Re: [Fsfe-uk] Re: [discuss] Open source software News

[Ralph Janke]

Timothy Baldwin wrote:

> On Saturday 22 May 2004 15:03, Ralph Janke wrote:
>
>  
>
> > Tom, you are absolutely right. GPL is based on the foundation of a
> > working copyright law. Also GPL is far less socialistic
> > than patents.
> >    
>
> How do claim that patents, a form intelluctual propiery, and therefore a form 
> of private propetry, are socialistic?
>
>  
The justification for patents is that they are for the common good of 
society. This is one of the principles of
socialism. The idea of socialism is to restricts individual freedom for 
what it is claimed to be good for the whole of society.
If you look in Article 1,s. 8 in the US Constitution, you will read that 
the purpose of granting exclusive (monopoly) rights
to inventors is the benefit of the progress of sciences. The benefit is 
for all of society.

GPL and the other hand, grants the user of the software almost unlimited 
freedom of usage. It does not restrict the freedom, like patents
do, but it explicitly grants it.
GPL also explicitly allows commercialism under its license. I think this 
is the point, most people misunderstand. I believe too many see
GPL as a non-commercial license, when in fact GPL opens individual 
commercial opportunities that are mostly missing under proprietory licenses.

> > Free markets are working because of competition.
> >    
>
> How can free markets be working when large numbers of people live in poverty?
>
>  
How comes that there is poverty in socialism ? And btw. in my opinion 
most poverty is not grounded on free markets, but on closed markets.
We are just starting to see the opening of markets. So far we never had 
a free market society, but a lot of closed markets competing with each other

> > In order  
> > to have price stability and innovation, it is very
> > helpful to have as much competition as possible.
> >    
>
> An (democratically made) agreement  to keep prices stable, should also keep 
> prices stable. Cooperation is more efficent than competeion, how much effort 
> is expanded by OpenOffice.org in being compatiable with Microsoft Office, and 
> how much resources does Microsoft spend in being incompatible, or spreading 
> FUD? Also consider the cost of developing 2 office suites instead of one.
>
>  
I do not think that Microsoft is necessarily a good example for 
macro-economy. Microsoft has been very successful seen in the context
of micro-economy so far. If this will last we will be able to see in the 
future.

I also do not see where democratically made agreements to keep prices 
stable have really worked. The local public transport system
had price increases of tickets in the range of 300% in the last 10 
years. I can not see a similar development in salaries.

Also, it is not only about consumer prises (which are drastically 
reduced if there is high competition as you can see in consumer 
electronics) it is
also about the innovation created by competition. We had far more 
innovation in space technology while the USA and the Soviet Union had 
their space
race. We have made some strives since then, but I doubt we are going in 
the same rate.

Competition has many facets of being a catalyst of positive progress. It 
creates motivation, to be better, faster, etc... It has an evolutionary 
aspect. Consumer which have a choice will decide what they want, which 
in return has in impact on what is delivered. Competition only gets to 
be bad, when it turns into games of dominance.

> However, even patents have their place where investments are so high,
>
> > that without a "protected" market the risk of investment is too high, and
> > therefore the absence of a monopoly market for some time would prevent
> > the development of i.e. medication that is beneficial to society.
> >    
>
> Public funding (distrubuted on a democratic basis) would solve that.
>
>  
Public funding already exists. And the expererience is that public 
funding increases every year far faster than inflation.
Unfortunately public funding has negative aspects as well. It does not 
solve everything. And I think our European neighbors
in the east seemed to be quite happy to have left a system of 100% 
public funding.

> > Patents therefore should be used as remedy for problems that free
> > markets are not setup to solve, not as general applicable principle.
> > A general principle of ownership for a few of something that should be
> > able to be owned  (through copyright) by many should be called feudalism.
> >    
> No, that's class society, of which capitalism and feudalism are examples.
>
>  
And socialism. Or do you think the Soviet Union has been classless or 
China is classless ?  Class based societies
do not allow the crossing of goups in whichever criteria is used to 
define classes. Patents are an instrument to achieve this.
Patents are used by the currently powerful to prevent the competition by 
others that do not happen to belong to that class.
They are an instrument to keep the status-quo. As I said before. 
Ownership of patents can be like ownership of land during
the pre-industrial times. They can create or maintain a feudal system of 
a few owning what is necessary to stay alive for
everybody. Patents are discriminatory because only a few have the 
resource to get them, protect them, and to enforce them.
Despite what some people say, patents are not an usable method of 
protection of ownership for everybody. This makes them
fundamentally flawed if used as a general priciple.

> > I do not see why it can be claimed that it is socialism
> >    
> What are you saying is claimed is socialism?
>  
I can not see the arguments that would explain why GPL is socialism.

Ralph Janke