and people were willing to pay less for a product with less quality than to pay more.

There's been a recent trend (http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/6886845/) to demand more quality razor blades precisely because people are now willing to pay more to get a better quality shave.


Cars as well used to design their automobiles with steering wheels that impaled the driver and it wasn't until the government cracked down on the automobile industry did they begin to fix them.

Source or it didn't happen


I don't think any of them actually contributed to the social sciences but I was talking about things that could support your argument besides ideology. I don't think you're even ideologically in step with Tucker, de Cleyre, or especially Proudhon in the first place. For example, Tucker opposed all landed monopolies and Proudhon opposed capital altogether, seeing it as a form of government. He also never made the argument for the division of labor (to my knowledge he condemned it) and the idea that people should vote with their dollars.

You even admitted once you didn't 'study much politics.'

Define "contributing to social sciences".


So you want me to prove that programming is more useful than advertisements?

What has contributed more to the economy, computers or Nordstrum's, Tim Horton's and Walmart's advertising agency?

I can't even take your arguments seriously, but the burden of proof is on YOU for making assertions like it's natural and free to have programmings take seconds jobs etc. to contribute to the economy.

If that's the case, why does the government/university system turn out so many productive innovations in computing?

Prove that programmers are forced to not live by their programming skills or shut the fuck up.

[Havet]

So let's say I develop a game. How do I make money out of it without IP laws?

Like these guys did

Game is given for free, users are charged for unique additional content (http://taiwanreview.nat.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=83073&CtNode=1337)

Seminar ad explaining the process (http://worlds.ruc.dk/archives/1502)

List of free games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeware_games)

How free Flash Games generate money (http://www.flashgamelicense.com/view_library.php?page=how-do-flash-games-make-money)

How an indie game developer company makes money (http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2009/05/indie_developers_make_some_mon.html)

Its usually always the same process: give away the product for free, and charge for the service around the product.


It's irrelevant again. How am I supposed to make money out of programming without IP laws? Get a job as a programmer? How does that fix anything?

You can't make money by selling your program directly because it is infinitely reproducible, and people will not abide by IP laws, so its better to make money on your programming skills indirectly, in many ways as I've explained before.


Great! But that would mean getting paid for writing the book, not developing software, exactly the problem I'm trying to point out since last year. You still haven't understood this.

I don't see any problem with not getting paid by developing software, but getting paid by your software indirectly.


Again not all free software developers build robots; it might come as a surprise.

It doesn't, it was just another example.


So that means they don't deserve to get paid for their work?

It means that nobody will pay them for their work directly, but indirectly.


Sure you might be smart but be sure that those thousands of free software developers who developed the greatest web server (http://www.apache.org/) there is, organized the efforts of thousands to create an OS (http://www.debian.org/security/) and issue security updates for it in a matter of hours or days, instead of months as it is so common in the "superior' corporate software, created the most used secure shell client (http://openssh.com/faq.html), an advanced molecular editor (http://avogadro.openmolecules.net/wiki/Main_Page) that outmatches many software that cost thousands of dollars are not dumb either.

Who finances them? Your argument that without an institution with the monopoly on force to force people into paying for these kinds of projects, then they wouldn't appear is flawed because the very same example you are quoting is a donation-based enterprise (http://www.apache.org/foundation/sponsorship.html).


In your free market wonder world everything is possible but somehow millions are homeless in developed countries

Show evidence that completely free trade generated this. You can't, because the reason they are homeless is because of an artificially lowered equality of opportunity, made possible by state legislation and overpowered corporation lobbies.


FOSS developers are not generally paid for their work

You keep going around in circles but don't understand it. Just because they are not generally paid for their work directly doesn't mean that they are forced into not being paid for their work directly.

So either PROVE, with FACTS, that they do not have any choice, or shut the hell up about this. Even a simple statistical inquiry would be enough to prove me wrong, so why don't you provide it?


huge projects like the LHC, the place where much of future physical theories will be developed would not exist in a completely free market economy since they don't bring much hope of a quick buck, or even that it will make the investment worthwhile. Yet they are of great value to all of us. Why? Because not everything can be measured in dollars and not everything that has value needs to be in a form that can be sold.

In a completely free market economy not all projects are made for profit

[danyboy27]

i dont really know about royalty, but i think the individual who come up with that music/idea should be at least rewarded with fame and advertising.

Fame is something that is powerful. A well known inventor could be recruited by the worker of a certain factory or a certain lab beccause he for exeple well known for his anti-matter reactor.

a well known actor will be recruited by worker and artist of a certain film studio to produce a film.

Less known people will also be loved by groups of individuals and eventually work with them for various project has well.

since there is no more money or market, it would be up to the scientist/artist to choose where he would go, regardless of the profit he would make.

who said vanity couldnt be used in a free society?:)

[IcarusAngel]

It might have been that your old razor blade is more valuable and better than the newer ones, but that's because the old ones cost more to produce and people were willing to pay less for a product with less quality than to pay more.

You could make razor blades that last two times over. How do you know that people didn't want these razor blades, since they've NEVER EVEN BEEN ON THE MARKET. How do you know that people wanted fridges that last for an even shorter period of time?

Why in God's name would people WANT prices kept artifically high by limiting resources and using them to make lower quality products, which is what the market is doing. Of course, if you only offer cheap, broken shit that makes corporations the most money, you'll have to buy it. People living under totalitarian regimes accepted the resources that they were given, such as land. Does that prove that land can only be dividing according to the rules of serfdom?

You're a tremendous idiot.

The "market" is NOT a scientific reflection of what the people want. If it was, economics would be a science, which it isn't.

In a "market system" the people who have say are the corporations providers, and other corporations they trade with, and the stock holders. That is the only "democracy." The individual comes last.

Most people would WANT razor blades that lasted (at least half their life times) and they'd be willing to pay for them. You could make razor blades that laster longer far cheaper than electric ones, which is also popular.


There's been a recent trend (http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/6886845/) to demand more quality razor blades precisely because people are now willing to pay more to get a better quality shave.

If people are demanding them then the people provding them should be forced to produce them. They're using resources that belong to everybody, and making poorer quality items helps no one. Thus the community should direct more resources to people willing to make higher quality items.

And by the way, the only thing razor blade companies have done is add more blades, they haven't done shit to improve quality.



Source or it didn't happen...

Again you provide no arguments. I've given plenty




Define "contributing to social sciences".

Making analytical contributions to the analyzations of social systems in a way that requires expertise. A few slongs is not necessarily 'contributing' to the social sciences.


not[/B] live by their programming skills or shut the fuck up.


I've already given two examples of two programmers that should already be sitting comfortably for even doing a MINIMAL amount of programming. It doesn't take much (excluding knowledge) to program: computer, keyboard, maybe a mouse, and some development software.

I've also shown that most productive programmers don't "sell advertisements" but instead work at Universities etc., which are GOVERNMENT FUNDED and determine how to distribute resources.

I would extrapolate on that and apply it to the whole economy, so that in any industry the people who are programming/making razor blades get the resources they need.

The burden of proof, again, is ON YOU to show that every programmer COULD NOT have a computer and every razor blade manufacturer COULD NOT produce high quality razor blades due to limited resources.

This to me sounds ridiculous because there is an abundance of computers. I work at a shop that provides FREE COMPUTERS to people. The only problem for programmers who would develop free-software is that they can't live.

You'd have to use more than economics. You'd have to show that aren't enough materials, that people don't want to have the materials used in a more productive fashion (absolutely ridiculous), or that materials are going to other areas that people don't find as important.

If you cannot provide all this you are trolling and unable to provide a serious argument.

[IcarusAngel]

Like these guys did

Game is given for free, users are charged for unique additional content (http://taiwanreview.nat.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=83073&CtNode=1337)

Seminar ad explaining the process (http://worlds.ruc.dk/archives/1502)

List of free games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeware_games)

How free Flash Games generate money (http://www.flashgamelicense.com/view_library.php?page=how-do-flash-games-make-money)

How an indie game developer company makes money (http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2009/05/indie_developers_make_some_mon.html)

Unbelievable. A list of flash games or free-software games does not prove that the programmers were paid reasonable wages for making them.

I've been following the "freeware" and shareware movement for years and know that most of the people making games - even good ones - do not make enough to survive.


Its usually always the same process: give away the product for free, and charge for the service around the product.


First of all you fucking dumb ass the people who provide services for the products aren't even the programmers to begin with. Programmers are usually socially inadequate and don't like talking on the phone with idiots.

The people who provide the services are the people who are trained on how the program works. This is the whole basis of software support technicians, network support technicians, and so on, i.e., people who know how these programs worked but not necessarily how it was developed.

Basically you're suggesting programmers be paid for services any idiot could do (tell people how windows or Linux works), and thus they'd be run out of business much quicker.

Out of the tens of thousands of free-software ware programs, about 98% of them it would be impossible to provide "a service" for them anyway. A program isn't a washing machine or a dryer. They don't 'break down' - and you provide documentation to tell the user how to use them. So what you're suggesting is that you should try and hide the documentation to try and make more money, which gets us back to inefficient production.

He said most software developers don't make living from developing free-software, which is true, and they live off donations and at the free-software page even brag about the fact that most of the donations come from other individuals, not corporations.

If you are unable to provide real evidence you should stop trolling this thread as it's obvious you are not even a programmer to begin with.


You can't make money by selling your program directly because it is infinitely reproducible, and people will not abide by IP laws, so its better to make money on your programming skills indirectly, in many ways as I've explained before.

Lol. Of course programs make lots of money if they can be restricted by free-markets; the richest people in the world are programmers.

What you're suggesting are ways people can starve to death. Most people who have free-software projects put them on other people's servers like freshmeat or sourceforge, ensuring that the owners of those companies get all the money for your free work. Again, this is because the market puts an end to any of the surpluses that would exist if government or a self-sustaining community were doing the programs, and puts it in private hands.

Thus most people with talent wouldn't even bother to become a programmer as they are only making other people a lot of money, thus programming is set back. Capitalism has set back advancements in computer science for decades now.

