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>But profit is what tells you that what you are doing is valuable wow. are you a fan of "Atlas Shrugged" by any chance? I will give you just one obvious counte

>But profit is what tells you that what you are doing is valuable wow. are you a fan of "Atlas Shrugged" by any chance? I will give you just one obvious counter example (though I could rattle off a huge list), which, if you are not sociopathic, should immediately make you see your mistake: The Red Cross Profit is a very poor metric for value to humanity. In fact it is a horrifyingly inhumane metric, and I would hope you feel shame for writing such rubbish publically. But if that doesn't do it for you, I could also point out that you have just insulted everyone here who happens to work on open source software, by telling them their work has no value, and is a waste without scare quotes. That's not to mention the day traders and bankers who make huge amounts of profits and contribute nothing of value to society.

pdonis 13y ago
are you a fan of "Atlas Shrugged" by any chance Not really. The Red Cross Perhaps we are using a different definition of "profit". AFAIK the Red Cross is funded by voluntary contributions; in other words, people pay the Red Cross to do what it does, indicating that people find what it does worth doing. That meets my definition of "profit", but apparently not yours. So we may be talking somewhat at cross purposes. Btw, the fact that the Red Cross and other similar organizations call themselves "nonprofits" is a subterfuge, so they can collect money, pay salaries to people, make purchases, have administrative expenses, and generally do all the same things that ordinary "for profit" businesses do, without ringing alarm bells with people who don't understand that the resources they use to do what they do have to come from somewhere; they don't just magically appear. In other words, they are forced to call themselves a "nonprofit" because most people have a faulty definition of what "profit" means. In a sane world the Red Cross would be a normal corporation that was selling the service of helping people. If they made a profit, so much the better: more money to reinvest in helping people better. As it is, they have to hide what would normally be "profit" in various expenses that amount to the same thing, reinvesting profits in helping people better--but it's less efficient because of the subterfuge. Profit is a very poor metric for value to humanity. In fact it is a horrifyingly inhumane metric, and I would hope you feel shame for writing such rubbish publically. No, what is inhumane is to pretend that people can be helped and human welfare improved for free, magically, without any cost and without any expenditure of people's time and effort, as well as other resources--for example, to force organizations like the Red Cross to pretend to be "nonprofits" and waste resources on subterfuge that could otherwise be used to directly help people. I would hope you feel shame for writing such rubbish in public. Profit forces us to face the reality that creating value takes time and effort, and forces us to make hard choices about which things will get done, out of all the things that could be done with the time and effort and resources at hand. There are other ways of making those choices, but on a large scale they all have worse track records than profit does. you have just insulted everyone here who happens to work on open source software, by telling them their work has no value, and is a waste without scare quotes. I have said no such thing. I write open source software myself; some of it is visible on the web (see the links at http://blog.peterdonis.com http://blog.peterdonis.com). But I write it because it is valuable to me; I don't need to be paid by anyone else because I already see the value. But the flip side of that is, I have no idea how valuable it is to anyone else. For example, suppose there were some feature that could be added to one of my Python libraries that would be very valuable to someone else. So that someone else sends me an email saying, basically, can you add this feature? But they don't offer me any money; they just say the feature would be really valuable. How do I know how much of my time and effort that feature is worth? If I have no other information, the feature will get done when I have the spare time and interest (which may be never). But if the feature really is that valuable to them, they have one obvious way of getting my attention: offer me money. Now I have an easy way of judging whether the feature is worth my time and effort: I judge the money offered against the opportunity cost, i.e., what else I could do with that time and effort, and how much would it be worth to me? (Note that "how much would it be worth" doesn't necessarily mean in money; it might mean giving up time with my family and friends, and I might not be willing to do that for the money offered.) For another example, look at a large open source project like OpenOffice. I filed a bug years ago asking if a "normal view" option could be added to the OpenOffice word processor, similar to the feature in MS Word (basically, you see the fonts and paragraphing as they will be in the finished document, but you don't see all the extra "page view" cruft that is in the default view in OO). Lots of people voiced support for adding the feature, and the OO project team agrees it's a good feature, yet it's never been added. Why not? Because they have no way of knowing whether that feature is worth more than all the other things the OO team has to do with their time and effort--which basically means they assume it isn't worth more, and the feature never gets done. Most open source software falls into this category: what there is may be very good (I use OO quite a bit, and do not use MS Word except when forced to at work), but it tends to lack features that for-profit software has. The exceptions are mostly cases where there are for-profit entities backing the project up--the Linux kernel, for example--or where the open source project is an enabler for profits made through other means, like Android for Google. Again, that is by no means an insult to open source developers; as I said, I'm one of them. It's a recognition of reality: we all put our time and effort where we can see value. We can all see when things are valuable to us (btw, this includes things like the Red Cross--many people see value in helping other people, and the Red Cross is an expression of that); but we are not good at seeing how valuable things are to others, particularly when the others are widely distributed and diffuse. Profit helps to fill that gap.
