Re: GPL vs. sweatshops (was Re: Bias)

On 14 Jun 2002, Martin Wilck wrote:

> Am Don, 2002-06-13 um 23.30 schrieb Deven T. Corzine:
> 
> :-)
> Take a look at the Winsock manual, and you'll see it's different from
> BSD. Take a look at the code, and you'll see it requires much more than
> a 1:1 translation. Winsock is 100% I think, but Winsock2 isn't.

Any idea what's missing?  Is it complex or difficult, or just stuff nobody 
ever got around to working on?

> The old story - developers like to develop much more than to write docs.
> Actually developers are pretty bad at writing docs that newbies can
> understand. Moreover, there are only very few people who really
> thoroughly understand wine's inner workings (I am not one of them), and
> we need their coding work.

On the one hand, you need the coding work of the wizards because they're in 
short supply.  On the other hand, if they took some time from that work to 
help create new wizards, they might not be in such short supply.  It's a 
bit of a Catch-22, indeed.  Still, it argues against 100% focus on coding.

And docs aren't necessarily the best use of a wizard's time, but one-on-one 
interaction to mentor a newbie or proto-wizard could be very effective, and 
those being mentored could be the ones writing the documentation -- then 
the wizards could review it for accuracy without having to write it, and 
the learners would learn a lot by writing documentation to help those who 
will follow in their footsteps...

Someone mentioned a medieval-style guild system to me earlier; maybe this 
is what large, complex projects could use.  I wonder if it would work?

> I didn't say you criticized it, but others did.

That may be true, but I'd rather you didn't tar (and feather) me with the 
same brush...

> > The problem is that those benefits tend to come with the side-effect of 
> > someone else getting a much greater benefit, undeservedly by appearances.
> > That's what makes it hard to accept, I think.
> 
> There is more to it. Think of people who may not have the funds to buy
> the commercial stuff (consider a less wealthy country than your own).
> Buy forcing others to distribute their improvements to your code freely,
> you give these people the chance to lawfully participate in the
> technical advancements. By allowing non-free commercial enhancements,
> you force them to stick with the supposedly inferior version you have
> written, or use black copies. 

Well, I think a big part of the problem here is simply that most of the 
software companies seem to follow Microsoft's lead and target those wealthy 
customers who can afford their outrageous prices.  There's no good reason 
why a Windows distribution should cost $100-200.  With the volumes they've 
got, it should be no more than $50, if not $10-20.  But they're greedy and 
will wring every cent they can out of it -- which they can get away with 
only because they're a monopoly and nobody can undercut them.

If proprietary offshoots from free projects are generally only incremental 
improvements and the free project remains mostly competitive, it keeps the 
playing field level and makes it harder for proprietary companies to charge 
excessive prices without making substantial improvements.

As for poor countries, they may have limited resources, but does that mean 
they can contribute NOTHING to the cost of developing the software they'd 
like to use?  Somehow I doubt that's the limit of their capabilities...

Deven