Linux World domination (was Re: [NCLUG] PC for Linux (Ubuntu))

[John L. Bass]

grant at amadensor.com wrote:
> Quoting "John L. Bass" <jbass at dmsd.com>:
>
>> There is a huge difference between making the best product available 
>> for whoever can use it, and advocating that use, over any form of 
>> domination which stiffles other ideas. From Wikipedia, *Domination* 
>> is the condition of having control or power over people, animals, or 
>> things.
>>
>
> I think people are taking Linus way too seriously and literally here.  
>  Read the stuff he posts.  Most of it is with a bit of smart alec and 
> tongue in cheek to it.  It you take it that way, as a little bit 
> toward true, but overstated to be funny, I think it will be closer to 
> what he meant.

Except that it's far from tongue in check for a fairly large number of 
folks that follow the Stallman manifesto 
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html:

    *“My company needs a proprietary operating system to get a
    competitive edge.”*

    GNU will remove operating system software from the realm of
    competition. You will not be able to get an edge in this area, but
    neither will your competitors be able to get an edge over you. You
    and they will compete in other areas, while benefiting mutually in
    this one. If your business is selling an operating system, you will
    not like GNU, but that's tough on you. If your business is something
    else, GNU can save you from being pushed into the expensive business
    of selling operating systems.

    I would like to see GNU development supported by gifts from many
    manufacturers and users, reducing the cost to each.(5)
    <http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html#f5>


    *“Won't programmers starve?”*

    I could answer that nobody is forced to be a programmer. Most of us
    cannot manage to get any money for standing on the street and making
    faces. But we are not, as a result, condemned to spend our lives
    standing on the street making faces, and starving. We do something else.

    But that is the wrong answer because it accepts the questioner's
    implicit assumption: that without ownership of software, programmers
    cannot possibly be paid a cent. Supposedly it is all or nothing.

    The real reason programmers will not starve is that it will still be
    possible for them to get paid for programming; just not paid as much
    as now.

    Restricting copying is not the only basis for business in software.
    It is the most common basis because it brings in the most money. If
    it were prohibited, or rejected by the customer, software business
    would move to other bases of organization which are now used less
    often. There are always numerous ways to organize any kind of business.

    Probably programming will not be as lucrative on the new basis as it
    is now. But that is not an argument against the change. It is not
    considered an injustice that sales clerks make the salaries that
    they now do. If programmers made the same, that would not be an
    injustice either. (In practice they would still make considerably
    more than that.)