- TheZenPsycho 13y ago
  welp, there's no profit in reading this.
- TheZenPsycho 13y ago
  Sorry I just saw this: >"That meets my definition of "profit", but apparently not yours. So we may be talking somewhat at cross purposes." is that the same definition you used here? >"It looks like Ovishinsky's corporation did make a profit, at least while he was running it. " Profit is defined as total income minus expenditure. When talking about corporations, that is, by convention, the one unambiguous meaning in that context. But you now say that simply having income at all, is good enough to be considered "profitable". Huh! You know it is very dishonest to just go around changing the meaning of words mid conversation, sir. > In a sane world the Red Cross would be a normal corporation that was selling the service of helping people. HELP ME! HELP ME I AM DYING. RC: Sure thing. That will be $1200. Don't worry we'll send the bill to your family. you know, like this sort of sane world? House Burns Down While Firefighters Watch [1] [1]: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/tennessee-family-home-burns-while-firefighters-watch-191241763.html http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/tennessee-family-home-b...
  - pdonis 13y ago
    you now say that simply having income at all, is good enough to be considered "profitable" No, that's not what I said. I said people pay the Red Cross to do what it does: but the amount paid in must be at least as large as the amount spent by the Red Cross or they won't be able to continue doing what they're doing. The likelihood that, averaged over time, the amount they take in is exactly the amount they spend is miniscule. So practically speaking, they must be making a profit, in the sense of taking in more money than they spend, in order to continue functioning. (As I said, the fact that they are called a "nonprofit" is a subterfuge; they have to be making a profit in the sense of total income minus expenditure.) You know it is very dishonest to just go around changing the meaning of words mid conversation, sir. I did no such thing. I didn't spell out all of the above because I assumed you would be able to figure it out for yourself. Apparently I assumed wrong. RC: Sure thing. That will be $1200. Don't worry we'll send the bill to your family. So you missed the part where I explicitly said that people pay the Red Cross to help other people. The Red Cross does not charge the people they are actually helping. That would also be true in the hypothetical sane world I was describing: people would pay the Red Cross to help others. They just wouldn't have to lie about the Red Cross being a "nonprofit": the Red Cross could openly admit that it was taking in more money than it spent, and investing the difference in finding ways to help people better. You know that it is very dishonest to put words in other people's mouths and accuse them of taking positions they have not taken, sir. like this sort of sane world? Was the local fire department a for-profit corporation? Or even a "nonprofit" like the Red Cross? Or was it, as I strongly suspect, a governmental entity? (The reason I strongly suspect that is that the city's mayor defended the fire department's action.) If it's the latter, then you are misrepresenting what happened to make it seem like it supports your position, when it actually does not. You know that it is very dishonest to do that, sir.
pdonis 13y ago
That's not to mention the day traders and bankers who make huge amounts of profits and contribute nothing of value to society. I just noticed this last sentence, and it's a valid point. I agree that profit does not always correlate with providing real value, and in fact day traders and investment banks provide a good example of how to spot when it doesn't. The key thing about the profits made by day traders and investment banks is that it comes from zero-sum trades: whatever they gain, someone else must lose. That's not true of a profit-making activity like Ovishinsky's company; it made products that were of real value to people, and it got back some of that value as profits. In other words, the transaction was positive sum--both parties (the company and the customer) were better off as a result. (And of course the same is true of the Red Cross: the overall process of people donating to the Red Cross and the Red Cross using that money to help people is positive sum.)
- TheZenPsycho 13y ago
  If profit correlated to value even most of the time, that would imply that Miley Cyrus and Justin Beiber are better musicians than Bach and Mozart, and that "Scary Movie 4" is a better film than Citizen Kane or Rashoman.
  - pdonis 13y ago
    It's evident that in your opinion, Bach and Mozart are better musicians, and Citizen Kane and Rashoman are better films. I happen to share that opinion. But you and I are just two people, and judgments about aesthetic merit are not the same as measures of value. The fact that lots of people pay money to hear Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber means that their music has value to all those people, whether or not it meets your or my aesthetic criteria.

