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To: Coral Snake
After you strip away all the outrageous style of your posts, you seem to be saying that the GPL is pushing software toward being a communal property, rather than privately owned property.

So ... your point is?

Yes, this does make it harder to make money at it. Or at least, one has to be more creative in finding alternative business models, than just straight propriatary software.

But customers love it, because software becomes more common, more sensibly priced, and open if need be to change and maintenance without worries that the initial vendor will go out of business or charge fees based more on extortion than reasonable costs and profits.

Is all communism bad?

Civilizaton has gained greatly over the past few centuries from the work of professors in Universities, who needed to "publish or perish". They did not personally become rich, in most cases, but for our most complex intellectual human endeavors, that require the contributions of many great and minor contributors, over years and decades of effort, public sharing does lead to the best results.

I think your hatred of all things communal is way over drawn.

Now if someone could just explain to me why I have bothered to respond to such spew in the first place, ... I would sleep better tonight.

11 posted on 09/01/2003 12:21:30 AM PDT by ThePythonicCow (Mooo !!!!)
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To: ThePythonicCow; Coral Snake
"Is all communism bad?"

And the answer is "no". Small-c "communism" is far older than the first colonial settlements in North America, and has, in many cases, worked quite well.

The two keys to successful "communism" are 1) that the association be voluntary, and 2) some major philosophical idea which is the driving force for the communal organization. Both of these things currently exist within the "Linux community".

Successful "communist" organizations have been mostly religious (see the Shakers, Oneida community, and many others), but not all ("the Farm").

HOWEVER--in the long term, even these "communist" communities failed, typically because the central "major philosophical driving force" has lost appeal, in many cases as a result of success (accumulation of wealth).

IOW, Coral Snake is "getting his knickers in a knot" over something that simply doesn't matter in the long run. If he doesn't like the GPL, there "are" other sandboxes he can play in.

22 posted on 09/01/2003 6:31:55 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog (The Hog of Steel)
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To: ThePythonicCow
Yes, but will the GPL "sap and impurify all our precious bodily fluids"?
29 posted on 09/01/2003 9:01:29 AM PDT by Wilhelm Tell (Lurking since 1997!)
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