From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Thu Jul 27 2000 - 22:18:20 PDT
Jeff Bone writes:
> Counterargument: plenty of people have spent plenty of time creating Linux and
> associated tools, which IMO are on the whole much higher-quality than commercial
> alternatives. Uptime on the home Linux box topped 100 days, as it often does,
Software, music and literature are special. (You geeks cannot be told
that often enough). They do not require considerable expenses to
create (you can pay admittedly expensive musical instruments from gig
income, though surprising amounts of expensive musical hardware are
owned by pure amateurs, and computers are as ubiquitous as they
come). In a society rich enough that basic needs are covered with part
time jobs or welfare, volunteered time is cheap, and such engagement
at the very least makes itself paid in honed skills (for a future
"real" career), and social status. The old gift society thing.
Whenever you need brick and mortar infrastructure (volunteers which
need not collaborate physically in an expensive environment who need
not to be paid much, or at all are all that not) to fabricate your
bits, and these bits have a high enough demand so that there is
incentive to publish them, reaping the benefit of pooled warez, you're
one step away from shutting down shop.
I'm not arguing that such a constellation is frequent, but these
people will find themselves in trouble. Whether the society as a whole
will encounter enough damage, that remains to be seen.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 23:24:10 PDT