Democrats Tap Open Source

[Leo J Mauler]

On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 10:24:46 -0500 "Charles, Joshua Micah
(UMKC-Student)" <jmcqk6 at umkc.edu> writes:

> > however your reaction must be to the political inference 
> > and seems tosupport SCO's suggestion that OSS and 
> > community based efforts are little more than communist. 
> 
> Well, unfortunately, in some cases OSS is communism.  
> Especially when RMS is an outspoken liberal.  
> 
> That's what drives me crazy.  There really is two types of 
> Open Source, or free software, what ever you want to call it.  
> There is the "Let's make the best product possible, using the 
> best technique possible" which is pretty damn capitalistic 
> when you get down to it.  Then there is the "Let's share 
> everything."  Ok, that's socialism.  Sure in the end you
> get the same output many times, but for so many of us that 
> are principal driven, it's an important distinction to make.

In most cases the "two distinct types" blur together so much as to be
indistinguishable.  Open Source, by its very nature is "lets share
everything", and no one can state that they already know the best
techniques themselves.  So most Open Source products share everything
while picking the best technique from the offerings from the community. 
I doubt Linus Torvalds includes *all* the contributed code for the
kernel, he only selects the best code developed using the best techniques
(despite his insistence on BitKeeper).  But since the kernel is freely
shared, Linus' selection of kernel patches grows much larger than if he
was working with a closed shop with a finite number of programmers.

And, to get briefly political here, pure capitalism eventually leads to
monopolies which in turn degrade technology (i.e., Micro$oft), and pure
socialism removes the incentives to innovate.  OSS seems to be the happy
medium between the two, creating a playing field which encourages people
to innovate within a basically socialist system, without leading to the
monopolies from pure capitalism.

> Just my two cents.  Tried to keep this on topic as much as possible.
> 
> Josh

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