Still no new license -- but draft text available

[Alex Martelli]

"Olivier Dagenais" <olivierS.dagenaisP at canadaA.comM> wrote in message
news:I5Fk5.139447$Gh.2002335 at news20.bellglobal.com...
> > > Stallman has fairly well soured on his whole "copyleft" notion
> > > anyway. Free software is winning, the rest of us see little need
> > > for communism. Which is exactly what copyleft is, IMO.
> > What utter and total nonsense.  Copyleft is not about communism, it is
> > about removing artificial barriers to competition.  Copyleft is, quite
> > simply, cooperative-competition, which works by competing over "I have a
> > better idea", rather than, "I've hidden my ideas".
>
> This is the part about "Copyleft" that I don't understand:  "I have a
better
> idea" will be a valid statement until you ship (or you check in your
code),
> at which point everybody else is free to use that "better idea".  How can
> you sell a product that is no better than your competitors'?  Or rather,
how
> can you sell anything if the end user can simply build it themselves?

>From a theoretical POV, the answer to the latter question is (or
could be) "comparative advantage".  That's quite a different
economic concept from _competitive_ advantage (such as, say, a
trade secret or patent can convey) and was first introduced (or
at least analyzed, demonstrated and expounded) by economist
David Ricardo, a couple centuries ago, in the context of trade
between countries (http://www.systemics.com/docs/ricardo/david.html).

Assuming no restraints to trade, there is no reason not to extend
Ricardo's analysis to individual or firms as well as countries.
So, let me exemplify in these terms.

Suppose there are just two products-or-services individuals need:
program-development and shoe-polishing.  Suppose I can develop
a program at 100 lines/hours and polish shoes at 10/hour; I'm
better at both than you are -- you program at 50 lines/hour and
polish shoes at 8/hour.  So from a _competitive_ point of view,
one could wonder "why should I buy either service from you when
I'm more productive than you at both"?  Answer: one only works
8 hours/day.  If I program for 4 hours and polish for the other
4, for example, at the end of the day I'll have 400 lines of
code and 40 brilliant shoes, while you, working at the same
rate, have 200 LOC and 32 bright shoes.  But now suppose we
agree to share our total work differently: I'll code for 6
hours and polish just for 2, while you just polish shoes for
all the 8 hours.  So in the end I have 600 lines of code and
20 shoes, you have 64 shoes.  I'll trade you 200 lines of
code for, say, 24 shoes.  In the end we have the same amount
of software as with the previous autarchy (400 for me, 200
for you) while I have 44 bright shoes (rather than 40 in a
regime of autarchy, "each man for himself"), and you have
40 shoes rather than 32.  We're both better off, since each
of us has exactly the same software, but more bright shoes.

This does not establish the terms-of-trade (how many lines
of code per polished shoe) but it does show that there IS
mutual advantage in trade -- *comparative* advantage, even
where *competitively* the situation seems one-sided.  In
other words, autarchy is not a Pareto-stable equilibrium
(absent restraints to trade).

Real life is even better, since quite often specializing in
developing software will make me more productive at that,
while specializing in polishing shoes will make _you_ more
productive at that endeavour; this advantage of division
of labour was first notice, published &c by Adam Smith, and
is one of the key issues in his landmark "Wealth of
Nations".  It is only magnified by the fact that there are
NOT just 2 goods-or-service we produce and consume, of
course.

How far this applies to copyleft, opensource, etc, is of
course debatable.  Personally, I suspect Ricardo's most
impassioned defense of free trade applies, though I can't
prove it; his retort to critics who wanted protectionism
"in retaliation" for (e.g.) France's protectionism was,
"So if France was silly enough to blow her own harbours
up, should we blow up our own in retaliation"?  I.e., the
advantages of free trade still accrue (mostly to the
party practising it) even if the other party is silly
enough to impede it (mostly to its own detriment).  This
is not immediately obvious to economic actors within a
country who are directly damaged by another country's
protectionism (or by their own country's free-trade), but
it holds overall for the country (given that each economic
exchange is still voluntary -- the theory breaks down in
presence of slavery, trade forced at gunpoint, pillage,
and so on).  So the freeing of trade is generally shown
as a 'concession' made to other country in exchange for
some equivalent freeing -- just as copyleft frees some
intellectual property as a concession in exchange for
further freedoms, rather than unilaterally; the analogy
isn't quite exact, but, it IS suggestive (to somebody
with a passion for macroeconomics) of a parallel of sorts.


Alex