🚀 go-pugleaf

John Drexler writes the following about GNU software:

        You are doing the equivalent to what the Japanese microchip
        industry did to the United States counterpart: dumping. Every time
        you create a software product, and give it out -- free -- to the
        public, some private software developer is taking the brunt of it.

There's a amusing parable, written in the 19th century by a fellow
named Frederic Bastiat (a proponent of free trade), which knocks the
stuffing out of John's argument.

Bastiat pointed out that there was (and is!) a great deal of dumping going
on every day: the Sun shines its radiance on planet Earth, thereby
providing everyone with free illumination.  In the process, a lot of
private providers of illumination (in Bastiat's day, candlemakers and such)
get burned.

Bastiat's tongue-in-cheek solution: pass a law to force all windows to be
boarded up!  This would keep out all the `dumped' sunlight, and put the
private illumination providers back in business.

I gather that a good many people took the point, and realized that
`dumping' can only help, never harm, a nation.  And the same can be said of
GNU software.

-- 
Robert S. Maier   | Internet: rsm@math.arizona.edu, rsm@cs.arizona.edu
Dept. of Math.    | UUCP: uunet!arizona!amethyst!rsm
Univ. of Arizona  | Bitnet: maier@arizvms
Tucson, AZ  85721 | FAX: +1 602 621 8322
U.S.A.            | Voice: +1 602 621 6893 (dept.), +1 602 621 2617 (office)