[cc-community] More discussion on NC

Alan Cox alan at lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk
Mon Oct 11 17:00:30 EDT 2010


> Not bad for whom? List a dozen open source projects that weren't funded 
> by big businesses looking to get out of software development and solely 
> into selling hardware, advertizers wanting to tie people into using 
> their search engine, or weren't the staple of CS courses that could 
> harness the work of 1000s of final year students?

I can't think of any good CS course examples. Those who have tried
generally merely succeeded in demonstrating the abysmal standard of
competence of final year comp sci students in most universities.

The others sound like markets doing the right thing although I'd say you
missed the direction a bit.

A lot of the funding via big business isn't to get out of software and
sell hardware, hardware is usually low value stuff and you only sell it
once. It's to avoid writing the same software as everyone else is and to
share the cost in a manner which avoids any of the contributors being
screwed by the others. Not perhaps what the GPL vision was about, but it
happens to work for that too.

If anything it's to get into other areas of software that make real
money, or into services which make real money. Oracle for example don't
do Linux to sell hardware.

And if you look at the FLOSS studies lots of free software was written
for fun, just as the net is full of free photograps from people who don't
care what is done with them and which were generally just for fun. It
also shows lots of the small one off contributions are rational economic
ones. "I needed widget X to work, I made it work, here it is" and then
vanishing type stuff.

> Claiming success for freeware businesses that ride on the free content 
> provided by 1000s of idealistic kids, and those desparate to please 
> their tutors is not going to fly with me. I think it is reminiscent of 
> those that preached up the Children's Crusades

You are self contradictory it seems, and insulting, but then you seem to
be trolling at this point for the most part.

If big business is funding it then its hardly riding on free content -
it's investing and creating a market. It's all really quite simple. There
are rational economic models of situations where "GPL free" content makes
sense. Likewise there are rational models of when it doesn't.

Maybe its putting a few "closed" businesses out of work, but diddums
that's market forces for you. Ebay destroyed most of the second hand comic
shops, Linux destroyed the closed educational OS competitors, free
photographs have put a lot of crap photographers out of business.

> Or that I took it outside of the Capitalist exchange system, and no one 
> is putting back in there. You want to make money from X go find some 
> thing else. 

You seem to act as if I want to use your content when you don't want me
to, or I'm opposed to NC - I'm not. On the contrary I use NC licencing
for some of the stuff I do in the photoetching world.

As to taking things outside the capitalist exchange system - the state
will put it back for you. They may wait until after you've kicked the
bucket, or in the case of music you've non-commercially performed
publically may not even extend you that courtesy in some cases. If the
orphan work studies are right then most likely as soon as you depart your
relatives will also just give it away 8)

Alan



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