🚀 go-pugleaf

Jason Clifford <jason@ukpost.com> writes:

>On Sat, 10 Oct 1998, PILCH Hartmut wrote:

>> Make electronic money a reality, so that free software programmers can
>> earn money the way street musicians do: by collecting a penny for each
>> web hit on their site.  Benevolent users would be glad to afford this.

>There is a serious flaw in your proposal. Very often I go to a developers
>web site and even download the software only to discover that it is not a
>very good solution. I then delete the software. Why should I pay for
>visiting his web site or downloading software that I do not use?

Why should you pay for street music that you don't like?  Of course you
shouldn't.  But if you go to let's say the GNU site and they have set
a http server parameter that collects a cent per page hit.  Your browser
would notify you of this and you would consent because you know the music
is good.  

>The solution is simple. Let your free software be free (in whatever sence
>you choose) and let your non-free softwaer be non-free. The market (being
>those ho might be interested in your software) will decide if they want it
>and are willing to pay or not.

I don't understand your solution at all.  The Market clearly decides that
it wants closed monopolistic software and doesn't give a damn about source
code.  When speaking about The Market, you can't be referring to any real
existing markets at least.

If electronic payment entered the HTTP protocol, the Internet would become
much more friendly toward free software.  Currently the people who contribute
software to others have to pay for those who suck.  For example on my site
each MB that someone sucks costs me 2.50 DM.  The GNU people need sponsors
to pay for all the suckers.  Now that really sucks.  You need advertising
banners and dependency on capitalist sponsors in order to provide free
information.  Why?  Because the HTTP protocol is to stupid to give people
the freedom to choose the bargain conditions they themselves want.

So introducing e-money into HTTP might be the single most important boost
that one can give to free software funding.  It wouldn't make the Market
more favorable to OpenSource, but it would remove the dependency on
sponsoring and allow the street music funding approach (which is also not a
capitalist approach) to have a chance of working.

--
Hartmut Pilch
http://www.a2e.de/phm/