From: Francois-Rene Rideau (fare@tunes.org)
Date: Wed Jun 20 2001 - 14:10:41 MDT
On Wed, Jun 20, 2001 at 05:41:18PM -0000, Robert Coyote wrote:
> I ask the simplest question
> How does one finance ones life as a programmer when you give away all your
> creativity and work for free?
Who talks about giving away creativity? You obviously didn't get the point.
Hence, I invite you to acknowledge the fact that you didn't quite understand
what Free Software was all about, and that you start collection information
about what are the actual opinions and arguments of Free Software advocates,
before you make your mind about it. It's ok for me that you disagree once
you know what it is, but it's foolish to disagree when you haven't got
a clue what you disagree with.
"Free Trade" does not mean that people exchange services for nothing;
it means that people are free to either exchange services or withhold them,
for any valuable counter-service that they find someone else to agree upon.
"Free Entreprise" does not mean that people undertake new activities
for nothing; it means that people are free to choose what activities
to undertake or not undertake, whether they do it for their own sake,
or in exchange of whatever other people agree to offer them.
"Free Software" does not mean that people give away software for nothing;
it means that they are free to use, copy, modify or redistribute software,
or not to do it, either for their own purpose or in exchange of whatever
goods, service or money anyone else is willing to pay for them.
Actually the meaning of "free" to refer to liberty is much older
than the expression "free of charge" whence comes the meaning of
"without expecting any money in exchange".
> what is this "external funding" ?
I work in a free software company. Our customers include administrations
or companies that need to revamp their information system, or startups
that need a brand new one, or companies that need software solution for
a specific need (especially software embedded in various devices).
If someone somewhere needs some software written, we can write it
better, faster, more reliable, within deadlines, because we're the best.
http://www.idealx.com/ http://www.idealx.org/
> How do you buy a House by programing in Opensource?
How do you buy a House by trading in Open Markets?
If you're really interested in learning a libertarian point of view
on free software, you might be interested in reading the archives
of my mailing-list:
http://lists.tunes.org/mailman/listinfo/cybernethics
[ François-René ÐVB Rideau | Reflection&Cybernethics | http://fare.tunes.org ]
[ TUNES project for a Free Reflective Computing System | http://tunes.org ]
Because people confuse information and information-related services
(which include searching, creating, processing, transforming, selecting,
teaching, making available, guaranteeing, supporting, etc), they are afraid
that Free (libre) Information mean free (gratis) information-related services,
which would indeed kill the industry of said services. On the contrary,
Free Information would create a Free Market in these services, instead of
current monopolies, which means they will be available at a fair price,
so the result would be a flourishment of that industry! -- Faré
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