RE: Charging the Charger

Most people WANT to be retired, and that means making money first. RMS
is kind of retired (it could be argued that he never started working ;-)
and maybe doesn't need money, after all, how much CAN one spend on
conditioner ;-) and ESR is retired the good old fashioned way, he got
VERY lucky with the stock market.  I suspect that there are many people
in open source who are better off than you might think. Half of Europe
is retired anyway due to the liberal public assistance, which probably
explains a lot about why so many open source programmers are from
Europe... but I digress.

In order to achieve state 1 (having enough money), you have to have done
something that society values enough to have cashed you out. If I had to
think of a founding father who was into IP, I'd have to go with Paul
Revere... :-) He stamped everything he made so nobody would copy it. On
the other hand, one could also say that Ben himself was into IP in a big
way, at least earlier in his career.

And I think maybe the scriptural reference you were looking for was,
"There's nothing new under the sun."

-Kelly

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Corneli [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2005 6:38 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Charging the Charger



   Franklin's reasoning was 1) I already have enough money, and I'm
retired

Most people I know want more money (including me, but I do try to
exercise some self-restraint, and trust me, once you get started down
that path, its relatively easy going), and most people are not retired.

   2) I want to maximize the benefit of the lightning rod, franklin
stove,
   armonica, etc. to the entire world. 

Mnay people seem to think similar things, but their ideas about how to
maximize the benefits of whatever _they_ are capable of creating will
tend to vary.  

Sometimes they haven't actually created anything but they still want to
collect paychecks while they are in the process of maybe-creating
something.  Sometimes they believe that doing the best to help their
company maximize profits will be best for the world.  And there are a
lot of other ways of thinking about this service-to-the-world stuff,
too.

I'm not necessarily going to argue (why bother).  But I can imagine
designing simple simulations that might prove that if everyone thought
_like Franklin_ about this stuff, things would be going better than if
everyone thought _like Gates_ (etc. -- if I knew more history I would
cite a founding father instead... my sense is that Jefferson would have
been a pro-IP guy, but who knows).  Of course, maybe I'd be surprised,
and it would turn out that strong IP really was "better" -- or maybe it
depends on a set of parameters; sometimes one way is better, sometimes
the other way is better.

   I indeed believe that Franklin was a significant contributor to the
open
   source world.  It's us, once again, who are catching up with the
First
   American.

Where was that prophesy... oh here it is: "The old shall be made new."







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