From reading Eric Raymond and Richard Stallman, i'm starting to get a better feel for the different philosophies behind some of the driving forces of the Open Source movement, and i'm starting to see where i don't fit in, and why.
This is a caricature but i think it captures key points:
Eric Raymondw: Open Source is a much more efficient and financially profitable way to develop great software. Large companies can make more money from Open Source software and it leads to better software; since most programmers and companies don't try to sell their software and are hired to produce internal software, most programmers will not be affected jobwise. The small minority of people who create software in hopes of selling it are out of luck and cannot survive in such a model.
Richard Stallmanw: All software should be Open Source (stallman actually prefers the term "
free software", a subset of Open Source), where it can be modified and distributed as users see fit. This gives the most freedom to the users of the software. This may make it impossible for software authors to make a living creating software, while helping middlemen and large corporations to make big profits by providing distribution, consulting, marketing, and support. This is ok because it's not important whether programmers can make money creating software, only that software users have the freedom to modify and share code. People should donate to support Open Source projects, but it isn't that important -- if programmers can no longer make a living from creating software that is ok -- they can always get consulting jobs if they need money.
I'm still trying to nail down my own personal philosophy about this stuff, but i think it's something like this:
- As a community, the best solution in terms of maximizing happiness, satisfaction, freedom, and security, occurs when we have the freedom to modify the programs we use and when we can pay what we want for them, *AND* when we support the programmers who create such software, financially and in other ways -- such that these programmers and artists can devote themselves to the creation of content for their users, instead of try to find indirect, convoluted, and compromised ways to get their work funded by corporations with ulterior motives.
- The key is that it is the mutual compact, in terms of users directly supporting/financing the programmers/artists, which is essential in my mind, in creating a sustainable healthy system that leads to the maximum benefit for all; the more direct the relationship the more beneficial the resulting system.
- Simply advocating an Open Source future is *not* sufficient to get us to such an ecosystem. Indeed it seems that the market forces embracing Open Source are incentivized to explicitly avoid such an ecosystem, and our cultural biases are antagonistic to this concept of voluntarily donating to support software (music, art, etc.) if it is free/opensource. A much more serious cultural shift is required within the Open Source and Artistic communicty is needed if we want to see such an ecosystem thrive.
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glad to hear it 
