Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Another artist who programs chimes in....

Author:Brett Glass
Posted:8/24/2000; 9:16:18 PM
Topic:Next survey: Are you an open source developer?
Msg #:20151 (In response to 20139)
Prev/Next:20150 / 20152

I am also an artist, musician, and author (besides being a programmer) and I couldn't agree more. Creative people should -- no, must -- be supported in their creativity or we are all the worse for it.

Alas, nowadays, artists' support is under attack from all directions. Napster prevents musicians from making ends meet by publishing, while all but top-name artists find it hard to get paid for playing. (Most venues expect you to play for nothing, or close to it, and make your money by selling CDs and tapes at the performance. But you can't if your tunes are all on Napster.)

Opportunities for writers are drying up, too. Periodicals are getting thinner -- remember how thick Computer Shopper used to be? Have you seen how thin it is now? -- because readers expect to get the same content for free on the Web.

Programmers are being undermined by the GPL, because the public at large and they themselves don't realize that this pernicious form of licensing is designed to deny them the ability to be rewarded for building on what has come before. (Software development is an incremental process, of which "cribbing" code -- as Dave often calls it -- is a vital part.)

The GPL is widespread because, as Dave states above, creative people are often not good businesspeople and in many cases have an aversion to thinking about such things. It is thus easy for them to swallow the misleading rhetoric of the FSF and hurt themselves by embracing an agenda designed to hurt them. I'm not quite a lone voice in the wilderness when it comes to pointing this out; others have mentioned it as well. But it's only when one looks at the whole picture -- microeconomics, macroeconomics, network effects -- that one sees just how dangerous the GPL is. I've mentioned many of these pieces of the puzzle in messages below. When you put them together, it's easy to see why the GPL is so devastating.

--Brett Glass

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