Programming provides a productive service for the economy and yet is controlled by a few corps, to the point where even the corporations are the ones starting to develop the langauges.

The programmers that make money and a livable wage and the ones that work for big corporations which means that the problem of monopolies only gets worse.



I don't see any problem with not getting paid by developing software, but getting paid by your software indirectly.

That's because you have no experience programming, have no idea what you're talking about, and are incompetent when it comes to any kind of analyzation of the problems of society.



Who finances them? Your argument that without an institution with the monopoly on force to force people into paying for these kinds of projects, then they wouldn't appear is flawed because the very same example you are quoting is a donation-based enterprise (http://www.apache.org/foundation/sponsorship.html).

And the programmers who work there all have other jobs and do other things, which means the quality of the work on their main projects suffers.

And Debian is an of something that comes from the University system to begin with, which means millions of dollars of development and research being shared freely. It's ridiculous to cite that as an example of the success of a 'donation' based enterprise.



You keep going around in circles but don't understand it. Just because they are not generally paid for their work directly doesn't mean that they are forced into not being paid for their work directly.

So either PROVE, with FACTS, that they do not have any choice, or shut the hell up about this. Even a simple statistical inquiry would be enough to prove me wrong, so why don't you provide it?

YOU prove that a majority of free-software developers are making a living solely off of their development of free-software. I've never heard of this.

You have only linked to other websites and wiki articles, which does NOT prove that anybody has made a living off of free-software.

They are making an obviously useful contribution to the public, and yet are not being rewarded enough for it, except in very superficial ways such as by 'donations.' And in you're 'free-market' system everybody would be making even LESS money and there would be no incentive to donate to organizations, such as by a reduction on your taxes.

So basically you want everybody to be a slave to one corporation or another, and the only pooling together of resources that can exist among the workers is with very meager resources they are given by the corporations and/or the University system (which you want to take away and privatize).

It's amazing you're allowed to stay here given the lies you use to support your asinine arguments. At least GENUINE capitalists say things like (paraphrasing): "Well, if they get good enough at programming maybe there's a snowball's chance in hell they can start their own company and start patenting their programs to make money," instead of suggesting that they can get paid for providing "services" for Unix command line tools.

[Havet]

You could make razor blades that last two times over. How do you know that people didn't want these razor blades, since they've NEVER EVEN BEEN ON THE MARKET. How do you know that people wanted fridges that last for an even shorter period of time?

Yes they used to be on the market. You said it so yourself:

"Entire razor blades from the olden days (I've got one) used to be made out of metal instead of plastic. it has not rusted, and it's easier to reuse because plastic breaks easily."

There must've been a reason for people to choose between lesser quality products and more quality products. I can think of several reasons:

- More petrodiesel, which reduced costs of manufacturing plastics, lead to the massification of plastic razor blades, appearing as a less expensive product, even though of lesser quality
- Inflation made the option of buying metal based razor blades more unattractive over time
- etc

Corporations don't just force products onto people. Fortunately there is still a fraction of the production that still is based on direct demand, and if people can't even bother to look for better quality products and demand them then they have their own guilt in the appearance of more low quality products.


Most people would WANT razor blades that lasted (at least half their life times) and they'd be willing to pay for them.

HOW do you know this? Where did you get the data to make this assertion? Either you start backing your assertions with some statistical evidence or you stop talking altogether.


If people are demanding them then the people provding them should be forced to produce them.

And they will


Again you provide no arguments. I've given plenty

Prove that car companies used to "design their automobiles with steering wheels that impaled the driver" or shut the fuck up.


Making analytical contributions to the analyzations of social systems in a way that requires expertise. A few slongs is not necessarily 'contributing' to the social sciences.

Define expertise

Also, you mean these few slongs?:



- Proudhon


Qu'est ce que la propriété? (What is Property? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_is_Property%3F), 1840)
Warning to Proprietors (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Warning_to_Proprietors&action=edit&redlink=1) (1842)
Système des contradictions économiques ou Philosophie de la misère (The System of Economic Contradictions or the Philosophy of Misery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_System_of_Economic_Contradictions,_or_The_Phil osophy_of_Poverty), 1846)
Solution of the Social Problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Solution_of_the_Social_Problem&action=edit&redlink=1), (1849)
Idée générale de la révolution au XIXe siècle (General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (http://fair-use.org/p-j-proudhon/general-idea-of-the-revolution), 1851)
Le manuel du spéculateur à la bourse (The Manual of the Stock Exchange Speculator (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Manual_of_the_Stock_Exchange_S peculator&action=edit&redlink=1), 1853)
De la justice dans la révolution et dans l'Eglise (Of Justice in the Revolution and the Church (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Of_Justice_in_the_Revolution_and_t he_Church&action=edit&redlink=1), 1858)
La Guerre et la Paix (War and Peace, 1861)
Du principe Fédératif (Principle of Federation (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Principle_of_Federation&action=edit&redlink=1), 1863)
De la capacité politique des classes ouvrières (Of the Political Capacity of the Working Class (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Of_the_Political_Capacity_of_the_W orking_Class&action=edit&redlink=1), 1865)
Théorie de la propriété (Theory of Property (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theory_of_Property&action=edit&redlink=1), 1866)
Théorie du mouvement constitutionnel (Theory of the Constitutionalist Movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theory_of_the_Constitutionalist_Mo vement&action=edit&redlink=1), 1870)
Du principe de l'art (The Principle of Art (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Principle_of_Art&action=edit&redlink=1), 1875)
Correspondences (Correspondences (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Correspondences_%28Proudhon%29&action=edit&redlink=1), 1875)

- Benjamin Tucker


Instead of a Book, by a Man Too Busy to Write One (http://fair-use.org/benjamin-tucker/instead-of-a-book/) (1893, 1897)
Travelling in Liberty (http://travellinginliberty.blogspot.com/2007/08/index-of-liberty-site.html): a complete online archive of Tucker's journal Liberty (1881–1908)
Several works by Tucker at Anarchy Archives (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/tucker/)
State Socialism and Anarchism. How far they agree and wherein they differ (http://www.panarchy.org/tucker/state.socialism.html) (1886)
Liberty and Taxation (http://www.panarchy.org/tucker/taxation.html) From the magazine Liberty 1881-1908

- Voltairine de Cleyre
de Cleyre, Voltairine (1889) The Drama of the Nineteenth Century.
(translated lecture) Pittsburgh: R. Staley & Co.

---(1894) In Defense of Emma Goldmann [sic] and the Right of
Expropriation. Philadelphia: The Author

---(1895) The Past and Future of the Ladies' Liberal League.
Philadelphia: Ladies Liberal League

---(1898?) The Gods And The People. Glasgow: William Duff,

---(1900) The Worm Turns. Philadelphia PA: Innes & Sons.

---(1903) Det Anarkistiske Ideal.(translated lecture)
Christiania [Oslo]: Social-Demokraten

---(1903) Crime and Punishment. (translated lecture) Philadelphia:
Social Science

---(1907) McKinley's Assassination from the Anarchist Standpoint.
New York: Mother Earth

---(1909) Anarchism and American Traditions. New York, NY: Mother
Earth

---(1910) The Dominant Idea. New York: Mother Earth

---(1912) Direct Action. New York: Mother Earth

--- (1914) Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre. New York: Mother
Earth publishing association.

---(1916) Selected Stories. Seattle: The Libertarian Magazine

---(1929) Anarquismo. (translated lecture) Buenos Aires: La Antorcha,
1929.

--- (1972) Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre pioneer of women's
liberation. New York: Revisionist Press.

--- (1980) The First Mayday : The Haymarket Speeches, 1895-1910.
Sanday, Orkney : Cienfuegos Press ; New York, N.Y.:
Libertarian Book Club.

I've already given two examples of two programmers that should already be sitting comfortably for even doing a MINIMAL amount of programming. It doesn't take much (excluding knowledge) to program: computer, keyboard, maybe a mouse, and some development software.

I've also shown that most productive programmers don't "sell advertisements" but instead work at Universities etc., which are GOVERNMENT FUNDED and determine how to distribute resources.

I would extrapolate on that and apply it to the whole economy, so that in any industry the people who are programming/making razor blades get the resources they need.

The burden of proof, again, is ON YOU to show that every programmer COULD NOT have a computer and every razor blade manufacturer COULD NOT produce high quality razor blades due to limited resources.

This to me sounds ridiculous because there is an abundance of computers. I work at a shop that provides FREE COMPUTERS to people. The only problem for programmers who would develop free-software is that they can't live.

You'd have to use more than economics. You'd have to show that aren't enough materials, that people don't want to have the materials used in a more productive fashion (absolutely ridiculous), or that materials are going to other areas that people don't find as important.

If you cannot provide all this you are trolling and unable to provide a serious argument.

Either you show statistical evidence (such as inquiries or polls) that MOST programmers do not work full time on their programming because they can't or you shut the fucking hell up.

[IcarusAngel]

i dont really know about royalty, but i think the individual who come up with that music/idea should be at least rewarded with fame and advertising.

Fame is something that is powerful. A well known inventor could be recruited by the worker of a certain factory or a certain lab beccause he for exeple well known for his anti-matter reactor.

Throughout capitalist history, and even before it, the people who CAME UP WITH THE IDEAS and who did most of the ground breaking research are the ones whose names we don't know. That's capitalism.

We know the names of AT&T, Bell Labs, the federal government's research programs, IBM, and so on. Less known are the names of the people who actually did the work. Do you know who Babbage, Ritchie, Kernighan, Vinton Cerf, etc. are? Without them technology would be a lot different. That's what happens in capitalism or really any hierarchical system. One of the VP's of GE said once that GE didn't really invent anything, it all came from individuals working under oppressive contracts. Who gets credit? GE, for "funding" them or what have you. Ironically, artists are generally more well known than for their own work than the 'artists' (programmers) in the computing industry.

I agree with you people should get credit for what they DO, not who they happened to employ under oppressive conditions. And the only way to do that is with a more democratic economy.

