Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 14:29:46 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> Cc: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>, Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>, trevor@jpj.net (Trevor Johnson), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Stallman now claims authorship of Linux Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20010419142203.046206d0@localhost> In-Reply-To: <15071.17950.439066.927510@guru.mired.org> References: <4.3.2.7.2.20010419140150.045176b0@localhost> <200104191845.LAA17455@usr09.primenet.com> <15070.54826.847491.916792@guru.mired.org> <4.3.2.7.2.20010419140150.045176b0@localhost>
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At 02:10 PM 4/19/2001, Mike Meyer wrote: >> Not true. Commercial software does not destroy markets or reduce >> programmers to the status of wage slave. > >Try contracting for MicroSoft. Most of Microsoft's contractors were recently ruled by a court to be de facto employees, and therefore entitled to stock options and other benefits. But in most cases, contracting IS a treadmill. This is why it pays to license commercially useful software rather than creating it as a work for hire. >You build capital as a programmer under conditions D, E and F the >exact same way you do in all those other fields, working under those >conditions. Not so. The small businessperson on other fields can create and build capital by growing a business rather than being a wage slave. Even as an employee, one can do so via profit-sharing and equity in the company. Of course, if you create GPLed software, you cannot do that. Ditto if your company creates GPLed software. This is the reason why companies such as Red Hat are not viable; they do not own the software of which they sell copies. And the market value of what they sell (other than the vanishingly small value of the pressed disk and book) is zero, becaus anyone can cquire it for free. Not a good basis for a business. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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