pdonis 13y ago

are you a fan of "Atlas Shrugged" by any chance Not really. The Red Cross Perhaps we are using a different definition of "profit". AFAIK the Red Cross is funded by voluntary contributions; in other words, people pay the Red Cross to do what it does, indicating that people find what it does worth doing. That meets my definition of "profit", but apparently not yours. So we may be talking somewhat at cross purposes. Btw, the fact that the Red Cross and other similar organizations call themselves "nonprofits" is a subterfuge, so they can collect money, pay salaries to people, make purchases, have administrative expenses, and generally do all the same things that ordinary "for profit" businesses do, without ringing alarm bells with people who don't understand that the resources they use to do what they do have to come from somewhere; they don't just magically appear. In other words, they are forced to call themselves a "nonprofit" because most people have a faulty definition of what "profit" means. In a sane world the Red Cross would be a normal corporation that was selling the service of helping people. If they made a profit, so much the better: more money to reinvest in helping people better. As it is, they have to hide what would normally be "profit" in various expenses that amount to the same thing, reinvesting profits in helping people better--but it's less efficient because of the subterfuge. Profit is a very poor metric for value to humanity. In fact it is a horrifyingly inhumane metric, and I would hope you feel shame for writing such rubbish publically. No, what is inhumane is to pretend that people can be helped and human welfare improved for free, magically, without any cost and without any expenditure of people's time and effort, as well as other resources--for example, to force organizations like the Red Cross to pretend to be "nonprofits" and waste resources on subterfuge that could otherwise be used to directly help people. I would hope you feel shame for writing such rubbish in public. Profit forces us to face the reality that creating value takes time and effort, and forces us to make hard choices about which things will get done, out of all the things that could be done with the time and effort and resources at hand. There are other ways of making those choices, but on a large scale they all have worse track records than profit does. you have just insulted everyone here who happens to work on open source software, by telling them their work has no value, and is a waste without scare quotes. I have said no such thing. I write open source software myself; some of it is visible on the web (see the links at http://blog.peterdonis.com http://blog.peterdonis.com). But I write it because it is valuable to me; I don't need to be paid by anyone else because I already see the value. But the flip side of that is, I have no idea how valuable it is to anyone else. For example, suppose there were some feature that could be added to one of my Python libraries that would be very valuable to someone else. So that someone else sends me an email saying, basically, can you add this feature? But they don't offer me any money; they just say the feature would be really valuable. How do I know how much of my time and effort that feature is worth? If I have no other information, the feature will get done when I have the spare time and interest (which may be never). But if the feature really is that valuable to them, they have one obvious way of getting my attention: offer me money. Now I have an easy way of judging whether the feature is worth my time and effort: I judge the money offered against the opportunity cost, i.e., what else I could do with that time and effort, and how much would it be worth to me? (Note that "how much would it be worth" doesn't necessarily mean in money; it might mean giving up time with my family and friends, and I might not be willing to do that for the money offered.) For another example, look at a large open source project like OpenOffice. I filed a bug years ago asking if a "normal view" option could be added to the OpenOffice word processor, similar to the feature in MS Word (basically, you see the fonts and paragraphing as they will be in the finished document, but you don't see all the extra "page view" cruft that is in the default view in OO). Lots of people voiced support for adding the feature, and the OO project team agrees it's a good feature, yet it's never been added. Why not? Because they have no way of knowing whether that feature is worth more than all the other things the OO team has to do with their time and effort--which basically means they assume it isn't worth more, and the feature never gets done. Most open source software falls into this category: what there is may be very good (I use OO quite a bit, and do not use MS Word except when forced to at work), but it tends to lack features that for-profit software has. The exceptions are mostly cases where there are for-profit entities backing the project up--the Linux kernel, for example--or where the open source project is an enabler for profits made through other means, like Android for Google. Again, that is by no means an insult to open source developers; as I said, I'm one of them. It's a recognition of reality: we all put our time and effort where we can see value. We can all see when things are valuable to us (btw, this includes things like the Red Cross--many people see value in helping other people, and the Red Cross is an expression of that); but we are not good at seeing how valuable things are to others, particularly when the others are widely distributed and diffuse. Profit helps to fill that gap.

