Linked by David Adams on Mon 16th Aug 2004 17:44 UTC
I read something in one of the comments for an OSNews posting a couple weeks ago that sent me thinking. It wasn't an original or profound thought. In fact, it's a rather commonly-held opinion that happens to be quite misguided. It's an opinion summed up by the "open source = communist" meme that gets thrown around in thousands of flamewars all over the internet. In this essay, I will explore why this idea is wrong and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of economics.
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While there are some valid points raised, this diatribe largely misses the mark. The conclusion pretty much shows the author's cards:
Many people today who are fighting for intellectual property rules because they think it promotes innovation and progress may actually be actually hammering nails into innovation's coffin.
With conclusions like this, the author is saying that he does not believe in the notion of intellectual property -- proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the author has never owned any. Those who "are fighting for intellectual property rules" are doing so because they own intellectual property -- they are not "hammering nails into innovation's coffin" because they are the innovators. And, I hasten to add, plenty of open source developers also fight for intellectual property rules -- just look on LKML for the latest accusations that some new Linux-based gizmo violates the terms of the GPL by not providing source code...
Open source does not mean that we abolish the notion of intellectual property, and the author does an enormous disservice to open source by making that implication.