[FOSS] How does one respond to this line of questioning?

Jonathan Linowes jonathan at linowes.com
Fri Apr 8 12:35:48 EDT 2011


On Apr 8, 2011, at 11:58 AM, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:

> So, if we can agree that the existence of free markets is generally
> `a good thing' for houses and cars (and all sorts of other things),
> and that we benefit from being able to choose (and re-choose)
> who we hire to do maintenance (even if the car-dealership is
> the obvious /first/ option to try--though there's no analogue
> for houses...), I think it makes a lot of sense to ask your question:
> 
>    "Why should software be any different?"
> 
> If we're asking someone a question like "why are free markets bad?",
> maybe it'd be appropriate to ask the guy pushing proprietary systems
> another question:
> 
>    "What are you, a communist?"

This is a very interesting perspective. As we know, the market opportunity for OSS is the value added services and solutions we provide. Traditionally one considers commercial software as free market, private enterprise, good for the economy, etc versus open software as shared, not private property, socialist, limited accountability, etc. As a free-market capitalist who loves OSS, this contradiction has bugged me. Thanks.





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