TheZenPsycho 13y ago
welp, there's no profit in reading this.
TheZenPsycho 13y ago
Sorry I just saw this: >"That meets my definition of "profit", but apparently not yours. So we may be talking somewhat at cross purposes." is that the same definition you used here? >"It looks like Ovishinsky's corporation did make a profit, at least while he was running it. " Profit is defined as total income minus expenditure. When talking about corporations, that is, by convention, the one unambiguous meaning in that context. But you now say that simply having income at all, is good enough to be considered "profitable". Huh! You know it is very dishonest to just go around changing the meaning of words mid conversation, sir. > In a sane world the Red Cross would be a normal corporation that was selling the service of helping people. HELP ME! HELP ME I AM DYING. RC: Sure thing. That will be $1200. Don't worry we'll send the bill to your family. you know, like this sort of sane world? House Burns Down While Firefighters Watch [1] [1]: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/tennessee-family-home-burns-while-firefighters-watch-191241763.html http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/tennessee-family-home-b...
- pdonis 13y ago
  you now say that simply having income at all, is good enough to be considered "profitable" No, that's not what I said. I said people pay the Red Cross to do what it does: but the amount paid in must be at least as large as the amount spent by the Red Cross or they won't be able to continue doing what they're doing. The likelihood that, averaged over time, the amount they take in is exactly the amount they spend is miniscule. So practically speaking, they must be making a profit, in the sense of taking in more money than they spend, in order to continue functioning. (As I said, the fact that they are called a "nonprofit" is a subterfuge; they have to be making a profit in the sense of total income minus expenditure.) You know it is very dishonest to just go around changing the meaning of words mid conversation, sir. I did no such thing. I didn't spell out all of the above because I assumed you would be able to figure it out for yourself. Apparently I assumed wrong. RC: Sure thing. That will be $1200. Don't worry we'll send the bill to your family. So you missed the part where I explicitly said that people pay the Red Cross to help other people. The Red Cross does not charge the people they are actually helping. That would also be true in the hypothetical sane world I was describing: people would pay the Red Cross to help others. They just wouldn't have to lie about the Red Cross being a "nonprofit": the Red Cross could openly admit that it was taking in more money than it spent, and investing the difference in finding ways to help people better. You know that it is very dishonest to put words in other people's mouths and accuse them of taking positions they have not taken, sir. like this sort of sane world? Was the local fire department a for-profit corporation? Or even a "nonprofit" like the Red Cross? Or was it, as I strongly suspect, a governmental entity? (The reason I strongly suspect that is that the city's mayor defended the fire department's action.) If it's the latter, then you are misrepresenting what happened to make it seem like it supports your position, when it actually does not. You know that it is very dishonest to do that, sir.

pdonis 13y ago

That's not to mention the day traders and bankers who make huge amounts of profits and contribute nothing of value to society. I just noticed this last sentence, and it's a valid point. I agree that profit does not always correlate with providing real value, and in fact day traders and investment banks provide a good example of how to spot when it doesn't. The key thing about the profits made by day traders and investment banks is that it comes from zero-sum trades: whatever they gain, someone else must lose. That's not true of a profit-making activity like Ovishinsky's company; it made products that were of real value to people, and it got back some of that value as profits. In other words, the transaction was positive sum--both parties (the company and the customer) were better off as a result. (And of course the same is true of the Red Cross: the overall process of people donating to the Red Cross and the Red Cross using that money to help people is positive sum.)

TheZenPsycho 13y ago
If profit correlated to value even most of the time, that would imply that Miley Cyrus and Justin Beiber are better musicians than Bach and Mozart, and that "Scary Movie 4" is a better film than Citizen Kane or Rashoman.
- pdonis 13y ago
  It's evident that in your opinion, Bach and Mozart are better musicians, and Citizen Kane and Rashoman are better films. I happen to share that opinion. But you and I are just two people, and judgments about aesthetic merit are not the same as measures of value. The fact that lots of people pay money to hear Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber means that their music has value to all those people, whether or not it meets your or my aesthetic criteria.