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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Open source is a logical evolution of a world dominated by closed source software. It allows individuals and companies to create new products faster, most significant advances in civilization have happend through group co-operation (the development of the computer and the internet, the human genome project). Group co-operation is the way nature works best, sure, it is possible for, say, an Eddison or a Henry Ford to succeed, but with concepts like open source, many more people can develop new applications.
As far as some closed source companies like Microsoft complaining, I think that Microsoft is being hypocritical as they achieved world domination in the browser wars by giving a software application away for free (Internet Explorer), so they have absoloutliy no credibility in saying that free software is bad. (they have used that tactic themselves). As far as giving the source code away, well, nothing is stopping Bill Gates from giving his software away (except Bill Gates), it should be up to the software creators/owners to give it away under any lisence arrangement they feel is suitable.