🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan6.132121.13286@hellgate.utah.edu> Greg Alt writes:

[ ... quoting a line of Mr. Alt's and using it to make a 
      completely tangential point ... ] 

>But it is true that there would be less commercial products.

I can't see this happening under any scenario.  People may be
finding it harder to make big bucks with commercial software,
but this trend would continue regardless of whether the GPL 
increases in popularity.  The GPL is just another way to 
publish software, and it competes with others that are still
quite healthy.

In the hypothetical "post-scarcity" society that has been 
used as an example somewhere in the FSF literature (doesn't 
matter where) there will most certainly be those who will 
continue to trade in intellectual property under a variety
of terms.  This is just human nature -  people like to make 
and trade neat things.  

If humanity reaches a state in which people are less concerned 
about where their next meal is coming from, the numbers who choose 
to trade in intellectual property will have to increase -  what 
else would people do in such a world?  Creating and consuming
software, music, videos, etc. is fun.  

In such a world, the price that one could charge for trading 
in such things on a proprietary basis will be limited by 
increased competition.  It doesn't really matter whether the 
competition comes from people who do it on a proprietary basis 
but more cheaply, on a "truly-free" PD  basis, or under GPL-like 
restrictions.

Fewer programmers?  I doubt it.  It's more likely that society 
will redefine necessity so as to cause itself to require more
of what people enjoy doing.

Such speculation may seem a bit self-indulgent when considers
that the current state of the world is far from "post-scarcity".

Still, for those who insist on worrying about how the future
will look if the GPL is not stamped out immediately - take a 
look at the big picture.  Microsoft isn't going away;  neither 
is Apple (~$8 billion) - or any of the other vicious hoarders 
that pay most of the salaries in the software business.  
-- 
-- Bill Johnston (johnston@me.udel.edu)
-- 38 Chambers Street; Newark, DE 19711; (302)368-1949