4 ms·

I'm just pointing out that microsoft and other companies have much larger equity than red hat, and have made a lot more developers rich than red hat. In genera

I'm just pointing out that microsoft and other companies have much larger equity than red hat, and have made a lot more developers rich than red hat. In general I believe that open source transfers wealth from developers to the rest of society, and the same applies to web companies that choose a ad-supprted model. In certain segments, such as search, this makes sense. But in others, people like richard stallman and jimmy wales, have single handedly destroyed potential industries that could have formed and employed many people.

_delirium 17y ago
I tend to think the opposite: the companies like Britannica keeping data closed do a lot to prevent potential industries from rising by keeping information from the people who would build those industries. Wikipedia goes a long way towards giving at least some of the information that is needed to start a modern business to everyone. It's hard to quantify each of them, but I'd be willing to bet that the wealth created by Wikipedia is considerably greater than the wealth that a hypothetical Britannica-still-rules-online-encyclopedias would create. I mean, Britannica just doesn't employ that many people, and never has.
- marshallp 17y ago
  Perhaps not britannica, but the fact that wikipedia gets a huge amount of search traffic 'steals' a lot of potential earnings from would-be content creators.
  - loup-vaillant 17y ago
    You sound like this is a bad thing. On the contrary, I think this is great. By killing the encyclopaedia industry, Wikipedia made everybody else richer. The reasoning is dead simple: if something you use suddenly gets cheaper, you get a bit richer. If something you can't afford (but wanted to have) suddenly becomes affordable, your buying power increases, making you a bit richer. I think that destroying an entire industry while making everyone else richer is worth often worth the trade-off. In the case of Wikipedia, I have no doubt.

_delirium 17y ago

I tend to think the opposite: the companies like Britannica keeping data closed do a lot to prevent potential industries from rising by keeping information from the people who would build those industries. Wikipedia goes a long way towards giving at least some of the information that is needed to start a modern business to everyone. It's hard to quantify each of them, but I'd be willing to bet that the wealth created by Wikipedia is considerably greater than the wealth that a hypothetical Britannica-still-rules-online-encyclopedias would create. I mean, Britannica just doesn't employ that many people, and never has.

marshallp 17y ago
Perhaps not britannica, but the fact that wikipedia gets a huge amount of search traffic 'steals' a lot of potential earnings from would-be content creators.
- loup-vaillant 17y ago
  You sound like this is a bad thing. On the contrary, I think this is great. By killing the encyclopaedia industry, Wikipedia made everybody else richer. The reasoning is dead simple: if something you use suddenly gets cheaper, you get a bit richer. If something you can't afford (but wanted to have) suddenly becomes affordable, your buying power increases, making you a bit richer. I think that destroying an entire industry while making everyone else richer is worth often worth the trade-off. In the case of Wikipedia, I have no doubt.