Anyway, hayenmill doesn't come here to debate. He comes here to antagonize workers, union activists, programmers, and people who know what they're talking with nonsense he's lifted from Mises forums or the Libertarian left website. He doesn't care if he contradicts himself or if he's already been corrected on an issue time and time again.

When he starts losing the debate he tells the programmers, workers, etc. (people with exerpeicen) to "shut the fuck up."

Every forum has one troll that is allowed to spam I guess; he's ours.

[IcarusAngel]

I said that razor blades used to made of all higher quality parts not just plastic. But I also said razors could be made to last at least half a life time with today's technology which is prevented by corporations who want to continually sell cheap products for $2 a razor (or $15 if you want a Gillette or something).

That's just one example of where capitalism is holding back technology. In computing, automobile design, etc., it's more obvious, just as wrong, and even worse for society.

Interesting fact: King C. Gillette, inventor of the disposable razor blade, patent holder on the safety razor, and founder of one of the Gilette Company, one of the leading manufacturers of razor blades (Mach 3, Gilette Fusion etc.), was a utopian socialist.

Since he believed in the inherent good of people he thought people could survive with under one single entity, that would be owned by everyone equally. This may have also influeced his business decisions, for example he devised the "freebie" business model where you would give away your product in the hopes that people would like what you have to offer and would continue making purchases (generally another disposable product) form you.

[Havet]

I've been following the "freeware" and shareware movement for years and know that most of the people making games - even good ones - do not make enough to survive.

How do you know this? Provide evidence (polls or inquiries).



Basically you're suggesting programmers be paid for services any idiot could do (tell people how windows or Linux works), and thus they'd be run out of business much quicker.

There are other services besides customer support:

Package it
Packaging your solution in a form downloadable via the Internet for no cost provides a friction-free manner for distributing your application, allowing you to establish your product's credentials and market presence. You can also provide a packaged version which includes printed manuals and CDs. This is for all those sites that do not like to use freely downloaded software off the Internet, but prefer a real, physical product. Price varies, as it's essentially a service charge. Say $100 to $500. You could also consider building an appliance solution, constituted of preinstalled operating system, database, application server and your application on top. Price: $2k to $10k depending on the level of bundled support. With all your product options, price them in the market sweet spot, to maximise attention and gain as many quick sales as you can.

But how do you make money? First up, support revenue. As soon as you can, establish mailing lists and discussion forums so that users of your software can help other users. This takes the load off your team. You will need to kickstart this community by providing technical support freely at first. Once momentum has been reached, provide no more free support. Instead, offer various paid support options, with credit card payments: per incident, quarterly and yearly. For business-grade vertical applications, this could be hundreds of dollars per incident or thousands of dollars per quarter. Next up, provide installation, customisation and enhancement services. This is where the real money is. Show the market you are a serious commercial open source player. Whilst your code is indeed open source, and your users could extend it themselves, most businesses do not have the time nor the inclination to undertake this kind of activity; it's not their core business. Firms will instead turn to you.



Additionally, no one should know the code as well as you, and your time to build for extensions and any integration work will far exceed others' value delivery. All you need to do is capture just a small percentage of all those users who pulled down a free download and you can generate some real revenue with customisation work. And because any such resultant work can be open source too, you can slowly build upon the functionality of your product, thus attracting more users.



Finally, you can make money by re-licencing. Just because you licence your software under an open source licence, doesn't mean you can't also licence it under non-open source terms as well. For various tactical reasons, the best open source licence to use for this purpose is the General Public Licence (GPL). This approach works especially well for libraries and for products which you could classify as 'engines', such as computing engines (scientific and engineering), database or transactional engines. By using the GPL, anyone who links to your engine or library and plans to redistribute that combination as a total product must also licence their own IP under the GPL.


small quote:



The proof
How do we know that it is possible for firm to develop a commercially viable support, training and custom extension business model based on open source? We have case studies.
Just consider the following success exemplars: JBoss, MySQL, eZ Publish, ZOPE and Trolltech. Let's drill down a little. MySQL AB in Sweden went from nothing to become a name brand in database technology in the space of seven years: over 4 million deployment sites worldwide, earning US$10 million in annual sales and growing. Similarly adept Australian software technology firms can do the same.

Open sourcing your code is not a panacea, nor is it guaranteed to work in every case, but then again, building and trying to sell closed-source apps carries no guarantee of success either, and the financial investment stakes therein are much, much higher.

Source (http://www.builderau.com.au/strategy/businessmanagement/soa/How-to-make-money-from-Open-source/0,339028271,339191343,00.htm)


He said most software developers don't make living from developing free-software, which is true, and they live off donations and at the free-software page even brag about the fact that most of the donations come from other individuals, not corporations.

Receiving donations is making a living, as far as I'm concerned. Anyway: PROVIDE THE FUCKING EVIDENCE THAT MOST SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS ONLY MAKE A LIVING BY DONATIONS IN THE FIRST PLACE!


That's because you have no experience programming, have no idea what you're talking about, and are incompetent when it comes to any kind of analyzation of the problems of society.

So now one can only discuss free software and IP laws if he's a programmer? Your idiocy astounds me.


And the programmers who work there all have other jobs and do other things, which means the quality of the work on their main projects suffers.

First you have to show evidence that most programmers have to have others jobs to live instead of receiving a living directly by their programming skills

After that you have to prove that they are FORCED into having a job unrelated to their programming skills, ie: NONE of them want to program only as a hobby.


And Debian is an of something that comes from the University system to begin with, which means millions of dollars of development and research being shared freely. It's ridiculous to cite that as an example of the success of a 'donation' based enterprise.

I was talking about Apache. Is that related to Debian?


YOU prove that a majority of free-software developers are making a living solely off of their development of free-software. I've never heard of this.

You have only linked to other websites and wiki articles, which does NOT prove that anybody has made a living off of free-software.

Yes I have given examples. See above (JBoss, MySQL, eZ Publish, ZOPE and Trolltech)

It's up to you to prove that all these programmers are FORCED into accepting other jobs, since it was you who made the initial assertion.


When he starts losing the debate he tells the programmers, workers, etc. (people with exerpeicen) to "shut the fuck up."

Where have I said so? I only told you to shut the fuck up because you just spam and troll and never actually show any proof of what you are talking about.


I said that razor blades used to made of all higher quality parts not just plastic. But I also said razors could be made to last at least half a life time with today's technology which is prevented by corporations who want to continually sell cheap products for $2 a razor (or $15 if you want a Gillette or something).

Can you prove that the reason why we have less quality razor blades is because of "corporations preventing new technology?"

Don't you think that if corporations made razor blades with new technology then people would buy them because they would have higher quality?

As usual you never prove anything and fail to grasp basic logic.

[IcarusAngel]

JBoss is owned by Red Hat. Red Hat is a Linux corporation that charges other corporations thousands of dollars to provide them servers and other enterprise software. Red Hat is terribly expensive and is a paid product. They used to offer a Linux distro but pulled out, creating the need for Fedora.

That is an example of a corporation doing something in house to benefit their company, not free-software developers who donate their time to better software quality overall.

Trolltech is not a "free-software" company. Their original licenses were proprietary, and their "free services" are of inferior quality to their paid services. That's not a good example of free-software succeeding, and since trolltech is a company it's not a good example of people voluntarily getting together and working on software.

That's a mutaul trade: developers help make the software and trolltech has some free-software products. Trolltec also succeeds because of QT and KDE, and you don't make money from developing KDE applications.

MySQL is for databases. People make money on that when corporations need people for databases. You provide no evidence that most of the contributers make enough money to live off of.

Zope and ezPublish make money in completely different areas than free-software, and they are making money off of the thousands of programmers who have given their time for and programming skills for free to the community. Zope also did not start out as a free-software project.

How is it fair to have one or two corporations who make money off the work of thouands of others who donate their time? So if you donate your time you're basically an idiot who allows his work to be exploited by businessmen, while you receiving nothing in return? That is why so few programmers ever dedicate their lives to free-software and what keeps it lagging behind, forcing them into areas of work they wouldn't otherwise be in.

[IcarusAngel]

Receiving donations is making a living, as far as I'm concerned. Anyway: PROVIDE THE FUCKING EVIDENCE THAT MOST SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS ONLY MAKE A LIVING BY DONATIONS IN THE FIRST PLACE!

There are tens of thousands of people developing free-software, and contributing to apache. How many people make money soley from developing free-software on Apache or QT? Few, if any. Apache receives donations, as does Debian, and that is just enough to keep their domains going. Trolltech and Red Hat are entire companies half of which doesn't have anything to do with free-software.

It stands to reason mathematically that most free-software developers aren't even making any money for the contributions, then.


So far you haven't even provided one example of a guy who made a living developing free-software.

[Havet]

JBoss is owned by Red Hat. Red Hat is a Linux corporation that charges other corporations thousands of dollars to provide them servers and other enterprise software. Red Hat is terribly expensive and is a paid product. They used to offer a Linux distro but pulled out, creating the need for Fedora.

JBoss only got owned by Red Hat in April 2006 (http://www.redhat.com/about/news/prarchive/2006/jboss.html), and they had made plenty of money before that.


Trolltech is not a "free-software" company. Their original licenses were proprietary, and their "free services" are of inferior quality to their paid services. That's not a good example of free-software succeeding, and since trolltech is a company it's not a good example of people voluntarily getting together and working on software.

Please show evidence that their original licenses were proprietary.


MySQL is for databases. People make money on that when corporations need people for databases. You provide no evidence that most of the contributers make enough money to live off of.

Not just corporations. Anyone who has a need for a database can purchase their services.

I'm pretty sure their contributors (Original development of MySQL by Michael Widenius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Widenius) and David Axmark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Axmark) beginning in 1994[22] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL#cite_note-21) ) made quite a living (they were bought by Oracle (http://www.oracle.com/innodb/index.html))


Zope and ezPublish make money in completely different areas than free-software, and they are making money off of the thousands of programmers who have given their time for and programming skills for free to the community. Zope also did not start out as a free-software project.

