More MS FUD

[Trent Shipley]

The main FUD I see in this is the unwarranted attack on GPL.  In fact,
putting code under a GPL license is voluntary and the private property model
that Craig Mundie defends implies the legality of something like GPL.
(However, there is no _per se_ reason a sweeping and viral contract like GPL
could not be made illegal.  It might even make good sense to disallow viral
clauses in intellectual property right contracts, but then it would apply to
greedy contracts as well as public welfare contracts like GPL.)

There is also the valorization of greed.  But that is nothing new.  Craig
Mundie makes the mistake that since the vice of greed can be harnessed to
produce good, greed itself is therefore virtuous.  This is total rot, but I
have never met a successful entrepreneur who didn't believe it.  Successful
entrepreneurs and even more executives hold themselves in high regard.  (If
they didn't they wouldn't be nearly so successful.)  This means it is hard
to be as greedy as these domineering robber barons and believe that greed is
an anti-social vice.

However, the central assumptions, that open source is a poor model for
making money and that greed has to be harnessed to progress for there to be
significant progress is correct.  To make money there must be scarcity.  To
raise capital for R & D it must be possible to make intellectual goods
scarce.  In a state of nature, intellectual goods are essentially free.
Therefore, if there is to be research, development, or even publication,
intellectual goods must be made scarce.  The public winds up being a net
winner.  The collective looses free access to any given intellectual
artifact.  The gain is that there are many, many, many more intellectuals
artifacts produced in a given amount of time when the producers of
intellectual artifacts can turn intellect into a means of satisfying the
base instincts of capitalists . . . and of intellectual workers.

Hell, I wouldn't think about working with these socially sterile #$%@
glorified abacuses if I didn't think I had a change of making more money
than doing just about anything else.
      (OK. I wouldn't work with them nearly as much, an expensive hobby
maybe, but that's about it.)


> -----Original Message-----
> From: plug-discuss-admin@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
> [mailto:plug-discuss-admin@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us]On Behalf Of Jim
> Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2001 12:15 PM
> To: plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
> Subject: More MS FUD
>
>
> I just read the prepared text of MS's Craig Mundie at
> http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/craig/05-03sharedsource.asp.  It
> is so full of contradictions that it is almost hilarious.
> --
> Jim
>
> Bliss comes from within, ignorance from without
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