🚀 go-pugleaf

sl1yn@millville.declab.usu.edu (869483 Denys Larry) writes:

>food costs money.  Maybe it has to do with the fact that very few 
>programmers out there have the luxury of sitting around like bums 
>and haveing a college foot the bill for their intellectual interests

Untrue.
Most hackers have "real jobs" and do hacking in sparetime.
There is a very tiny core of GNU development which is done by
full-time programmers, and they're paid for it.  (Paid much less
then their market price, but it's no "college footing the bill").

Even while at school, hacking has a price i.t.o. grades, qualifying
exams, publications, ... your career.  It's most certainly not a
cruise liner.

>  I have a question for all you GNU/socialists/commmunists out there.
>If the GNU idea is so great, why don't we apply it to other parts of the
>economy?  Like, say, woodworking.  Think about it.  You're a cabinet
>maker; you love to work with your hands and create works of art and use

Because software is special in that the cost of making one more
copy of gcc is 0.  Once a good program is written and placed in
the PD, it is like air: a public good.  From sound economics, then,
there IS a case for the funding of the creation of such public goods
using taxes.

If I slaved away and built me a beautiful car (never mind that it's
hard to do a one-off) and gave it away, where would we be?  The world
would have one happy car-owner.  And that car would wear out and breakdown.
Software has no such problems.  One program can reach infinite users
at 0 cost, and it'll still be humming away many years hence.

>That's because they cannot.  The point is true, as you would know if you
>took a single course in economics.

I'm a 5th year Ph. D. student in Economics.  :-)

        -ans.
-- 
Ajay Shah, (213)749-8133, ajayshah@rcf.usc.edu