Zope did start as a free-software project (check out the wikipedia article on this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zope))

As for ezPublish, it is both available in GPL licenses and proprietary licenses (http://ez.no/software/proprietary_license_options).


How is it fair to have one or two corporations who make money off the work of thouands of others who donate their time?

Can you prove that is was thousands who created the specific sources for these companies and that they did not receive compensation for this?


That is why so few programmers ever dedicate their lives to free-software and what keeps it lagging behind, forcing them into areas of work they wouldn't otherwise be in.

So you have evidence that the number of programmers has been decreasing? please share it!


There are tens of thousands of people developing free-software, and contributing to apache. How many people make money soley from developing free-software on Apache or QT? Few, if any. Apache receives donations, as does Debian, and that is just enough to keep their domains going. Trolltech and Red Hat are entire companies half of which doesn't have anything to do with free-software.

It stands to reason mathematically that most free-software developers aren't even making any money for the contributions, then.

I'm sorry but you still provided no evidence for your claims that most are funded by donations, so i'll have to take your word for it in order to keep the conversation going.

How is that being funded by donations does not give money to their contributors, ie: how is it that the contributors do not get any of the money from the donations? Can you prove this? Have you asked them all about this? Have you seen polls? Please share the info!

---

On another note, it should be worth mentioning that i'm perfectly aware of the role of the State and universities in all this free-software development in the last years, but I do not think there is evidence that proves that stolen fruits of one's labor (aka taxation) are still required to continue to fund major breakthroughs in these kinds of projects.

[IcarusAngel]

JBoss only got owned by Red Hat in April 2006 (http://www.redhat.com/about/news/prarchive/2006/jboss.html), and they had made plenty of money before that.

Jboss makes money off services. That means that they are benefitting from the free-software community, most of whem do not get anything in return.

Your other examples are of people who've found away to create private services off of free-software products while providing nothing in return to the community.

So the community provides free-software and then a few corporations make money off of it, like what Red Hat does? This is basically exploitation.


Please show evidence that their original licenses were proprietary.

"At all times, Qt was available under a commercial license, which allows the development of proprietary applications without restrictions on licensing. In addition to that, Qt was at all times licensed under an increasing number of increasingly free licenses"

QT didn't go free-software until it became clear that KDE was going to be popular and the free-software community demanded it.

As shown, QT has a commercial license which is how they make their money and the company is owned by Nokia.

So that's another example of a company that benefitted from the community but made a lot of money privately as well until they became acquired by a large corporation.

So the purpose of free-software is to exploit the community until you can figure out a way to make money selling services, then bought out by a big corporation?

How is this productive to the thousands of software developers who do NOT make money?


Not just corporations. Anyone who has a need for a database can purchase their services.

I'm pretty sure their contributors (Original development of MySQL by Michael Widenius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Widenius) and David Axmark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Axmark) beginning in 1994[22] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL#cite_note-21) ) made quite a living (they were bought by Oracle (http://www.oracle.com/innodb/index.html))

I.e., another example of one or two people benefitting from the work of others, just like QT and JBoss.


Zope did start as a free-software project (check out the wikipedia article on this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zope))

Where does it say it started out as a free software project? "Zope was originally authored by Zope Corporation (http://www.zope.com/). Parts of Zope have been open source as far back as 1996, with the whole application server open source since 1998."

Furthermore Zope is written from python.

So again, a few people make money from the sweat of thousands of others, except those thousands of others receiving NOTHING in return, not even a wage, so it's even more exploitative than capitalism.


As for ezPublish, it is both available in GPL licenses and proprietary licenses (http://ez.no/software/proprietary_license_options).



Can you prove that is was thousands who created the specific sources for these companies and that they did not receive compensation for this?

Free-software is creating by thousands of people. The point of free-software is that people share the code and learn from it. Python for example has hundreds of contributers and many people who've written libraries for it.

By having one or two people make money from free-software and then selling it to a business model isn't a good example of all the thousands of developers making a living wage.


So you have evidence that the number of programmers has been decreasing? please share it!

I didn't say the number of programmers has been decreasing. I said there would be far more people developing free software if they could make a living at it, as they should.


In another note, it should be worth mentioning that i'm perfectly aware of the role of the State and universities in all this free-software development in the last years, but I do not think there is evidence that proves that stolen fruits of one's labor (aka taxation) are still required to continue to fund major breakthroughs in these kinds of projects.

And yet it's OK for one or two corporations to control a majority of the market, benefitting from the hard work of others or from resources that were given to the community for free? Or hiring programmers in India for slave wages? How is that not "exploitation" considering corporations didn't do most of the ground breaking research in computers in the first place.

And how are taxes "stealing" when the rich are the ones who use the government to their advantage in the first place? They SHOULD be forced to pay taxes to fund Universities etc., since this is where a majority of the research in computer science is worked on.

The only people who are stealing are the corporations and the CEOs, who are given a government protected rights over the land and the resources.

Taxes is too kind; they should be overthrown and ALL software should be forced to be public, since all software is based from public creations in the first place.

[Havet]

Jboss makes money off services. That means that they are benefitting from the free-software community, most of whem do not get anything in return.

Your other examples are of people who've found away to create private services off of free-software products while providing nothing in return to the community.

So the community provides free-software and then a few corporations make money off of it, like what Red Hat does? This is basically exploitation.

"At all times, Qt was available under a commercial license, which allows the development of proprietary applications without restrictions on licensing. In addition to that, Qt was at all times licensed under an increasing number of increasingly free licenses"

QT didn't go free-software until it became clear that KDE was going to be popular and the free-software community demanded it.

As shown, QT has a commercial license which is how they make their money and the company is owned by Nokia.

So that's another example of a company that benefitted from the community but made a lot of money privately as well until they became acquired by a large corporation.

So the purpose of free-software is to exploit the community until you can figure out a way to make money selling services, then bought out by a big corporation?

How is this productive to the thousands of software developers who do NOT make money?

I.e., another example of one or two people benefitting from the work of others, just like QT and JBoss.

So again, a few people make money from the sweat of thousands of others, except those thousands of others receiving NOTHING in return, not even a wage, so it's even more exploitative than capitalism.

Free-software is creating by thousands of people. The point of free-software is that people share the code and learn from it. Python for example has hundreds of contributers and many people who've written libraries for it.

By having one or two people make money from free-software and then selling it to a business model isn't a good example of all the thousands of developers making a living wage.

Ok, i think i may start to see your basic argument, but I don't understand it. Why should these people owe anything to the community if the community voluntarily agreed to put out for free this kind of free software in the first place?


I didn't say the number of programmers has been decreasing. I said there would be far more people developing free software if they could make a living at it, as they should.

Ok, but how can you know that for sure?


And yet it's OK for one or two corporations to control a majority of the market, benefitting from the hard work of others or from resources that were given to the community for free? Or hiring programmers in India for slave wages? How is that not "exploitation" considering corporations didn't do most of the ground breaking research in computers in the first place.

It is indeed exploitation, but I do not intend to have corporations in a freer environment, nor do I think there are reasons for them to appear in the first place.


And how are taxes "stealing" when the rich are the ones who use the government to their advantage in the first place? They SHOULD be forced to pay taxes to fund Universities etc., since this is where a majority of the research in computer science is worked on.

The only people who are stealing are the corporations and the CEOs, who are given a government protected rights over the land and the resources.

How about we destroy every single entity that lives off the exploitation of others, such as corporations and the state, institute a system with equality of opportunity and allow every to go as far as they want to go by their own effort or by joining with others?

[Ovi]

Like these guys did

Game is given for free, users are charged for unique additional content (http://taiwanreview.nat.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=83073&CtNode=1337)

Seminar ad explaining the process (http://worlds.ruc.dk/archives/1502)

List of free games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeware_games)

How free Flash Games generate money (http://www.flashgamelicense.com/view_library.php?page=how-do-flash-games-make-money)

How an indie game developer company makes money (http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2009/05/indie_developers_make_some_mon.html)

Its usually always the same process: give away the product for free, and charge for the service around the product.

It's completely pointless to respond any further, especially since IcarusAngel is doing a pretty good job :D, but here goes nothing. First of all you confuse free software with freeware. Free software refers to freedom, not price. One of those links showed how some freeware programmers managed to make moneys without selling the game. But they still sold something, game items. People pay for those virtual items because they are only available by paying the company that has monopoly over the online servers. If the game and the server software would be free software, anyone could make their own game server and distribute those virtual items for free, hence no profit. And flash games is a completely different story from desktop games. In the latter, you can't display ads.


You can't make money by selling your program directly because it is infinitely reproducible, and people will not abide by IP laws, so its better to make money on your programming skills indirectly, in many ways as I've explained before.


Getting a job in programming doesn't fix the issue though.




I don't see any problem with not getting paid by developing software, but getting paid by your software indirectly.

It doesn't, it was just another example.



It means that nobody will pay them for their work directly, but indirectly.

You don't get paid for software at all by having a second job so that you can afford programming. That's the whole idea that you don't get.


Your argument that without an institution with the monopoly on force to force people into paying for these kinds of projects, then they wouldn't appear is flawed

Who said anything about the state. You do realize that when I say the market economy should be abolished I don't propose that the state should instead take care of all this right?


Show evidence that completely free trade generated this. You can't, because the reason they are homeless is because of an artificially lowered equality of opportunity, made possible by state legislation and overpowered corporation lobbies.

Oh yeah, I forgot that these people are doing bad because of that pesky minimum wage law.




You keep going around in circles but don't understand it. Just because they are not generally paid for their work directly doesn't mean that they are forced into not being paid for their work directly.

Get over it. No free software developer refuses to get paid for his work. Just that there's nobody to offer him any support!


So either PROVE, with FACTS, that they do not have any choice, or shut the hell up about this. Even a simple statistical inquiry would be enough to prove me wrong, so why don't you provide it?

