We look at this volunteerism as contributing to the community which we enjoy so greatly and we get great egoboo for doing so. (Egoboo: postive strokes, esteem from our peers, that kinda thing.) The strong overlap between the sf community and the computer geeks may have helped encourage some of these attitudes. Or maybe not. At any rate what I get out of your gift/volunteer culture is intangible, but very real nevertheless: egoboo and the knowledge of having having helped make possible a culture and community I enjoy

MKK

You have to share with the rest of us….

:)

K

If open source is the end all and be all of software development, then why does the movement feel the need to convert at knifepoint?

I wonder how many of you have taken the time to ever read the GNU Public Licence (GPL)? If you did, you would realize how wrong it is. First, the GPL is viral. What that means it that if you were to use code from a GPL program in your program, you don’t get a choice about what licence you use – your program is GPL code. Why do you think that bison (a GPL parser generator) uses a modified version of the GPL? Because under the standard licence, any parser made by bison would immediately be under the GPL, and so would any program using that parser. There would be no commercial viability for a tool that makes anything it is used on governed by the GPL.

The other major problem with the GPL is that the creator loses any distribution rights whatsoever. Yes, I know the licence says that the creator may set any price that they wish. But the GPL also gives the end user the same rights. With peer to peer file sharing networks the way they are now, a GPL program that was even moderately popular – a program that could make the programmer a moderate living if he controlled distribution rights – would be obtained for free, not bought. The programmer also has no control over how his project is used – something that has probably killed quite a few projects. (Read up on the bnetd issue from a year ago – Blizzard and Vivendi would most likely have been willing to let bnetd sail under their radar had it not been for the fact that a splinter group made a variant that would allow the online play of the beta of Warcraft III - a splinter formed because the core bnetd devs chose not to add that functionality for that reason.)

It’s interesting how much Stallman pushes to have people accept that Linux is under the GPL - something that is considered to this day to be a fringe notion. And I wonder exactly where open source would be today if it wasn’t for the GPL. The GPL is the one thing that makes me shy away from open source, considering how much of open source is under the GPL.

Altruism and volunteerism drives economists nuts. If you buy the simplistic view that incentives drive all behavior, you will always search for incentives. The point is people volunteer all the time and the motives can be heterogenous.

As Walt Scacchi from UC Irvine noted, the research on Open Source has not come up with a unique motive. Most of the work presented at the conference read like a generic list from a textbook.

Of course, one could argue that there is nothing unique about Open Source…. :-)

There would be no commercial viability for a tool that makes anything it is used on governed by the GPL.

Your example Bison, a parser, is a special case. First, the GPL limits (1) modifying the original program (2) including the source code of a program into a new program and (3) linking, which is technically equivalent to (2). Additionally, there is an operating system clause in there that mediates even this requirement.

GNU Emacs hardly require that all documents and code created with it be GPLed anymore than Visual Basic blocks people from writing free software with it. Your fears of contamination are overblow and, in the context of the rest of the message, come close to FUD.

With peer to peer file sharing networks the way they are now, a GPL program that was even moderately popular – a program that could make the programmer a moderate living if he controlled distribution rights – would be obtained for free, not bought.

Two major oversites here: (1) F/OSS is testiment to the fact that paying programmer is not a requirement for the production of software and (2) Paying programmers need not be dependent on complete control of distribution.

There are plenty of people who write free software soley for the money they make. I’m not one of them but I’ve made very decent living writing software without control of distribution rights for the past half decade. GPLed software in fact.

The programmer also has no control over how his project is used – something that has probably killed quite a few projects.

I’d say it has “saved” just as many.

If you hold free software up to the business logic of proprietary companies based on highly individualized control, it will appear flawed and that is hardly suprising. If you hold free software up as an example of a new form of software production with it’s own, distinct business logic, you are in a position to critically evaluate the nature of free software production.

It works. It develops good software and it employed programmers. I have the tax returns to prove it.

OPEN SOURCE….Kieran Healy has an interesting post about the Open Source movement and asks what I think is the key question: why do people volunteer to work on Open Source projects for free?The best predictor of whether you’ve volunteered time…