Other commercial outfits like the freedom of adding proprietary products to mostly free bundles, and that is an important part of open source, too. (For example, the original OSI’s Perens’ and Murdock’s Debian Free Software Guidelines #9 reads: License Must Not Contaminate Other Software – The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be free software.”)

OK,so where’s the source code to their search system?

I’m trying to understand what you are saying here.

The first three paragraphs of your post seems a bit disconnected from the rest of your post, in any case let me ask this question, what’s the big deal here? do we really need philosophical interpretations of software?

isnt software at the end of the day a product – like your TV, microwave or sliced bread ?

Isnt it also true that people use software use it by applying the same consideration as any other product, and doesn’t really give much about whether its open source or closed-source per se, but more to do with how much does it cost and what can it do for me?

I’d think open source software is a result of the free market dynamics, a set of people not liking the products on offer in the market (closed-source-software) and creating a new brand altogether, which caught on with others. Kind of like sliced-bread or wireless keyboards?

Your major contention seems to be that closed-source software would be less efficient than open source because the latter is more decentralized..

but arnt’ you really talking about a management style here? I think its completely plausible for a closed-source software to have a very decentralized development process.. isnt that how google seems to do stuff? i dont know about microsoft.

Does this have anything to do with the source being open? i dont think so.

Any product development seems to need a degree of centralization, with teams, firms n so on. the degree of centralization depending on the relative cost/benefits of the management decision.

So i don’t see the point really of having a debate on open source vs closed source software. or to the fact that what’s efficient at creativity n so on, as libertarians i thought we’d trust the market to make those kind of decisions, on a product by product basis.

Also many political philosophies be it communist, libertarian or otherwise seems to work best when applied to governments and the general society rather than anything specific as done here.

either that or i haven’t read the Road to Serfdom – Refrigerator edition.

Looking forward for responses,

Cheers Deane.

Have you ever actually heard Stallman speak? I don’t think you have, as he comes across as quite a arm hearted person, and although he has a bit of a goofy sense of humour, he’s not mean spirited as you seem to want to make him out to be.

At his talk at the University of Missouri, St. Louis last year, someone had asked him a question along that line, and he didn’t mind at all, as long as they abide by their commitments under the GPL.

But, the whole point, richard of the GPL is fredom Richard, and you don’t seem to understand that–that freedom means someone can, even if they release closed source software, use GCC to compile it.

Of course Stallman, and all people who care about free software, would much prefer that those who produce software would make a moral decision and produce free software.

There are three developments that change this observation:

1. raw “bigness”: “Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations; only 49 are countries. Wal-Mart–the number 12 corporation–is bigger than 161 countries, including Israel, Poland and Greece. Mitsubishi is larger than the fourth most populous nation on earth: Indonesia. General Motors is bigger than Denmark. Ford is bigger than South Africa. Toyota is bigger than Norway.”

2. Globalization has given corporations a virtually unlimited domain of action; they can operate globally while governments are normally limited in their jurisdiction by national boundaries. If they don’t like the environmental, or labor rules is country A they just pick up and go to Country B. That’s why all the agreements like the Kyoto Protocol have to be international in scope, to be effective. That it appears doubtful that even the global environmental catastrophe that is now unfolding will be enough to adequately galvanize the opposition to corporate hegemony that now exists should tell us who is really in power now: large corporations.

3. The line between large corporations and large governments is becoming increasingly blurry, with governments basically seeing their duty to align themselves as closely as possible with the goals of the corporations, against the interests of their own people. A prime example of this would be present day China, and therefore it is no surprise that the IP Central crowd fawn over China, and heap criticism on India. But our own country is becoming more and more like China every day: a state run for corporations, not for people.

The question then is, given these three factors, “Why are libertarians almost totally incapable of finding fault with the actions of any corporation, however bad or freedom depriving that action is?”

This is especially troubling because libertarians say they value individual freedom, yet much of what is done by large corporations destroys that individual and his freedom.

I had asked that question some time ago, and found a very convincing answer in the wonderful book Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen, in his description of the “informational exclusions” made by libertarians. Basically they want so very much to believe that the simple extension of procedural freedoms will solve all the big problems, that they are unable to process information which contradicts this. Such information does not exist, can not exist, and is of necessity excluded.

I rest my case.