Here's some facts: most free software developers don't get paid despite the fact that they would like to. Deal with it. Live with it. Get over it.




In a completely free market economy not all projects are made for profit
And who exactly would fund a multi billion dollar research project by the way? Donations? Yeah right.

[IcarusAngel]

Well, half of what hayenmill is suggesting isn't even legal. For instance, if you take ANY GPL'd code, you MUST release further alterations under the GPL. You can't mix and match GPL and non-GPL'd code, unless you're working on entirely different projects.

GNU is protected by the law. Some of hayenmill's advice is not only bad, it could land your ass with a lawsuit if you follow it.

[IcarusAngel]

Ok, i think i may start to see your basic argument, but I don't understand it. Why should these people owe anything to the community if the community voluntarily agreed to put out for free this kind of free software in the first place?

It's equivalent to the fact that workers do most of the work in any given society and yet to not receive their fair share of the pay. But it's even worse since they're not getting paid. What you're suggesting is to find a way to make CAPITAL off of free-software, which is disingenuous. It also has little to do with free-software. For example, I could make a database program for my company that sells grills. It would be the grills, not the software, that is making me the money. The free-software portion is just a way to cut costs and hence increase profit.. So, while it is true that you can make money off free-software these kind of projects are not good examples of free-software developers making money. Only if they are directly employed for the company is it a good example with no help from other developers.

Profit, however, is bad. As Benjamin Tucker said "interest is theft, Rent Robbery, and Profit Only Another Name for Plunder." Also, since the labor is supposed to be under your own control, the people profiting from free-software would owe resources and money to the people who made the free-software if they are profiting off of it.

Also, since capital belongs to "society," any capital made from the free-software should go back to the free-software developers.


Ok, but how can you know that for sure?

There are over 10,000 projects in debian alone. Lets double the amount of the examples you gave of people making money off of free-software: so 4 times 2 is 8.

8/10,000 = x/100

= 0.08/100.

So .0008% of free-software projects make money (keep in mind half of your examples are not your typical free-software project but we're being generous; open source (where business makes money off a free-software project) is a different movement from free-software (http://www.gnu.org/events/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt)).

Now, since they are dedicating their LIVES to this stuff, working on the side doing god knows what, to the point where even the project leader of Debian has other jobs, it stands to reason that they absolutely love their "secondary" work life and would probably make it their first.

Interesting, Conan O Brien said of the 200th anniversary of the systems if he was on island and paid $1 to develop the simpsons and write for them, he'd do it, provided he had his other needs taken care of.

This is what would happen in communism/syndicalism/any form of anarchism but is prevented from happening in capitalism.


How about we destroy every single entity that lives off the exploitation of others, such as corporations and the state, institute a system with equality of opportunity and allow every to go as far as they want to go by their own effort or by joining with others?

Yes, but as long as corporations are around there is going to be a government.

Corporations are a part of the government, as the fractions above tell us, you can't have a part without the whole. A part is defined as belonging to some whole. In buddhism the heavens and the earth are part of the same whole, the spirit and the flesh, and so on. Parts add up to the whole like in fractions.

So as long as the corporations and the division of labor and so on is around there has be to be a government to keep it in place, and that government can either protect the slave owners or do things on behalf of the workers. For example, if the government is enforcing workers rights and labor rights it is better than having the businesses themselves do it, since business is further divorsed from the people. And if the people aren't paying taxes to protect corporate interests, corporations will get it from workers in other ways.

Also, the original point of this thread was that businesses aren't providing enough public research, which is also true. Corporations do not do research that favors the public and public research is 90% government.
So it stands to reason the tax rate should be high; some liberal economists say it should be 50-75%, which sounds accurate to keep society moving.

[Skooma Addict]

Yes, but as long as corporations are around there is going to be a government. Do you just know this a priori? I see no reason to assume that corporations would disappear with the abolition of government; especially in American society.

[Havet]

First of all you confuse free software with freeware. Free software refers to freedom, not price. One of those links showed how some freeware programmers managed to make moneys without selling the game. But they still sold something, game items. People pay for those virtual items because they are only available by paying the company that has monopoly over the online servers. If the game and the server software would be free software, anyone could make their own game server and distribute those virtual items for free, hence no profit.

Ah, i understand now. But I never ever even heard of a game whose software was available for free and could be modified without restrictions

Though now that i think of it, mods are pretty good examples that one can take an IP game, modify it and then release the modification for free.

Often, modders find the original company wanting to buy the modification from them so as to direct traffic towards the company's website instead of the modder's website and to have a greater chance of people buying shit from the company's website (counter-strike is a good example)


And flash games is a completely different story from desktop games. In the latter, you can't display ads.

Maybe not yet, but companies are certainly pushing forth the idea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-game_advertising)


Getting a job in programming doesn't fix the issue though.

When I say "many ways", one of them is a job in programming, but others include self-employment (or freelancing), etc

- Make a website, give the code for free and make money by the traffic that you will receive
- Look for jobs on programming and show your code as proof of your skills
- Write books and sell them (also without using ip laws), charge for conferences and seminars
- Get a job as a teacher
- make a website, give the code for free and make money on services around that code.
- Make unique products which run on your code (perhaps some basic robotic appliances) and commercialize them.


Who said anything about the state. You do realize that when I say the market economy should be abolished I don't propose that the state should instead take care of all this right?

Sure, but someone will still have to have a monopoly on force to force others to contribute to massive projects.


Oh yeah, I forgot that these people are doing bad because of that pesky minimum wage law.

I'm not talking about the minimum wage. I'm talking about the real restrictions which only allow a "lucky few" to enter the business world and become business owners, while artificially increasing the number of wage earners and therefore making them easily replaceable. That's what i'm against.


Get over it. No free software developer refuses to get paid for his work. Just that there's nobody to offer him any support!

Here's some facts: most free software developers don't get paid despite the fact that they would like to. Deal with it. Live with it. Get over it.

But how do you know this?


And who exactly would fund a multi billion dollar research project by the way? Donations? Yeah right.

In China alone, they were able to raise (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/09040XijinZhou.html) the equivalent of 15.7 billion dollars in donations for victims of snow storms and earth quake disasters.

[Havet]

It's equivalent to the fact that workers do most of the work in any given society and yet to not receive their fair share of the pay. But it's even worse since they're not getting paid. What you're suggesting is to find a way to make CAPITAL off of free-software, which is disingenuous. It also has little to do with free-software. For example, I could make a database program for my company that sells grills. It would be the grills, not the software, that is making me the money. The free-software portion is just a way to cut costs and hence increase profit.. So, while it is true that you can make money off free-software these kind of projects are not good examples of free-software developers making money. Only if they are directly employed for the company is it a good example with no help from other developers.

But in this current society, workers are forced to sell their labor to capitalists because they do not have as much choice to self-employ themselves or join cooperatives as they would in a natural environment.

In the case of programming, NOBODY is forcing the programmers to create their programs and give them away for free. Some choose to put them for free, even less decide that they want to give it a try at trying to make a living out of it.

Here, a few quotes of some programmers:

"ITS NOT ABOUT THE MONEY, for crying out loud. its about doing something worth doing. christ, some people just don't get it."- jeremiah johnson on April 24, 2007 3:21 AM


"Well a lot of people think it's fun to program and share what they have done, like myself for example." - daniel of sarnia


"I just want to understands what drives the programmers, who must spend hundreds of hours developing the software, and getting no monetary reward for it.
When you start looking at specific examples, it gets easier to understand. Some actually get paid, some do it for ethical reasons, some do it because getting monetary rewards is not actually possible (as the popularity is a direct result of being open source). A good example of the last case is the Linux kernel: Linus could have kept his kernel a proprietary one, but then we'd never even have heard of it -- no company would have invested a cent in it at that time." - Jussi Kukkonen


" You get paid to write the code. You don't get paid for the code. Just because everybody else can benefit from the code does not mean that the original author did not get paid by someone to write it.

That means that the code can go on to be a base for someone else to start with. " - az


"Well I've done a little PHP coding here and there. I'm most certainly not the best coder out there. And if someone else wants to use parts of my code for something and/or improve on it, then Open Source lets them. So really, it gives the programmer practice and helps a great community. Since it's Open Source, we can all teach other tricks and improve our selves as opposed to a closed source community where money has to flow both ways." - Enigmus


I took this from Ubuntu Forums (http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-376482.html) btw




Profit, however, is bad. As Benjamin Tucker said "interest is theft, Rent Robbery, and Profit Only Another Name for Plunder."

Profit is only bad when the workers do not have equality of opportunity and are literally forced to sell their labor.


Also, since capital belongs to "society," any capital made from the free-software should go back to the free-software developers.

Why does capital belong to society?


There are over 10,000 projects in debian alone. Lets double the amount of the examples you gave of people making money off of free-software: so 4 times 2 is 8.

8/10,000 = x/100

= 0.08/100.

So .0008% of free-software projects make money (keep in mind half of your examples are not your typical free-software project but we're being generous; open source (where business makes money off a free-software project) is a different movement from free-software (http://www.gnu.org/events/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt)).

Thats a pretty shallow estimate, isn't it? Only the double of the examples I gave? Tsch, tsch (http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/01/1613253)...


Now, since they are dedicating their LIVES to this stuff, working on the side doing god knows what, to the point where even the project leader of Debian has other jobs, it stands to reason that they absolutely love their "secondary" work life and would probably make it their first.

Exactly, and many do. But other's don't (see their comments above). It must be because either they are not aware that they can, or they are, but don't pursuit it and would rather keep it as a hobby.


Yes, but as long as corporations are around there is going to be a government.

And corporations are only around due to government in the first place. So if you take down the government, and all that shit about limited liability and corporate personhood is going to go down the drain, and many will go bankrupt because now they have to internalize more costs.


So as long as the corporations and the division of labor and so on is around there has be to be a government to keep it in place, and that government can either protect the slave owners or do things on behalf of the workers. For example, if the government is enforcing workers rights and labor rights it is better than having the businesses themselves do it, since business is further divorsed from the people. And if the people aren't paying taxes to protect corporate interests, corporations will get it from workers in other ways.

