From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Fri Jun 22 2001 - 02:11:25 MDT
Francois-Rene Rideau wrote:
>
> >>>: Felix Ungman
> >>: Francois-Rene Rideau
> >: Samantha Atkins
>
> >>> The open source movement is driven by hobbyists
> >>> that like to tinker with software for the fun of it.
> >> No. It's driven by the fact that proprietary software covers so badly
> >> the needs of consumers that even hobbyists can make significant improvement.
> >> Scary, isn't it?
> >
> > Do you think Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman and such are
> > "hobbyists"?
> I tried to be concise, but I seem to have been imprecise enough that
> you have confused my position with Felix'. Sorry about that.
I realized quite quickly after your opening remarks that your
positions are quite different.
> Linus Torvalds started as such and was still when he did his
> sociotechnical breakthrough of building the linux kernel community.
> But that is beside the point. I do not pretend, like Felix maybe,
> that ALL free software hackers be hobbyists. But I do acknowledge
> that there is some truth behind this excessive assertion, and the
> truth is that most free software hackers, including most of the most
> significant ones, do their free software stuff as a hobby.
How do you define "hobby"? Is everything not done for an
employer in a fulltime job for a paycheck automatically a
"hobby"? For some of us software is high art, a tool for the
transformation of the world. Are we "hobbyists" when we do this
outside of an employment contract? Many of us do this stuff both
within and outside of such contracts.
> The reasons are multiple: first there are hobbyists, as everywhere;
> second, the software development market is displaced by governmental
> monopolies of IP, so that work on free software is often forced to be
> as a hobby rather than being externally funded; finally, these hobbyists
> can actually hack in ways that add up their efforts into significant wholes,
> whereas within the proprietary software paradigm, they just can't.
That misses much of the significance of it to many of us in my
opinion.
> Now, I am convinced that as free software will gain market acceptance,
> and/or if proprietary software did not exist or would lose importance,
> more and more work would be done as part of third-party funded (commercial)
> developments, as opposed to self-funded (hobbyist) developments.
>
So the hobby distinction is simply a matter of funding rather
than implying amateur? It seems the wrong word for that.
> > I have been a professional programmer aka software
> > engineer aka computer scientist aka hacker for over 20 years. I
> > have lived, breathed, eaten and dreamed software.
> > It is because I know it and love it that I love open source.
> With the change that I can claim but 13 years of experience,
> I emphatically make mine this paragraph of yours.
>
> >>> What we need is a society where it's possible to make money
> >>> on intellectual activity.
> >> Exactly. And IP, aka Information Protectionism,
> >> is precisely the opposite to valuing _activity_.
> >> Instead, it values monopolies that consist in _preventing_ activity.
> >> The legal framework I call for is Freedom. Think about it twice.
> >
> > A society where it is possible to make money on intellectual
> > activity is not necessarily synonymous with a society where all
> > products of that activity are directly sources of income or
> > packaged one particular way.
>
> Not only that: IP not only does not value intellectual activity,
> but strips it from its value, by creating legal barriers that prevent it.
>
Yes! Very much so.
- samantha
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