This is a fallacy. It's equivalent to arguing that any increase in productivity (which is precisely what this is: less effort expended to develop software) is bad. But it's wrong. Over time, those freed from obsolete jobs are employed by society to do new stuff (stuff that wasn't practical before because of labor costs) and we all benefit.
And even in the short term this is pretty much just plain wrong. Almost all GPL software is written by people paid to develop GPL software.
There are a number of factors you're not addressing, and are very convenient to overlook. One particular (example) is that it is no longer necessary to pay for software for typical (e.g., email, web browsing, Skype, music playing, spreadsheeting) activities with a computer.
You can. You don't have to unless external forces constrain you to.
Socially, an expectation is being created that useful software is without monetary charge. I would like the readers to extrapolate from this what happens as more users expect gratis software.
If I was running a business, I would use 100% gratis software unless a really compelling reason otherwise was presented. As a software engineer, I usually recommend gratis software for most things... it works great! Why should I pay Microsoft/Oracle/etc when gratis software works so well? This means that non-gratis software companies (and their developers) are simply not receiving my dollars.
Unfortunately us, we as software developers have to pay the bills, and gratis software is, well, gratis.
Arguably, we can assume that software developers will continue to invent new and shinier things, useful to all, which people will pay for. But "past performance is no predictor of future performance", as stock prospectuses like saying, and I believe that to be a great statement about our industry. Who could have predicted the fall in 15 years of mainframes in 1970 [1]?
I think that a viable business model for AGPL3 software still needs to come into fruition besides consulting/SaaS.
Let's personalize this: I own a Macbook Pro, and have paid $0.00 for software on it; I use it probably 80% of the time I'm at home doing all sorts of geeky things. I feel bad for Mac app developers, but I don't need what they sell: gratis software does it for me. I've only paid for 2 pieces of app software on my personal computers in the last decade(not counting games - maybe I should?):
- Microsoft Office for Mac (prior Mac)
- Quicken (Once)
Plus OSX 10.6, 10.4, and Windows 7.
Until I come into a stiff requirement for a piece of proprietary software, I have no plans to change the 'use gratis/GPL software' model. It's worked well so far!
I've bought about 4 (cheap) apps on the iPod, in contrast - the GPL is effectively banned, iirc.
Of course, the GPL has caused some wonderful shared goods to come into being: gcc, emacs, Linux, etc. But those hard-working very smart developers don't receive money from me in general[2], because it's more financially efficient to use software gratis. I release my small amounts of public software under the AGPL3, because I believe in building a better world together, instead of grabbing each other's resources. But I think that we need to figure out a better way to make our bills get paid.
To summarize: Someone around here referenced the idea of a post-scarcity world. I think common software is becoming a post-scarcity world, and I don't know how common app developers are going to survive and keep developing on those common apps.
[1] probably a few visionaries, but besides them... :-)
[2] modulo donations or swag
"It's equivalent to arguing that any increase in productivity (which is precisely what this is: less effort expended to develop software) is bad."
RMS is not proposing an increase in productivity, he's proposing a massive disincentive to engaging in one of the most productive, highest growth industries in the world's history.
"Over time, those freed from obsolete jobs are employed by society to do new stuff ...and we all benefit."
These jobs aren't obsolete. It's not like the same software will get done if all these people stop working and go do "new stuff". We just wouldn't get those advancements and would suffer greatly not benefit.
"RMS is not proposing an increase in productivity, he's proposing a massive disincentive to engaging in one of the most productive, highest growth industries in the world's history."
You say tomato, I say tomato...
Seriously: if you were explaining to a space alien what the distinction was, how would you do it? The only one I can see is all the subtle connotations of the adjectives and superlatives you chose to throw in.
I mean, the automobile was a "massive disincentive" to the horse breeding industry too. The gun put a ton of blacksmiths out of work. And secretaries and typists were an awfully big part of the world economy in the recent past too... All those people (figuratively -- really the fraction of the workforce they represented) are now doing other stuff like building web apps. And the world is a better place.