The biggest reason why the private sector is so divorced from the consumers is because of special privilege granted by the government to them.

[IcarusAngel]

But in this current society, workers are forced to sell their labor to capitalists because they do not have as much choice to self-employ themselves or join cooperatives as they would in a natural environment.

In the case of programming, NOBODY is forcing the programmers to create their programs and give them away for free. Some choose to put them for free, even less decide that they want to give it a try at trying to make a living out of it.

Here, a few quotes of some programmers:

"ITS NOT ABOUT THE MONEY, for crying out loud. its about doing something worth doing. christ, some people just don't get it."- jeremiah johnson on April 24, 2007 3:21 AM

They are forced to program if it is under the threat of starvation. Some people might be forced to program, particularly those who work on software that may be even free-software. If you make a decision that doesn't come out of your own supposed "free-will" it is slavery. You might as well say the people on holocaust camps were free to make the decision that they wanted. Certainly taxes were be more voluntary than capitalist slavery, because people can choose to pay them and will not starve to death if they do not.

I would make it so that the programmers could program because they want to, WITHOUT the threat of starvation. The fact that people will do complicated things like art and programming - even though capitalism doesn't reward them for their work - shows the natural cooperative, not competitive, aspect of people.

So, from each according to need, each according to ability.

If there are resources that aren't earned through the trading of this free Marxist labor, they could be done voluntarily and NO ONE would be forced to starve because there is no threat of starvation.



I took this from Ubuntu Forums (http://ubuntuforums.org/archive//t-376482.html) btw...

Yes, Ubuntu is not a programming forum either. Ubuntu = Linux for dummies.


Profit is only bad when the workers do not have equality of opportunity and are literally forced to sell their labor.

Profit is always bad. It derives from capital, which should be owned equally by all of society, as Tucker indicated. Profit is also always a theft from one group of people to another, since there is no true way to determine how people should be "paid." It makes much more sense to deal with resources rationally and democratically, not the capitalistic way.

In all capitalist conditions, capital is slavery.


Why does capital belong to society?

It belongs to society because all capital is based off of resources that belong to everybody and all capital decisions affect everybody. Capital should be dealt with democratically, then you can't blame one or two people for misusing it or cheating people.


Thats a pretty shallow estimate, isn't it? Only the double of the examples I gave? Tsch, tsch (http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/01/1613253)...

What are you even talking about. What does that prove? Many people worked on the Linux kernel, yes. Linux comes from Minix, which came from the University system.

In the Linux community there is an emphasis of free-software because it came from Minix. Unix was proprietary and it made a lot of money, with many companies claiming their own standard. This "free-market" situation killed Unix as a viable OS for the avg user, and we ended up with DOS. Another situation where capitalism wrecked progress in consumer goods.

I would give all software developers the freedom Uni students enjoy.



And corporations are only around due to government in the first place. So if you take down the government, and all that shit about limited liability and corporate personhood is going to go down the drain, and many will go bankrupt because now they have to internalize more costs.

corporations are the government. Most interference in people's lives comes from corporations. So you would eliminate corporations first.

I'm not going to hope that 'corporations' magically go away from attacking only one sector of the government.


The biggest reason why the private sector is so divorced from the consumers is because of special privilege granted by the government to them.

The "private sector" shoudl be eliminated. All resources should be in the public. The "private sector" is about your house, family, right to privacy from big corporations and government, etc.

Everything else is the public sector, or public domain.

[Havet]

They are forced to program if it is under the threat of starvation. Some people might be forced to program, particularly those who work on software that may be even free-software. If you make a decision that doesn't come out of your own supposed "free-will" it is slavery. You might as well say the people on holocaust camps were free to make the decision that they wanted. Certainly taxes were be more voluntary than capitalist slavery, because people can choose to pay them and will not starve to death if they do not.

Yet these people aren't forced to program. They are forced to work, at best, under the threat of starvation. But programming is an absolutely voluntary action. They could just work, and not program, if they wanted. They will not starve to death if they don't program, but they will starve to death if they don't work.


Yes, Ubuntu is not a programming forum either. Ubuntu = Linux for dummies.

So what? Many people there admitted to program, and specified their reasons behind their choice.


Profit is always bad. It derives from capital, which should be owned equally by all of society, as Tucker indicated. Profit is also always a theft from one group of people to another, since there is no true way to determine how people should be "paid." It makes much more sense to deal with resources rationally and democratically, not the capitalistic way.

In all capitalist conditions, capital is slavery.

So which one is it? Communists advocate the destruction of capital, but you want to preserve it and give it away equally through society. Which one is it?

Profit is not always bad because there simply is nothing wrong with me hiring you to perform a work for me provided you have other choices to choose from (and not just employers, i mean choices of realistically starting an enterprise of your own, whether hierarchical itself, or cooperative or communistic).


It belongs to society because all capital is based off of resources that belong to everybody and all capital decisions affect everybody. Capital should be dealt with democratically, then you can't blame one or two people for misusing it or cheating people.

Why do resource sbelong to everybody?


What are you even talking about. What does that prove? Many people worked on the Linux kernel, yes. Linux comes from Minix, which came from the University system.

It proves many were paid to develop the 2.6.20 patch, even though it was released for free (both in freedom to alter it and use it as in price)


I'm not going to hope that 'corporations' magically go away from attacking only one sector of the government.

There isn't any magic involved. Only economics. Currently many businesses are able to externalize costs to the state or to the public due to privilege granted to them by the government which would not occur in the absence of it.

[IcarusAngel]

Yet these people aren't forced to program. They are forced to work, at best, under the threat of starvation. But programming is an absolutely voluntary action.

Programming is not "an absolutely voluntary action." Many smart people go into programming because it's the only way they can make money in society. Programming also has ranked as the best job in any field in many surveys, such by money market. This is because it cobines the right degree of stress with the right degree of income, as opposed to like a doctor/lawyer (too much stress) or artist (too low of an income).

Since the mantra of free-markets is "from whatever is currently marketable, you will be a slave to corporation x" there are many programmers who program who have no business programming in the first place.

Linsus Torvalds himself won't even use C++ because there are too many "idiot" programmers who use Boost and so on and thus slow their programs down. Java programmers are also infamous for designing bad code as many "java programmers" learn from vocational schools and so on to get a job.

Linux says these people should be kept out of programming projects: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/57643/focus=57918

However, he's forgetting that capitalism necessities that some people program just to have food and a house. He has been away from the University system so long he forgets some people do it for fun as well. In a free society, "bad programmers" would go into their own projects and either succeed or continue to make bad programs.

But as it stands now all programming is not voluntary except of the rich in society, even GNU projects, because many people use those projects just to learn on.



They could just work, and not program, if they wanted. They will not starve to death if they don't program, but they will starve to death if they don't work.

Programming = work. It is a form of work. In a communist/anarchist society all programming would be done voluntarily, and as shown this would be enough to maintain the entire field of programming. Since only those who want to program would be programming



So what? Many people there admitted to program, and specified their reasons behind their choice.

PHP isn't exactly computer programming but scripting. And I've already said many people program for fun but also many people program who don't even want to be and probably contribute bad code.



So which one is it? Communists advocate the destruction of capital, but you want to preserve it and give it away equally through society. Which one is it?

The wealth owned by the cooperatives would be shared with the community; in anarchism there would be no hierarchical system that gained power merely because of the fact that they held property. Society may have designated that a certain group of scientists however be given a lot of resources, such as for a huge research project.


Profit is not always bad because there simply is nothing wrong with me hiring you to perform a work for me provided you have other choices to choose from (and not just employers, i mean choices of realistically starting an enterprise of your own, whether hierarchical itself, or cooperative or communistic).

Choosing from different companies to work for is choosing who can "own" you or "rent" you.


Why do resource sbelong to everybody?

Why should resources belong to 10% of the population who is able to exploit the bottom 90% because of said ownership?


It proves many were paid to develop the 2.6.20 patch, even though it was released for free (both in freedom to alter it and use it as in price)

And the kernel is just one piece of the puzzle of an operating system.

[Havet]

Programming is not "an absolutely voluntary action." Many smart people go into programming because it's the only way they can make money in society

So you admit, then, that people can make a living from programming? You kind of just contradicted yourself here, hehe.

First you claim that programmers cannot get a living by their programming which is why they have to get a job and keep programming as a hobby. You even use the term "force" to describe their condition.

Now you claim that programming is not voluntary (in other words, they DON'T do it as a hobby) because they get paid because they need the money.


Programming = work. It is a form of work. In a communist/anarchist society all programming would be done voluntarily, and as shown this would be enough to maintain the entire field of programming. Since only those who want to program would be programming

So what? I'm talking of paid work, and you stated earlier that the overwhelming majority of programmers don't get paid anything by their work, which is why they have another job.

My point is that nobody is forcing them to continue to program. They already have their job as an income earner, they could just do something else, yet they decide to program, because they like it.


PHP isn't exactly computer programming but scripting. And I've already said many people program for fun but also many people program who don't even want to be and probably contribute bad code.

Whatever, PHP (http://tuxradar.com/practicalphp) is kind of in the same category as programming, and i'm sure many php scripters also don't make a living out of scripting (as you claim...)


The wealth owned by the cooperatives would be shared with the community; in anarchism there would be no hierarchical system that gained power merely because of the fact that they held property. Society may have designated that a certain group of scientists however be given a lot of resources, such as for a huge research project.

What entitles the cooperatives to the capital? According to you, didn't capital come from the exploitation of labor? So why then should anyone be entitled to it? Why not jus destroy it?


Choosing from different companies to work for is choosing who can "own" you or "rent" you.

You should have read what i wrote more carefully. I did not just say freedom to choose an employer:


...provided you have other choices to choose from (and not just employers, i mean choices of realistically starting an enterprise of your own, whether hierarchical itself, or cooperative or communistic)


Why should resources belong to 10% of the population who is able to exploit the bottom 90% because of said ownership?

