A response to Richard Stallman

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A response to John Carroll: John,

I found your article pleasing today. I quite liked the way you did not condemn the Open Source Free Software (FOSS), the GPL or Richard Stallman as communistic and/or socialistic. You addressed the practical concern of generating a profit off the investment of creating software.

As a result, I was much more open to listening to your point(s) of view. Thank you very much for staying focused on the issue and not ?philosophically summarizing? or ?economically oversimplifying?, both traits that seem to be common to person?s strongly aligned with the positions I have seen you espouse in the past (i.e. Rand?s Objectivism).

And I do agree with you, the generation of monetized profit is an important motive in many, if not most, human cooperative activities at the present time. And I also agree it is important to speak clearly about how the "freedom" of the GPL creates what appears to be a short circuit on the production of monetized wealth IN A RECURRING MANNER.

It is this ?monetized wealth in a recurring manner? some would say is a "pyramid scheme" utilizing the ?government enforced monopolies? of copyright and patent law.

I also agree with your general conclusion that Stallman's approach to the GPL and Free Software is quite "simplistic". And that Stallman attempts to use dramatic words to describe things seems out of proportion to the actual issues involved. The issues are just not as "important" as the analogies and metaphors he uses seems to imply.

I think it causes Stallman to ?not? be listened to as ?balanced? or as ?well-reasoned? by many who would find his ideas persuasive. I understand his intent, just like I understood Ayn Rand?s intent. However, both are so ?arrogant? in their ?philosophic positioning?, they end up complicating all sorts of things for their cause. Humans are FIRST psychological beings and only second philosophical beings. Rationality is an EMERGENT EFFECT of an psychological/emotional brain. This is a whole different tangent discussion, though.

That said, I do think it is important to call out a distinction I do not necessarily see made very often - that of the nature of "scarce" goods versus the nature of "abundant" goods.

I have read Reisman's, Rand's, and other "Austrian Economists" perspectives on capitalism. Additionally, I have very specifically focused on the domain of "ideas" and "idea ownership by an individual and/or corporation".

The conclusion I came to was that the bulk of the current economic systems are "wired" for managing "scarcity". And they are very efficient at managing scarcity. The free market?s mechanism of ?supply and demand? managed with "price" is VERY EFFICIENT and a HIGHLY DISTRIBUTED MASSIVELY PARALLEL process in monetized human value exchange. The emergent effect from this system is startling in the magnitude of effectiveness it has achieved in such a short time span considering all of human history. It is essentially responsible for allowing humans to ?scale up? to the population densities we now support. And it is what has made possible the vast number of enjoyable optional values we now experience daily, if not hourly.

I also noticed these same economic systems which are very efficient at managing "scarcity" seem to be quite poor at managing "abundance". I define scarcity to be when a particular good has a limited supply which can be exhausted. I define abundance to be when there is a ?virtually inexhaustable? supply of a good or resource (ex: air and/or water).

The supply/demand mechanism of these systems seems to be inadequate or flat out broke (with one exception, which I identify below) when dealing with an abundant product. For example, Rand and company dealt with ?air pollution? via the grossly oversimplified position of it being ?anti-business? to stop corporations from blowing horrid crap into the air or dumping it into our shared rivers and waterways. It was a very unfortunate position for them to have taken. It made them look ignorant and uninformed to not see and acknowledge the damage it was doing to nearby fellow humans.

Oppositionality can be downright ignorant. Oversimplification can be downright deadly. Rand and company seemed to have engaged strongly in both.

In the domain of software, scarcity has been largely eliminated, even prior to Stallman and the GPL. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that the creation of MOST software exists in the domain of abundance, not scarcity.

In short, MOST software is generated WITH EXCESS CAPACITY, not with scarce capacity. Much of FOSS is generated with ?excess capacity? of both individuals and now major corporations. Thus, the nature of software creation is largely ?abundance?, if not totally ?abundance?.

Now add to that the fundamental difference from a piece of software and that of a piece of physical property. That is the fact that a piece of software can be duplicated indefinitely without their being any loss to the holder of the original copy. This is not the case with a good that is physically based.

If I take your bike, I have it and you do not. This is the definition of scarcity. We cannot both have the one bike at the same time.

Now, imagine I had a matter replication machine. If I came up to your bike, had my matter replication machine make a perfect copy of it and then I went away, you would be no more the worse for it (please exclude all the tangents related to owning the meta-physical notion of the bicycle design?that would create a circular reasoning opportunity based on ?idea ownership again? and we do not want any of that, now do we ;^).

