🚀 go-pugleaf

> Maciej Stachowiak <mstachow@mit.edu> writes:
>
> >Sure it is. Many parts of it are not a market that involves transfers
> >of money, but assuming money is required for markets the kind of
> >naiive view of markets that only someone who hasn't studied economics
> >would have.
>
> It is only market driven if you extend the meaning of the word "Market"
> to a degree where it means everything and nothing.  E.g. to a degree where
> you can say that the evolution of animal species and ideas and social
> patterns are all "market driven".
>

Yes, they are. The only thing that is _not_ market-driven is anything
centrally planned. Again, read an econ textbook, economists regularly
analyze processes that involve no direct exchange of money. These are
sometimes called "shadow markets".

> >It is true that many industry rags measure "market leadership" in
> >dollars, but this is hardly universal; if you are an OS vendor trying
> >to attract ISVs and VARs to your platform, you tell them how many
> >units you ship and how much installed base you have in units, both
> >absolutely and as a percentage of the market, not what percentage you
> >have in dollars.
>
> This again is an extended use of the word "market", which is understood in
> context.  Usually a market is measured in dollars, and "percentage of the
> market" would mean percentage of the cake that you eat.

Only because dollar markets are easier to analyze quantitatively. In
any case, if a cheaper piece of software in a category sells twice as
many copies as an expensive one, they may have the same dollar market
percentage but the company selling the cheaper software is clearly in
a strategically superior position.

> >Economic viability for open source only requires that the software
> >market become a service economy rather than a commodity
> >economy. Actually, many sectors already _are_ more service-oriented
> >than product-oriented, so this shouldn't be too much of a problem. 
>
> Service-orientation means that creation of the software is not rewarded,
> only bugfixing and hand-holding is rewarded.  Which means that the only type
> of open-source software that is rewarded by the Market is 
> * buggy and poorly documented open source software.
> * tailored solutions that serve only one customer

In practice, open source software that is developed primarily by
commercial concerns (as with Cygnus and the GNU tools) is not buggy or
poorly documented. Many have made this argument and it's just not
true. No one would want _any_ service for the software if the software
were not already very high quality.

>> Basically, my
>> view, and that of many others, is that customers should >pay, not for
>> the software itself, but for the labor of creating, >maintaining and
>> otherwise servicing software, much the way legal and >medical
>> knowledge operate already.
>
> I would subscribe to this view.  The problem is that OSS creation cannot be
> rewarded by a market system based on individual demand.  The reason for that
> is that OSS serves a public demand.

It serves individual demands too. The public demands are served OK as
a side effect. Lawyers who make arguments in court on behalf of a
client have publicly beneficial side-effects too - if their arguments
are effective, they may be cited as precedents in later
cases. Public-benefiting side effects do not preclude there being a
healthy market for a given service.

 - Maciej Stachowiak


-- 
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((n(c(lambda(x)(o x)x))))(let p((n n)(l(string->list s)))(cond((not (null? l)
)(display(car l))(p(c n)(cdr l))))))))((f"Js nte ul akr")(f"utAohrGieHce\n"))'