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"It's equivalent to arguing that any increase in productivity (which is precisely what this is: less effort expended to develop software) is bad." RMS is not p

by Steko 15y ago

"It's equivalent to arguing that any increase in productivity (which is precisely what this is: less effort expended to develop software) is bad." RMS is not proposing an increase in productivity, he's proposing a massive disincentive to engaging in one of the most productive, highest growth industries in the world's history. "Over time, those freed from obsolete jobs are employed by society to do new stuff ...and we all benefit." These jobs aren't obsolete. It's not like the same software will get done if all these people stop working and go do "new stuff". We just wouldn't get those advancements and would suffer greatly not benefit.

icebraining 15y ago
The obsolete jobs are those which depend on re-inventing the wheel, because some company needs to add a new feature or fix a bug in software X and they can't, because it's proprietary. If every software was Free we'd eliminate plenty of redundant work.
- Steko 15y ago
  You don't just eliminate the wasteful jobs; you eliminate the productive ones as well.
ajross 15y ago
"RMS is not proposing an increase in productivity, he's proposing a massive disincentive to engaging in one of the most productive, highest growth industries in the world's history." You say tomato, I say tomato... Seriously: if you were explaining to a space alien what the distinction was, how would you do it? The only one I can see is all the subtle connotations of the adjectives and superlatives you chose to throw in. I mean, the automobile was a "massive disincentive" to the horse breeding industry too. The gun put a ton of blacksmiths out of work. And secretaries and typists were an awfully big part of the world economy in the recent past too... All those people (figuratively -- really the fraction of the workforce they represented) are now doing other stuff like building web apps. And the world is a better place. "Productivity" is a quantifiable metric. Either you pay programmers to duplicate effort or you don't. In the latter case, productivity is higher by definition, and no amount of adjectives is going to change that fact.
- CJefferson 15y ago
  Look around at open source software, clang vs. gcc, gnome vs. kde vs. xfce, and many others. I see little evidence that open source leads to a reduction in duplicate effort.
  - tjr 15y ago
    Alternately, we as developers can use existing open source software with which to build new software, without having to rewrite things that are already completed and available.
  - ajross 15y ago
    I don't think that analysis is complete. Obviously the point isn't that there no duplication within free software; just that there is less. Sure, clang competes with gcc. But as recently as the 90's there were dozens of commercial compilers were competing in the market. Now, everyone (outside of a handful of legacy platforms like windows) just uses gcc. Clearly that's a gain in productivity.
    - rbanffy 15y ago
      Not only that, but Gnome, KDE and xfce all build upon each other - experience and code - and explore different ideas. This accelerates their evolution.
    - nullc 15y ago
      And LLVM was bootstrapped by using GCC as the front end before clang was written to replace it. The freedom to combine with another program _temporarily_ while you bootstrap something better improves productivity significantly. And the world before GCC had a great many commercial compilers. Many of the crap. GCC replaced almost all the crap ones, so that only free compilers and a few commercial compilers that were good enough to offer something over GCC existed.
- Steko 15y ago
  "Either you pay programmers to duplicate effort or you don't." That's not what I'm talking about. Free software doesn't just kill duplicate effort. Free software kills the original effort that is there to be duplicated. You're saying "well all the unproductive leeches will go do something else". What actually happens is all the productive people go and do something else too. If you fix the price of automobiles at zero, you don't get an automobile revolution that puts horse breeders out of business. You get an artificially created dark age while you wait a few extra decades for hobbyists to create the model t.
loup-vaillant 15y ago
> [RMS is] proposing a massive disincentive to engaging in one of the most productive, highest growth industries in the world's history. OK, you lost me. How exactly the possibility of rendering your software proprietary enhanced in any way at all productivity in software ? Just a warning : I don't accept metrics based on how much money you extract from others, or how much people work behind a keyboard. What matters is how the lives of the people actually improved thanks to proprietary software. My guess is not much at all. If I recall correctly, the most crucial innovations where mostly public research work.

by Steko 15y ago

icebraining 15y ago

The obsolete jobs are those which depend on re-inventing the wheel, because some company needs to add a new feature or fix a bug in software X and they can't, because it's proprietary. If every software was Free we'd eliminate plenty of redundant work.

Steko 15y ago
You don't just eliminate the wasteful jobs; you eliminate the productive ones as well.

ajross 15y ago

"RMS is not proposing an increase in productivity, he's proposing a massive disincentive to engaging in one of the most productive, highest growth industries in the world's history." You say tomato, I say tomato... Seriously: if you were explaining to a space alien what the distinction was, how would you do it? The only one I can see is all the subtle connotations of the adjectives and superlatives you chose to throw in. I mean, the automobile was a "massive disincentive" to the horse breeding industry too. The gun put a ton of blacksmiths out of work. And secretaries and typists were an awfully big part of the world economy in the recent past too... All those people (figuratively -- really the fraction of the workforce they represented) are now doing other stuff like building web apps. And the world is a better place. "Productivity" is a quantifiable metric. Either you pay programmers to duplicate effort or you don't. In the latter case, productivity is higher by definition, and no amount of adjectives is going to change that fact.

CJefferson 15y ago
Look around at open source software, clang vs. gcc, gnome vs. kde vs. xfce, and many others. I see little evidence that open source leads to a reduction in duplicate effort.
- tjr 15y ago
  Alternately, we as developers can use existing open source software with which to build new software, without having to rewrite things that are already completed and available.
- ajross 15y ago
  I don't think that analysis is complete. Obviously the point isn't that there no duplication within free software; just that there is less. Sure, clang competes with gcc. But as recently as the 90's there were dozens of commercial compilers were competing in the market. Now, everyone (outside of a handful of legacy platforms like windows) just uses gcc. Clearly that's a gain in productivity.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    Not only that, but Gnome, KDE and xfce all build upon each other - experience and code - and explore different ideas. This accelerates their evolution.
  - nullc 15y ago
    And LLVM was bootstrapped by using GCC as the front end before clang was written to replace it. The freedom to combine with another program _temporarily_ while you bootstrap something better improves productivity significantly. And the world before GCC had a great many commercial compilers. Many of the crap. GCC replaced almost all the crap ones, so that only free compilers and a few commercial compilers that were good enough to offer something over GCC existed.
Steko 15y ago
"Either you pay programmers to duplicate effort or you don't." That's not what I'm talking about. Free software doesn't just kill duplicate effort. Free software kills the original effort that is there to be duplicated. You're saying "well all the unproductive leeches will go do something else". What actually happens is all the productive people go and do something else too. If you fix the price of automobiles at zero, you don't get an automobile revolution that puts horse breeders out of business. You get an artificially created dark age while you wait a few extra decades for hobbyists to create the model t.

loup-vaillant 15y ago

> [RMS is] proposing a massive disincentive to engaging in one of the most productive, highest growth industries in the world's history. OK, you lost me. How exactly the possibility of rendering your software proprietary enhanced in any way at all productivity in software ? Just a warning : I don't accept metrics based on how much money you extract from others, or how much people work behind a keyboard. What matters is how the lives of the people actually improved thanks to proprietary software. My guess is not much at all. If I recall correctly, the most crucial innovations where mostly public research work.