Cathedra and the Bizarre: Why Free Stuff is Good

[Eric Cordian]

Tim Philosophizes:

> All of the interesting languages now generating a lot of buzz, and 
> substantial communities, are essentially "free." Or non-profit, or open 
> source, or whatever one wishes to call them. Some examples:

I believe "Free" to be very different than "Open Source", particularly
open source under viral licensing agreements like the GPL.

My perfect example of free software is the quadratic formula.  I don't
have to pay anyone to use it.  I may use it for any purpose whatsoever,
including commercial applications.  Using it does not obligate me in any
way, or legally encumber any product which includes it.  The knowlege of
it is so widespread that were it to be lost, someone would quickly
reconstruct it and spread it around again.

IT has lots of free things.  Most computer science is free.  I don't have
to mail Andrew Tanenbaum a check if I write an OS, even if I use his book
to design it.  Knuth's books are free.  etc...

I'm a big fan of free.  Free works.  Free is like Pandora's box.  Once
opened, the stuff cannot be put back in.  Ever.

I am less of a fan of schemes like the GPL, which seek to impose a set of 
contagious terms on anything touched by the knowlege.  

> But "free" arises for some reasons which are readily-understandable to 
> Hayekians and Randians and those interested in markets and capitalism:

> * the creators are anticipating rewards _other_ than salaries from 
> employers, e.g.,

True scientific inquiry is always driven purely by intellectual curiosity.
Salary is just how you eat and pay the bills.  Understanding the essential 
nature of apparently complex things is its own reward.

> -- fame ("Yes, I am Guido")

"Yes, I am Paracelsus.  Would you believe I've been cooking this large vat 
of feces for 6 months?"

> -- job opportunities ("I wrote Digital Datawhaque, the leading open 
> source frobbolizer")

"I showed the correspondence between Tarot Trumps and Paths on the Tree of 
Life."

> -- publish or perish

"I wrote the Copronomicon."

> -- simple pleasure or some mission (applies to several Cypherpunks 
> projects...)

"We must stop discrimination against Druids."

Of course my point here is that with minor exceptions, most really great
innovations are unappreciated by the public, and may in fact go
unappreciated by all but a very small number of people working in ones
subspecialty at the time they are announced.

So I think the non-tangible rewards from employers argument for innovation
fails.  Smart people do innovative things because of their intrinsic
coolness, even if no one else in the world can appreciate them.

> The large communities, and probable large adoptions by corporations 
> later, are in the free stuff areas. I don't even think the important 
> defining characteristic is that the thing be "open source." The 
> important thing is "free." Free as in no hassles, no licenses, play 
> around, copy it for your friends, write about it without fears of being 
> contacted by lawyers, and so on. Free. Unencumbered.

> (Yeah, there are various kinds of licenses having to do with whether 
> products based on the freebie can be sold for profit.

If you can't do whatever you like with it, it's not free.  Period.

> Just the obvious one: any digital money system needs to be free, or 
> open source, to be widely adopted by our kind of people.

Secure anonymous digital money will never win out over easy to use, 
good buddies with Homeland Security systems like Paypal in the wide 
adoption Olympics.

This is a dead horse that continues to be beaten on this list.

> Had David Chaum, a man I respect a great deal, freely published and
> distributed his ideas, he would likely today have a lot more fame and
> fortune.

Chaum's ideas were the JPEG Arithmetic Coding of the digital money spec.

They suffered from two faults.  One, they had legal restrictions.  Two, 
other things that were almost as good didn't have legal restrictions.

If Chaum wanted fame and fortune, he should have started eBay.

-- 
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"