Re: Charging the Charger

       Joe> But I can imagine designing simple simulations that might
       Joe> prove that if everyone thought _like Franklin_ about this
       Joe> stuff, things would be going better than if everyone thought
       Joe> _like Gates_.

   Highly unlikely.  The Golden Rule is a great way to run a society of
   clones, but the whole point of the market economy is "how do you deal
   with the situation where 'as you would have them do unto you' is the
   last thing _they_ want?"

I didn't say "golden rule" - I just said, make a simple model.

Suppose there is 1 good... music boxes.  People can create music boxes
of varying degrees of quality (suited to a range of different tastes);
some people are quite skilled by nature, others less so; anyone can
market their music boxes in either a "black box" or a "clear box"
format (either as a prototype or a mass-produced edition); novelty
wears off, but classics are always in demand; every music box design
is unique; music boxes break after 1 year; an individual or firm earns
a reputation for works they produce (and though designs can be copied,
a consumer knows both who designed and who marketed a given copy; or
alternatively, perhaps the original artist is only known for clear-box
and self-produced black-box editions).

Something like that.  So... it isn't _that_ simple... but at least
there is no copyleft.  (Save that kind of complexity for round two.)
I don't think is obvious that either the "clear-box" or "black-box"
solutions win out all the time.  Maybe there is some better simple
model that better describes simple IP considerations.

   So the question is "are hackers' software needs similar to those of
   the rest of the world?"  I think the answer is pretty clearly "not all
   that much," and for that reason I think that the Battle of the Sexes
   is arguably the more appropriate simulation.  Doesn't prove that the
   Invisible Hand Theorem applies to Microsoft, but does cast serious
   doubt on the provability of the Franklin solution.

Even if hackers tend to need very different things from, for, or in
software than your average end-user, that doesn't in the least mean
that hackers can't write and support software that end-users will
like.  Most end-users don't care what license they get with the
software (do they?).  If you talk about the interests of "proprietary"
vs "non-proprietary" _producers_, then, sure, they are different.

This model might suggest that either group should be able to buy out
the other (i.e. so as to "close" or "open" a particular program).  And
this happens.  But again, do many end users care?  I assume they
typically just want cheap, good, software.