You're avoiding the question with another question. Let me get more clear: What is the criteria by which you claim that everyone has a claim to all resources?


And the kernel is just one piece of the puzzle of an operating system.

I'm pretty sure all the other parts of the operating system were also created by paying competent open source programmers.

[Ovi]

Ah, i understand now. But I never ever even heard of a game whose software was available for free and could be modified without restrictions

Welcome to free software! there's a completely free as in freedom OS (http://www.debian.org/) that you can modify every single part of it, brand it (http://www.ubuntu.com/), sell it, whatever. There are also free games that give you the same rights, such as OpenArena (http://www.openarena.ws/smfnews.php)



Maybe not yet, but companies are certainly pushing forth the idea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-game_advertising)

Believe me free software developers are not pushing forth the idea. Plus anyone can and will take that, remove the ads and be more popular. Everyone hates ads.


When I say "many ways", one of them is a job in programming, but others include self-employment (or freelancing), etc

- Make a website, give the code for free and make money by the traffic that you will receive
- Look for jobs on programming and show your code as proof of your skills
- Write books and sell them (also without using ip laws), charge for conferences and seminars
- Get a job as a teacher
- make a website, give the code for free and make money on services around that code.
- Make unique products which run on your code (perhaps some basic robotic appliances) and commercialize them.

Ok, for the sake of it here goes:
- games, operating systems and software compilers can't make money out of the web traffic
- If you can't make money out of software without IP laws, neither can a company that you claim can hire you
- the vast majority of programmers don't write books. It's obviously that these will not give most of them any support. Neither do most of them participate in conferences in seminars, anyway not on a regular basis for regular income. There are millions of programmers by the way.
- getting a job as a teacher doesn't pay for your work as a programmer. Again not all programmers can nor want to be teachers.
- programming is more than web developing
- programmers don't generally build robots
Most of these ideas don't help most programmers to get any fund whatsoever.


Sure, but someone will still have to have a monopoly on force to force others to contribute to massive projects.

Yes, market economy either doesn't provide income for crucial domains, such as research and programming, or it's authoritarian.


In China alone, they were able to raise (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/09040XijinZhou.html) the equivalent of 15.7 billion dollars in donations for victims of snow storms and earth quake disasters.
Yes, ok you're right the entire LHC funding of billions of dollars and it's multi million dollars of expense each month could be paid out of donations. Why didn't I think of that?

[IcarusAngel]

So you admit, then, that people can make a living from programming? You kind of just contradicted yourself here, hehe.

NO. "Hehe." We were talking about free-software programmers. Then you brought up all programmers, who many whom work in oppressive conditions that the market creates.


Now you claim that programming is not voluntary (in other words, they DON'T do it as a hobby) because they get paid because they need the money.

No. I accurately pointed out that in the wage slavery system of capitalism, many people do not program voluntarily. Some of these people may even work on GNU projects just to get good.



So what? I'm talking of paid work, and you stated earlier that the overwhelming majority of programmers don't get paid anything by their work, which is why they have another job.

I said the overwhelming majority of Free software developers.


Whatever, PHP (http://tuxradar.com/practicalphp) is kind of in the same category as programming, and i'm sure many php scripters also don't make a living out of scripting (as you claim...)

People who make money doing web development use several technologies, not just PHP. To even use PHP you must be familiar with several frameworks.


What entitles the cooperatives to the capital? According to you, didn't capital come from the exploitation of labor? So why then should anyone be entitled to it? Why not jus destroy it?

Capital does come from exploitation of labor. Capital means the wealth "created" by the capitalists. However, any such wealth is part of the community, it does not belong to any one particular individual, since nothing that is produced ever comes solely from your own labor. So in that sense capital should be shared.


You're avoiding the question with another question. Let me get more clear: What is the criteria by which you claim that everyone has a claim to all resources?


Everyone has a claim to all resources because any decision of what to do with resources affects everybody. So any society that forbids public input - such as capitalism - is exploitative. Capitalist claims that people "vote with their dollars" is the same elitist system that the founders of the US set up, only instead it applies to all areas of the economy, not just politics, so it affects their lives in a more oppressive way.

What you support isn't even capitalism but slavery, where there is a slave class whose work is only allowed to be exploited by a dictatorship of the super rich that come from the free-market. It is similar to capitalism but not even capitalists openly advocate slavery as you do.


I'm pretty sure all the other parts of the operating system were also created by paying competent open source programmers.

lol. You gave five or six examples. As I said there are tens of thousands of open source projects, meaning a fraction of one percent make money.

Again you want pure slavery for society, which is unacceptable.

[Havet]

Believe me free software developers are not pushing forth the idea. Plus anyone can and will take that, remove the ads and be more popular. Everyone hates ads.

I think that between the option of paying for a game and having it as a proprietary software or getting it for free (in both meanings of the word) and seeing advertisement in it, most people would choose the latter.



- games, operating systems and software compilers can't make money out of the web traffic

Why not?


- If you can't make money out of software without IP laws, neither can a company that you claim can hire you

But you can make money out of free software, and the reason the company hires free software programmers is because they have a necessity for their level of skill (besides the fact that free software is cheaper because its free)


- the vast majority of programmers don't write books. It's obviously that these will not give most of them any support. Neither do most of them participate in conferences in seminars, anyway not on a regular basis for regular income. There are millions of programmers by the way.

That's why there are even more choices.

All in all my point is that there are several choices, but each of those choices is only available to a certain percentage of people. Adding all of them up would probably amount to 75% of free software programmers, who wanted to, could make a living out of their skills. Now obviously there's still 25% left, but there are always people who won't be able to make a living out of whatever passion they hold, either because nobody demands their level of skill or simply because they don't want to.


- getting a job as a teacher doesn't pay for your work as a programmer.

How do you know this?


- programming is more than web developing

When I said "make a website", i'm talking about building a website where the programmer can place his code to be reviewed and analyzed, and then "make money on services around that code" adding money from the web traffic.


- programmers don't generally build robots

I didn't say generally, and i didn't mention just robots. read again:

"Make unique products which run on your code (perhaps some basic robotic appliances) and commercialize them"


Yes, market economy either doesn't provide income for crucial domains, such as research and programming, or it's authoritarian.

Wait, what? WHat are you talking about? A completely free market economy does not have a monopoly on force and would ressemble something much less authoritarian than what we see today, partially because many people would finally have a choice between getting a job or self employing themselves or join joint operations in either cooperatives or communes.


Yes, ok you're right the entire LHC funding of billions of dollars and it's multi million dollars of expense each month could be paid out of donations. Why didn't I think of that?

Actually, the chinese (who raised 15.7 billions of dollars (http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/09040XijinZhou.html)) raised a lot more than the 9 billion dollars (http://askanexpert.web.cern.ch/AskAnExpert/en/Accelerators/LHCgeneral-en.html#3) for the LHC

Its like this: either people can be convinced to pay for such kind of projects, or they are compulsed to do so, against their will.

Nobody is preventing the scientists from such great projects to share the information they acquire (although there's every incentive to do so), and if they're afraid that people will benefit from their findings without them getting anything in return then they can just keep their findings to themselves.

Otherwise, they will try to find ways and projects which will bring the most benefit to the people in a way that will convince them to voluntarily participate.

[Havet]

NO. "Hehe." We were talking about free-software programmers. Then you brought up all programmers, who many whom work in oppressive conditions that the market creates.

No i did not bring up all programmers. It was you who did so, in order to evade the point.


No. I accurately pointed out that in the wage slavery system of capitalism, many people do not program voluntarily. Some of these people may even work on GNU projects just to get good.

Good what? skills? GNU projects aren't the only ways to get skills. Your argument that people are forced to go to websites to learn to program is ridiculous.



People who make money doing web development use several technologies, not just PHP. To even use PHP you must be familiar with several frameworks.

Good then. This just furthers my point that most people who choose to program do so voluntarily (i had proved such point by quoting php programmers, but you give me even more reason by explaining that they had to be familiar with even more frameworks, which indeed shows how passionate they are about their "hobby")


Capital does come from exploitation of labor. Capital means the wealth "created" by the capitalists. However, any such wealth is part of the community, it does not belong to any one particular individual, since nothing that is produced ever comes solely from your own labor. So in that sense capital should be shared.

"In economics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics), capital or capital goods (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goods) or real capital are factors of production (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factors_of_production) used to create goods or services (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_%28economics%29) that are not themselves significantly consumed (though they may depreciate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depreciation)) in the production process"

If capital indeed comes from the exploitation of labor, and does not belong to one particular individual, then it DOES NOT belong to the community as well, because the community is a group of individuals. So why not just destroy it?


Everyone has a claim to all resources because any decision of what to do with resources affects everybody.

How does the decision of what to do with resources affect everybody? The logical extreme of your argument allows me to argue that "personal property" should be abolished as well, because all property, whether private or personal, comes from resources, and you just claimed that any decision with resources affects everybody, therefore everybody has a claim to them!

So, under your system, everyone has a claim on my pillow and my toothbrush and my clothes. Every single one of them.


Capitalist claims that people "vote with their dollars" is the same elitist system that the founders of the US set up, only instead it applies to all areas of the economy, not just politics, so it affects their lives in a more oppressive way.

I don't think that "voting with dollars" is oppressive provided we are in an environment with equality of opportunity. Here, see this:



Contrast the relationship between two men, one having an income of 10,000$ a year and one of 5,000$

Bidding for necessities, the richer man outbids the poorer; if there were only enough food on the market for one man, it would be the poorer who would starve. But when the richer man is bidding for luxuries and the poorer man for necessities, the poorer man wins.

Suppose the richer man, having bought enough flower to make bread for himself, wishes to buy the rest of the flour on the market to make papier-mâché for his children's halloween masks. The poorer man still does not have anything to eat; he is willing to use as much of his income as necessary to bid for the flour. He gets the flour, and at much less than 5,000$. The richer man already used half of his income buying flour for bread (since there too, he was bidding against the poor). His remaining income is barely equal to that of the poorer man, and he is certainly not going to spend all of it, or even a substancial fraction, for halloween masks.


lol. You gave five or six examples. As I said there are tens of thousands of open source projects, meaning a fraction of one percent make money.

