From owner-freebsd-chat Tue May 23 10:11:35 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from dt051n0b.san.rr.com (dt051n0b.san.rr.com [204.210.32.11]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 497A037B530 for ; Tue, 23 May 2000 10:11:33 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from DougB@gorean.org) Received: from gorean.org (doug@master [10.0.0.2]) by dt051n0b.san.rr.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA46948; Tue, 23 May 2000 10:10:06 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from DougB@gorean.org) Message-ID: <392ABB6D.94B7C8B7@gorean.org> Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 10:10:05 -0700 From: Doug Barton Reply-To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Organization: Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (X11; U; FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT-0508 i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Arun Sharma Cc: Rahul Siddharthan , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The Ethics of Free Software References: <20000521131809.A6546@sharmas.dhs.org> <20000522170335.B94994@azazel.zer0.org> <20000523085510.A5994@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <20000522222438.A11092@sharmas.dhs.org> <20000523114956.A39397@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <20000522234412.A11711@sharmas.dhs.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Arun Sharma wrote: > > (2) If all software was "free" or "opensource", the number of > > programming jobs would decrease. > > It's not the total number of jobs - it's the total amount of money to > be made, that defines the size of the economy. This is one of the fundamental flaws in most of the arguments put forth on this topic so far. There IS NO total amount of money to be made. The opportunity to expand the pie is always present, in the American economy anyway. The importance of this distinction cannot be overestimated. New technologies, new markets, new economies are being created every day, and radically reshaping the way we think about economics as a whole. Just look at the internet itself if you need an (incredibly obvious) example. Doug -- "Live free or die" - State motto of my ancestral homeland, New Hampshire Do YOU Yahoo!? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message