In other words, you would still have your bike. And I would have my bike, an exact copy of yours. In fact, you would not even know I had a copy of your bike as your bike was unaffected by my making a copy.

In other words, in the domain of software, the price of duplication and distribution are now effectively $0.00 (imagine we are talking about the context OUTSIDE of the ?government enforced monopolies? of copyright and patent law). Again, this adds to the nature of software being ?abundant?.

So, where is the scarcity? The only place I can see scarcity is where it is being generated artificially ? via, shall I repeat once again, the ?government enforced monopolies? of copyright and patent law. That?s correct. The scarcity is artificial as it is not ?natural?.

The scarcity is man-made and requires an individual?s cooperation to abstain from engaging in activity that does not directly impact another person. This is to take away that person?s freedom to INDIRECTLY and NOT INTRUSIVELY protect another person?s so-called right, the exclusive and therefore scarce ownership of an idea.

This was the ONE particular aspect I thought was very conspicuous in all of Rand?s, Reisman?s, etc. works. They clearly condemn and abhor the idea of industrial ?government enforced monopolies?. They each do a GREAT job identifying how the use of ?government force via (implied industrial) government enforced monopolies? perverts the free market. I was deeply moved and persuaded to adopt their positions. I became a very staunch capitalist.

And then they turn right around and in the very same piece typically and with almost NO CLEAR reasoning (less than a paragraph), flip to ?protecting information (idea) via copyright and patent is the good? and then act as though it is patently (no pun intended) obvious it holds from what they reasoned previously about the industrial context.

It seems they completely missed the contradiction. They seemed to completely miss the fact that all of the reasoning they had just deemed irrational for supporting the industrial government enforced monopolies could then be applied to the domain of ideas and the ?government enforced monopolies? of copyright and patent law.

I was astounded when I realized this contradiction so blatantly existed. I read and reread their work to try and understand the connection. Being a software engineer myself, I had already ?selfishly? bought into the whole ?copyright and patent laws are the good because they protect idea innovation and idea freedom?. Believe me when I say I was deeply motivated to find the connection. I very much wanted moral justification for making a multiplier profit on my production of idea property. I really really liked the idea of RECURRING PAYMENTS TO ME for an idea I ?created?.

I never was able to find where they go on to address this contradiction. And I looked for several years. I saw and still see very few discussions of the ?validity? of copyright and patent law as a contradiction of the core capitalistic principles espoused by Rand and company.

In fact, in going to numbers of discussion groups and other economic literature and papers, the whole ?how does one generate an effective profit in the domain of abundance in a capitalist based economic system? question is clearly left unanswered, laissez faire capitalism, less ideal capitalism (which is what the USA is currently condemned for having) or even socialism in its many forms.

And discussions in the area seem to generate conversation polarizations (black and white simplistic positions), shutdowns (I?m no longer talking about it), avoidance (what idea ownership thing), long long diatribes and rationalizations largely based on circular logic or just plain ?requotes? of Ayn Rand and company, using the whole ?appeal to intellectual authority? vein.

And if those don?t work to intimidate those who actually question the premises being repeated, then it is time to condemn and ostracize the questioner. Finally and my favorite, they start calling him (me) rationally immoral for not seeing the ?obviousness? or self-evident nature of Rand and company?s positions on idea ownership, the intentional generation of scarcity as a means to produce value in the idea production domain.

What really gets me is they don?t even see how they are inconsistent and violating their own reasoning principles. It is astonishing to witness such stupid-smart people. They appear to be so intelligent until you find they are merely repeating what they read and heard without really challenging the core of the thinking itself.

I think FOSS is now answering this whole ?idea ownership is good? claim. I think FOSS demonstrates that monetized profit is not going to be sufficient for generating and trading value in a society where there is an exponential increase in the TYPES of values available to each individual, and especially when the values exist primarily or exclusively as ideas and/or information. I think FOSS is demonstrating that the power of widely distributed massively parallel information generation and duplication will unlikely tolerate much in the form of ?monetized profit resistance?.

And I also I think this is why, regardless of the less mature and focused marketing FOSS and Linux had to work with, they are certainly common phrases in the techie community now. MS is largely responsible for the marketing, too. Negative marketing generates just as much awareness, if not more, as positive marketing. We can thank politicians for this illuminating discovery.