I gave you an example that for the creation of the kernel patch people were paid. Its only natural to assume other people were paid in other parts of the project.

[IcarusAngel]

No i did not bring up all programmers. It was you who did so, in order to evade the point.

I don't know what you're even talking about. You said that people are never forced to program. You are living in a dream world of capitalist fantasies. I know from experience many programmers hate their jobs. When Microsoft's win2k source code was leaked, it was filled with comments making jabs not only at Microsoft but programming in general and languages such as C++. They do it in order to survive.

If you only work just to survive you are a slave. This is the type of society that you want, one where all of the resources are controlled by a few corporations so anybody who volunteers their time to do what they want to do ends up only helping to continue their own oppression.

You don't work in any field of particular importance so you don't know what people are like.


Good what? skills? GNU projects aren't the only ways to get skills. Your argument that people are forced to go to websites to learn to program is ridiculous.

Many of them do go to websites to learn to program. Functionx, learncpp, cplusplus.com, etc. are some of the resources I used


Good then. This just furthers my point that most people who choose to program do so voluntarily (i had proved such point by quoting php programmers, but you give me even more reason by explaining that they had to be familiar with even more frameworks, which indeed shows how passionate they are about their "hobby")

You quoted some people on an Ubuntu forum, none of whom were of any particular project.

Going to an online forum and citing two posters - with no evidence that they even program - is the fallacy of the hasty generalization.




"In economics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics), capital or capital goods (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goods) or real capital are factors of production (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factors_of_production) used to create goods or services (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_%28economics%29) that are not themselves significantly consumed (though they may depreciate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depreciation)) in the production process"

Yes, capital is when resources are used to make more capital. I would democratically manage the economy so that those resources go into the hands of the people who actually did the work, not into the hands of the capitalists.


If capital indeed comes from the exploitation of labor, and does not belong to one particular individual, then it DOES NOT belong to the community as well, because the community is a group of individuals. So why not just destroy it?

Because that's not a very pragmatic solution to a problem. It would require an entire democratic revolution. If it occurred I would support it.

But you want to eliminate capital to implement pure slavery where people can tage advantage of the work of others and privatize it, which is even worse than capitalism.



How does the decision of what to do with resources affect everybody? The logical extreme of your argument allows me to argue that "personal property" should be abolished as well, because all property, whether private or personal, comes from resources, and you just claimed that any decision with resources affects everybody, therefore everybody has a claim to them!
So, under your system, everyone has a claim on my pillow and my toothbrush and my clothes. Every single one of them.

Personal property is in abundance, though. There is enough land for everybody to have some land. There is are enough "pillows" for everybody to have a pillow.

If however for some reason pillows were limited then indeed it would become a public issue, just as if air became so polluted, breathing air and gas masks would become a public issue. It already is, deregulation has caused much damage to the environment.



I don't think that "voting with dollars" is oppressive provided we are in an environment with equality of opportunity. Here, see this:

It is oppressive because most of the people who do the voting are the producers and industry. This is the old slave argument the powerful and 'superior' classes somehow deserve more voting. "Equality of opportunity" is a lot of nonsense; in any type of free-market system some people are going to have an upper hand in society.

Furthermore, corporations can design such a system to sell thousands of products at high prices rather than millions at low prices, so it's inefficient as well, and leads to conspiracies of industries.



Contrast the relationship between two men, one having an income of 10,000$ a year and one of 5,000$


Don't post fascist nonsense on the forum; I'm not going to read it.



I gave you an example that for the creation of the kernel patch people were paid. Its only natural to assume other people were paid in other parts of the project.

What the hell are you talking about?

[Havet]

I don't know what you're even talking about. You said that people are never forced to program. You are living in a dream world of capitalist fantasies. I know from experience many programmers hate their jobs. When Microsoft's win2k source code was leaked, it was filled with comments making jabs not only at Microsoft but programming in general and languages such as C++. They do it in order to survive.

I said that I did not find evidence that most free software programmers are forced to program.

In order for you to prove that statement, YOU NEED TO SHOW STATISTICAL EVIDENCE, WHICH YOU HAVEN'T


If you only work just to survive you are a slave. This is the type of society that you want, one where all of the resources are controlled by a few corporations so anybody who volunteers their time to do what they want to do ends up only helping to continue their own oppression.

You don't work in any field of particular importance so you don't know what people are like.

Strawman bullshit


Many of them do go to websites to learn to program. Functionx, learncpp, cplusplus.com, etc. are some of the resources I used

Where they forced? Prove so through statistical evidence.


You quoted some people on an Ubuntu forum, none of whom were of any particular project.

Going to an online forum and citing two posters - with no evidence that they even program - is the fallacy of the hasty generalization.

Except I cited like 7 posters. While still it is no basis for a good enough sample, i'm still waiting for YOUR evidence that they are forced to program in the first place


Because that's not a very pragmatic solution to a problem. It would require an entire democratic revolution. If it occurred I would support it.

Even if its not pragmatic, your argument claims that CAPITAL IS ALWAYS BAD, so why take advantage of it even if a revolution does not occur?


But you want to eliminate capital to implement pure slavery where people can tage advantage of the work of others and privatize it, which is even worse than capitalism.

More strawman bullshit


Personal property is in abundance, though. There is enough land for everybody to have some land. There is are enough "pillows" for everybody to have a pillow.

So, then lets get rid of all restrictions on equality of opportunity so resources are as less artificially restricted as possible.


If however for some reason pillows were limited then indeed it would become a public issue, just as if air became so polluted, breathing air and gas masks would become a public issue. It already is, deregulation has caused much damage to the environment.

You are basically claiming that every single invention belongs to the public, even though it was the inventor who created all by himself. If i invent a toaster where none existed, your argument claims that it belongs to the public because it is a limited resource, and i should be coerced into giving it away.


"Equality of opportunity" is a lot of nonsense; in any type of free-market system some people are going to have an upper hand in society.

No it isn't nonsense, unless you can prove that natural differences are great enough to hurt people in production.


Furthermore, corporations can design such a system to sell thousands of products at high prices rather than millions at low prices, so it's inefficient as well, and leads to conspiracies of industries.

Right, except we wouldn't have corporations.


Don't post fascist nonsense on the forum; I'm not going to read it.

You moron, its not fascist. Its right-libertarian at best.

The nerve of you... So know you only read arguments that you "feel like"? HOW THE FUCK could you even tell if the argument was fascist or not WITHOUT looking at it?

Your sense of apriorism and anti-empiricism is elitist and disgusting.


What the hell are you talking about?

Good to know that you're keeping track of the conversation...

[Ovi]

I think that between the option of paying for a game and having it as a proprietary software or getting it for free (in both meanings of the word) and seeing advertisement in it, most people would choose the latter.

You don't understand. If nobody is keeping me from modifying someone else's code, I can remove the ads and make it available to others. Not to mention that adware it's compltely hated by everyone, it's a failed marketing scheme.


Why not?

Web traffic is about websites. A compiler is not a website.


But you can make money out of free software, and the reason the company hires free software programmers is because they have a necessity for their level of skill (besides the fact that free software is cheaper because its free)

No. Most of the work done on operating systems like Red Hat and Ubuntu is not done by paid developers. Take Fedora: developing it would cost 11 billion dollars (http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3780006/How-Much-Is-a-Linux-Distro-Worth.htm) which dwarfs the 78 million dollars net income (http://investors.redhat.com/common/download/sec.cfm?companyid=RHAT&fid=1193125-09-91983&cik=1087423) of Red Hat. Windows Vista has about 50 millions lines of code, while the entire debian lenny distro 323 million (http://libresoft.dat.escet.urjc.es/debian-counting/lenny/index.php?menu=Statistics). You clearly have no understanding of how much work is put into free software and that paid labor in this domain is an exception.


That's why there are even more choices.

All in all my point is that there are several choices, but each of those choices is only available to a certain percentage of people. Adding all of them up would probably amount to 75% of free software programmers, who wanted to, could make a living out of their skills. Now obviously there's still 25% left, but there are always people who won't be able to make a living out of whatever passion they hold, either because nobody demands their level of skill or simply because they don't want to.

75%? That's like saying the earth is flat although reality proves otherwise. And reality proves that you have no idea what you're talking about.



How do you know this?

Teachers get paid for teaching, not programming software in their spare time.



When I said "make a website", i'm talking about building a website where the programmer can place his code to be reviewed and analyzed, and then "make money on services around that code" adding money from the web traffic.



I didn't say generally, and i didn't mention just robots. read again:

"Make unique products which run on your code (perhaps some basic robotic appliances) and commercialize them"



Wait, what? WHat are you talking about? A completely free market economy does not have a monopoly on force and would ressemble something much less authoritarian than what we see today, partially because many people would finally have a choice between getting a job or self employing themselves or join joint operations in either cooperatives or communes.

Even so, the LHC and much of scientific research would not exist in your hypothetical free market.


Actually, the chinese (who raised 15.7 billions of dollars (http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/09040XijinZhou.html)) raised a lot more than the 9 billion dollars (http://askanexpert.web.cern.ch/AskAnExpert/en/Accelerators/LHCgeneral-en.html#3) for the LHC

Saying that donations could support the LHC is bullocks and you know it. Surely governments would resort to donations if it were such a good idea.


Its like this: either people can be convinced to pay for such kind of projects, or they are compulsed to do so, against their will.

Nobody is preventing the scientists from such great projects to share the information they acquire (although there's every incentive to do so), and if they're afraid that people will benefit from their findings without them getting anything in return then they can just keep their findings to themselves.

If they don't get anything in return, there won't be any research to begin with because you'd have to have another job. There's no immediate material benefit from much of the scientific research and keeping the results to yourself is not only stupid but also hinders innovation. No wonder even governments forbid patents that have to do with science.