🚀 go-pugleaf

philh@vision25.demon.co.uk (Phil Hunt) writes:

>In article <F0B8I1.475@a2e.de> phm@a2e.de "PILCH Hartmut" writes:
>> Some social models of financing Open Source development are also
>> conceivable. I.e. a hardware tax whose revenues are used for public bidding
>> or prize awarding.

>IMO this would be a good idea.

>Note that things like this are already in existance today. For example,
>much TV programming in Britain is funded by a tax -- the "TV license".

In Germany, the public television which is funded that way (ARD, ZDF etc)
produces clearly better quality programs than anything that any private
station.  This has been experienced for a decade now, and "free market"
advocates, although vocal 10 years ago, have only a very bleak record
to point at.  Recently all political parties have campaigned against the
contents of private tv, promising to exert some control to prevent it
from harming children with pornographic talkshows in the afternoon hours.

This is about the same as the record of commercial-funded software.
Commercial funding has adverse results on the product.
TV: commercials are interspersed and only such films are broadcast as
    can hope to appeal to the most wiling buyers
Software: only closed-source and vender-lock software can prevail

Both cases produce inferior-quality drug-like products ultimately lead to
monopolism, see Murdoch and Gates.  In real existing informatic capitalism,
the money-makers undercut community efforts (such as available public
information) while profiting from them.

Therefore even those people who want to buy a computer without any open
source software on it already have profited from the existence of an open
source software code base.  Paying 1% would (although needn't) be justified
in every single case.

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