Re: open source policy across the globe

On Monday, March 8, 2004, at 04:06 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> \is bad public policy.  I believe in democracy, and if a democratic
> society chooses to do things that way, I will acquiesce, but not shut
> up.
>

Markets are good public policy ONLY when they function as they should, 
they are not good per se. Markets are good public policy when they 
maximize production via incentives. Markets are bad public policy when 
the exclusion and rivalry on which they depend are not present, and the 
cost of exclusion is greater than the resulting increase in value.  It 
appears that the means (markets) have been dreadfully  confused with 
the ends (improving the lot of humanity).

The software market "works" under an exclusion model even when there is 
proof, in running code and viable businesses, that the exclusion model 
is not necessary. I don't think we should prohibit closed software, 
don't get me wrong, but that a strict property model makes more money 
for some subset of the people involved in software does not make it 
superior in policy terms. It is only superior in economic terms because 
it fits more effectively with the assumptions, which proves that 
economic tautologies do not contradict themselves but not that classic 
models are superior - in software or in global trade.

Luckily for the fsb, bad economics is often good business.

-Jean