"Productivity" is a quantifiable metric. Either you pay programmers to duplicate effort or you don't. In the latter case, productivity is higher by definition, and no amount of adjectives is going to change that fact.
I don't think that analysis is complete. Obviously the point isn't that there no duplication within free software; just that there is less. Sure, clang competes with gcc. But as recently as the 90's there were dozens of commercial compilers were competing in the market. Now, everyone (outside of a handful of legacy platforms like windows) just uses gcc. Clearly that's a gain in productivity.
And LLVM was bootstrapped by using GCC as the front end before clang was written to replace it.
The freedom to combine with another program _temporarily_ while you bootstrap something better improves productivity significantly.
And the world before GCC had a great many commercial compilers. Many of the crap. GCC replaced almost all the crap ones, so that only free compilers and a few commercial compilers that were good enough to offer something over GCC existed.
Not only that, but Gnome, KDE and xfce all build upon each other - experience and code - and explore different ideas. This accelerates their evolution.
Alternately, we as developers can use existing open source software with which to build new software, without having to rewrite things that are already completed and available.
"Either you pay programmers to duplicate effort or you don't."
That's not what I'm talking about. Free software doesn't just kill duplicate effort. Free software kills the original effort that is there to be duplicated. You're saying "well all the unproductive leeches will go do something else". What actually happens is all the productive people go and do something else too.
If you fix the price of automobiles at zero, you don't get an automobile revolution that puts horse breeders out of business. You get an artificially created dark age while you wait a few extra decades for hobbyists to create the model t.
"Free software doesn't just kill duplicate effort. Free software kills the original effort that is there to be duplicated."
Once more you're making a distinction that seems meaningless to me. How does one kill "original effort" and what on earth would it mean to do so? My guess is that you mean that it kills off the profits gotten from the rights to software that has already been written; in which case I can only suggest you google "rent seeking" for the thoughts of smart economists on the issue.
Using free software means that fewer people need to be paid to develop software. And over time the market will put them to work doing something else. (Note carefully that I'm avoiding loaded terms like "leeches" which you seem to be so enthused about using.) That's just macro economics 101. Do you really disagree?
There are companies which don't rely on copyright. One really big example is "on demand": non-software company needs software which does X (and doesn't exist yet), so they contract with a software company (or just hire developers) to write it.
I know some companies like that - they basically get paid to adapt FOSS software to specific needs.
Another example are companies which rely on other things besides per-copy licensing; Red Hat is a good example.
The point isn't that zero people will be writing software, the point is that the few people left will not accomplish a fraction of what's currently being done.
If there were no copyright for film, you'd still have films being made for various reasons (hobbyists, educational, propaganda, vanity, advertising, etc.) but there's no way you'd see stuff like Avatar get financed.
Obviously film as a medium is an art form and not everyone values it the same (or at all).
Reasonable analogies do have limits that it pays not to overextend them. Software itself has more direct and inarguable benefits then film: the software equivalents of Avatar save lives in our world and many of them wouldn't exist in RMS's utopia.
I'm not sure what you were referring to, but to be fair, the software equivalents of Avatar are big blockbuster video games. Like Call of Duty, Gears of War, Skyrim... They're awfully similar to big, blockbuster computer animated films.
The obsolete jobs are those which depend on re-inventing the wheel, because some company needs to add a new feature or fix a bug in software X and they can't, because it's proprietary.
If every software was Free we'd eliminate plenty of redundant work.
> [RMS is] proposing a massive disincentive to engaging in one of the most productive, highest growth industries in the world's history.
OK, you lost me. How exactly the possibility of rendering your software proprietary enhanced in any way at all productivity in software ?
Just a warning : I don't accept metrics based on how much money you extract from others, or how much people work behind a keyboard. What matters is how the lives of the people actually improved thanks to proprietary software.
My guess is not much at all. If I recall correctly, the most crucial innovations where mostly public research work.
And even in the short term this is pretty much just plain wrong. Almost all GPL software is written by people paid to develop GPL software.