Richard Stallman

[FluffyMcDeath]

If you have an economic theory that states that free software can't happen, but free software exists, then your theory must be wrong.

 

[Glaucus]

Yes, if the theory is that all software can't be free, then ya, the theory is wrong. But the only ones pushing that theory are probably those building a straw man.

He talks about free software back in the day, but let's face it, nothing is really free. Companies back then made money off hardware or support or whatever. Those making the software didn't donate it out of their free time, they were paid like everyone else. They just didn't market software as it's own entity. It came with the hardware and back then hardware cost an arm and a leg. Today, hardware is so cheap it's practically free and it's the software that drives the market. It's the reason the Amiga is dead; no software that everyone wants.

And I say all this as an author of freely published software. I spend many hours working on my app that very few people use but mostly for fun. I'd love to do it full time but unfortunately you can't develop any software under a bridge.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Yes, if the theory is that all software can't be free, then ya, the theory is wrong.

No, I think you are twisting it INTO a strawman. The statement could be applied to many endeavours - that if your economic theory requires a profit motif for the creation of things of value to happen and yet things of value are crreated without a profit motive then the theory is wrong.

Of course, people have always ceated things of value where the only benefit accrues to the creator, and there have been people who create and the benefit to them is the satisfaction of creating. There are people who create philnthropically which satisfies their own needs. All hese things have happened before.

However, it has always required vast investment to create a mass produced product and where vast investment is required, profit motive tends to be required too, to satisfy the interest requirements of the investors.

However, we now live in a world where the cost of creating copies is virtually nothing and so previous assumptions about mass produced goods don't apply to software (or music and movies) which is why monopoly laws have been strengthened to create artificial scarcity to maintain profitability and to severly manipulate the market.

But, if you listen, his definition of free goes beyond being merely gratis.