John, if you think about it?there are a whole lot of very FREE people making very FREE choices to ?give away? their ?excess capacity? in term of ?time? to generate value for both themselves and for others. And I do not think most of them inherently value the likes of MS, Oracle, Sun, etc. They will use ?unfree? products where it profits them to do so. And where it does not, they will not. And the overall trend is toward ?free? products.

This is the ULTIMATE EXAMPLE of CAPITALISM and FREEDOM in action. No one is ?forcing? these individuals to produce this ?free? value. They just produce it. No one is forcing them to choose to create ?free? products in specific areas. They just create them. No one is forcing them to INNOVATE around existing copyrights and patents when it comes to replacing an existing product in the market. THEY JUST DO IT FOR THEIR OWN AND ITS OWN SAKE!

Most software is created by programmers as application solutions in the corporate world (like over 80% according to a recent study I heard quoted). Most of the rest of software production IS A SMALL PERCENTAGE of software development. Granted, that small percentage has a high impact on the productivity of most of the other software. However, it is still A SMALL PERCENTAGE. It means it has a SMALL overall economic impact.

This means for every corporate software person who uses his excess capacity in terms of his work time and/or his personal time and generates software using FOSS, he is MULTIPLYING the value of HIS CORPORATION?S time, HIS OWN TIME and MULTIPLYING the downstream value generated by the CONSUMER of the thing he is producing which can be interpreted in terms of TIME.

Please notice, I do not talk about MONEY. I am talking about the one and only scarce resource which every individual has, his TIME. And it is THIS value that largely drives the wealth produced by FOSS. The wealth is not MONEY, it is TIME. And that extra time can be used to maximize wealth ELSEWHERE.

An individual can use the TIME profit generated in an ABUNDANCE oriented system to then maximize his TIME and MONEY in a scarce system. This is a FANTASTIC (TIME) WEALTH MULTIPLIER. And it is available to every THINKER that CHOOSES to participate in the PRODUCTION chain. And this is the first time in human history this kind of economic model has existed, much less existed at the scale the Internet is now enabling.

The only downside is this ? the ABUNDANCE system will essentially commoditize any idea-based product to the smallest HUMAN TIME amount required for it to be effectively utilized. And that will likely be, in terms of MONEY, $0.00. Just because there was no MONEY generated does not mean there was no PROFIT generated. Having more human time available is a valid form of WEALTH.

And the monetized products will continue to exist. They will just be moved up into the ?luxury? category where the belong. It is what I predict will happen with MS Windows as Linux occupies the bulk of the commodity market Microsoft enjoyed profits taming and developing.

The developer who chooses to generate TIME PROFIT is fully, freely and rationally justified in his endeavor, regardless of ANY AND EVERYONE ELSE?S OPINION. And the only way to stop him from doing so without persuading him to some other point of view IS TO TAKE AWAY HIS FREEDOM TO CHOOSE TO GENERATE TIME PROFIT!

To legislate away the freedom, to legislate away abundance, to eliminate an individual?s choice to produce wealth in WHATEVER FORM HE CHOOSES is what *I* consider to be the bad, what I consider to be a real evil. And I am relatively sure you would agree with this.

Ultimately, I think Stallman had/has a great set of ideas. He just has poor presentation and is too self-righeous about it. His methods alienate (notice this is a psychology, not a philosophy, based word) many of the people to whom which would be very valuable in supporting his cause.

I feel the same about Ayn Rand and her philosophy Objectivism. She had/has a great set of ideas, and tainted it all with arrogance and self-righteousness. She just alienated most of those who might have valued the ?core? of what she had to say. Not everyone, just most.

FOSS is here to stay as long as ONE PERSON is FREE to hold the ideas defined in the GPL by Richard Stallman. And FOSS is going to make ?free? as in beer and ?free? as in reproduction and distribution continue to exist as long as it is VALUED by a SINGLE PERSON, regardless of their rationality.

I just hold that ultimately it is more rational for me to see TIME as a higher value and therefore a higher priority than that of MONEY. And this core ?prioritization?, conscious or subconscious, seems to be emerging from the legions of software developers, IT managers, etc. in the market.

And *I* think it is this, valuing time higher than money, that is the *good* about which Stallman is so dramatically trying to speak.

Jim O?Flaherty, Jr.; Posted by: jim_oflaherty_jr Posted on: 01/08/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use