RMS%mit-oz@sri-unix.UUCP (10/08/83)
It's interesting to hear the claim that my free competition is "destroying the work of everybody else". We hear great praise of the entrepreneur for his willingness to take a risk. This is supposedly why he deserves to make money. But if it looks like his risk might fail, he always starts complaining! It's an amusing contrast. Businessmen love competition when they are winning, but not when they are out-competed. Then the competition is "destroying their business". So here we have a person who clearly programs primarily to make money. But now he is faced with a competitor who decided to charge a lower price (nothing, in fact), and the market doesn't think his product is worth the price any more. Good for the market! Capitalism doesn't say he is entitled to find any customers. In this light, his message is really an attempt to start a programmers' cartel. "Please don't work for free because then we will make less money. Let's all unite and keep our prices high." But I'm not joining. Without me, the cartel probably won't succeed. I'd rather see the government make people pay for programming through taxes than a cartel make people pay to buy programs, because at least the government would let everybody copy the results. You can view my request for donations as an attempt to organize the victims of the programmers' cartel, to help them resist. Like the various measures that the oil-importing countries took to resist OPEC: conservation and better use of their own resources. If it does happen that there is difficulty in getting market acceptance for an unfree operating system once GNU exists, perhaps that is just. Operating systems will have to compete on terms of availability as well as technical features. Perhaps an operating system that is technically superior but not free is not really an improvement over one that is free. I will be pleased if the market thinks so; and a capitalist has no grounds to object to the market's decision. Technical improvements will still happen. I will not stop with GNU, and the rest of you need not do so either. Rich men will still support research, just as they do now, and so will hardware manufacturers, and so will the government. Furthermore, it should be noted that commercial conservatism is a strong force against innovation. New ideas can be marketed but it's hard for them to gain acceptance, especially when it costs a lot to try them out. If the operating system isn't seen as a product, this difficulty may get less. Why not give the new improved system a try, if it's free? -------
padpowell@wateng.UUCP (PAD Powell [Admin]) (10/18/83)
In one article, the author says that he would rather let the "government" support his software efforts by taxation, because then the software would be distributed "free". Firstly, if the software is competing with products offered by companies, then the government is using taxes from the companies to put them at a disadvantage. "You are doing so well that we are going to bankrupt you." This is a fact of life up here in Canada, where the economic policies have created an environment so tied to the Provincial and Federal Government grant schemes that no company can afford not to be part of them. The result is a tremendous waste of money and people. Also, the fact the government pays for things does not mean access to them. I know of one major telecom company here in Canada that has had direct and indirect subsidies for decades that has never put any software they have developed in the public domain. Patrick Powell