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Re: [fsf-community-team] Argument from economic nessesity


From: Simon Bridge
Subject: Re: [fsf-community-team] Argument from economic nessesity
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:45:11 +1300

On Tue, 2009-12-15 at 02:51 -0800, Mike VandeVelde wrote:
> Simon Bridge wrote:
> > Curiously, and in the face of "gnu/linux is not ready for the desktop",
> > it is the day-to-day desktop that is the first target.
> >   
> 
> Curiously, to the curious ;-)

One of the curious things about me is my curiosity :D

> 
> > In the private sector, there are lots of inquiries with the big hurdle
> > of the moment being support and some people worried about the future of
> > software development.
> >   
> 
> Worried about the future of software development??

The whole - "how do programmers get paid" thing.

> 
> > Private companies have made a virtue out of greed and self interest so
> > their management are not very open to a community spirit as a support
> > guarantee however well proven. They want to know their support is paid
> > for. (Why would someone act in my interests if I don't own them?)
> >   
> 
> Yes! For those sorts of people, they are free to keep paying (embracing 
> freedom does not mean they need to stop paying).
Which is why there is an industry survey in NZ right now to discover
businesses in a position to offer free software support to businesses.

Otherwise we have the chicken and egg problem - businesses claiming they
won't move to freedom due to lack of support and other claiming they do
not support due to lack of demand.

One of our activists here has figured out that this is a communication
problem - the demand and supply are both here, they just don't talk to
each other. The current step is to get them all in the same room.

However, I've seen this sort of thing before in other contexts - I
cannot help the suspicion that this is just an excuse which, once
solved, will lead to another one.

I don't see why it is up to us to solve everyone's business problems.

>  If that's what makes 
> them comfortable. Even having that sort of conversation is a step in the 
> right direction though. Just remember that free software won't die 
> without their support, it doesn't hurt to politely remind them of that, 
> and frame the conversation that way. "You know, there is another way..."

Taylor the argument to the audience I think.
Businesses have made a virtue of immorality but they like things like
market position and dynamics.

Of note - lets see if I can find a reference - a recent-ish business
conference had a free software activist workshop the crowi over what
freedom, in general, means for business. Without reference to FSF or GNU
he got the crowd to propose principles which made businesses free. There
were lots, but the discussion showed that most of them were subsets of
others and the set was condensed down to four.


- Freedom is a competitive landscape offering real choice of systems and
suppliers.
- Freedom is escape from vendor lock-in and mitigating the risk of
vendor capture.
- Freedom is flexibility to make a choice today that doesn't remove our
ability to make a choice tomorrow.
- Freedom is control over software—the ability to share our experiences
and adapt software to our needs.

This is how business people think - en mass. Though there is an element
of politics here: I see many businesses would want these for everyone
else but are happy with being the one imposing the restrictions
themselves.

Anyway, interest in this started oyy the Public Sector Remix project
here:

http://nzoss.org.nz/news/2009/public-sector-remix-project-launch
... sadly they talk about "free open source software" which leads to the
impression that it is open source software being provided gratis.

It is not a consistent oversight however. The press release also talks
about freedom and "free software" positively without mentioning open
source in connection. I suspect the author intended "free *and* open
source".



> 
> > Some sort of overview of what successful business models have been used
> > would be useful here.
> >   
> 
> Yeah maybe.

> Hehe, that's me. I do a lot of work with Lotus Notes, on one side that's 
> given me a lot of practice dealing with haters, on the other side that 
> makes me proprietary satan spawn (in some little defense there is 
> http://www.openntf.org/ with an option for GPL). I use free software 
> where I can, even in some places where it isn't exactly easy, but I use 
> proprietary software in a lot of situations where I probably don't truly 
> need to. So either kick me out of this club now, or you'll regret it 
> later! Muwahaha!!

You get paid for the lotus notes work?





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