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

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Article #1298

#1298

From: Decklin Foster
Date: Thu, 08 Oct 1998 00:00

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Maciej Stachowiak <mstachow@mit.edu> writes:

> I'd hate to see the government choosing which open source projects to
> fund. nothing can screw up a good thing mroe than government funding.

Have you read <URL:http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/dat.html>? I think
the government can be a wonderful *facilitator* here, not an
allocator. Keep in mind that at least in democratic states what the
government does is supposed to represent what the citizens want.

RMS presents a model for music that could easily work with software
too. All the government has to do is collect taxes and then hand the
money back to the developers, according to how the taxpayers
vote. This would be a great way to reward people for their efforts
without restricting distribution of software/music/books/whatever, if
we could start over tomorrow. Unfortunately copyright has a lot of
inertia.

-- 
please read: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/
"cry me a bayou/and i'm leaving..." -tricky

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From: Decklin Foster <decklin@base.org>
Subject: Re: Publicly funded software development (was: KDE v. Gnome)
Date: 1998/10/08
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