Re: Publicly funded software development (was: KDE v. Gnome)

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Article #1193

#1193

From: Malcolm McMahon
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1998 00:00

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On Fri, 09 Oct 1998 21:14:40 GMT, Decklin Foster <decklin@base.org>
wrote:

>malcolm@pigsty.demon.co.uk (Malcolm McMahon) writes:
>
>> This works in direct proportion to how close it is to the current
>> situation. Substitute "software house" for "free software organistation"
>> and everyone gets to chose the individual products their money goes to
>> and you're back to the market.
>> 
>> The only difference is you're forcing people who use very little
>> software to subsidise those that use a great deal of software.
>
>Not necessarily. The taxes should be proportional. In that case, it
>*is* like the market, except everyone has the freedom to fully use the
>software.

So how do you make the tax "proportional"? You need to see what software
people are using, against their natural desire to minimise the "tax"
they pay. This ammounts to restricting access to software. In other
words you've eliminated the only remaining difference from the copyright
system.

Whereas the market system has clear problems dealing with intelectual
products this "software tax" approach ammounts to little more than a
bunch of people who use a _lot_ of software hoping to get other people
to pay for it.

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From: malcolm@pigsty.demon.co.uk (Malcolm McMahon)
Subject: Re: Publicly funded software development (was: KDE v. Gnome)
Date: 1998/10/10
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