[Wolves] [Fwd: [Gllug] An article for you from an Economist.com reader.]

David Goodwin david at openminds.co.uk
Thu Jun 17 13:03:07 BST 2004


this might interest some.
David.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Gllug] An article for you from an Economist.com reader.
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 07:43:26 -0400
From: gllug at minty.org
Reply-To: Greater London Linux Users Group <gllug at gllug.org.uk>
To: gllug at gllug.org.uk


- AN ARTICLE FOR YOU, FROM ECONOMIST.COM -

Dear gllug,

Murray (gllug at minty.org) wants you to see this article on Economist.com.

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BEYOND CAPITALISM?
Jun 10th 2004

The open-source model can be applied to goods other than software, but
it has its limits

THAT "open source" is a good way to make software is beyond question.
For those unfamiliar with the term, the open-source model allows many
people to collaborate on the development of a piece of software by
making its underlying programming instructions, or source code, open to
everyone, usually by publishing them on the internet. The resulting
program is then given away too: open-source software is shared, not
sold. Commercial software vendors, by contrast, jealously guard their
source code because only by keeping it secret can they protect their
ability to demand money for their products.

By far the best-known example of open-source software is Linux, an
operating system that is maintained by volunteers around the world,
runs on everything from wristwatches to mainframes and now powers one
in five of the world's server computers. Open source's other successes
include Apache, a piece of software that powers two-thirds of the
world's web servers, Sendmail, a program that dispatches most of the
world's e-mail, and MySQL, a database program.

Advocates of open source argue that it produces software that is
secure, reliable and, of course, cheap. All this is clearly true,
despite the fact that open source's opponents--chief among them
Microsoft, the world's largest software company--try to deny it. Now
many people want to apply the open-source model in many fields other
than software. There is already an open-source cola recipe, an
open-source encyclopedia and open-source academic journals. The model
is also being applied in medical research (see article[1]). Some
zealots even argue that the open-source approach represents a new,
post-capitalist model of production. Are there no limits to the power
of open source?

Of course there are. The model is particularly well suited to
information-rich goods, of which software is merely the most obvious
example, since it is pure information. The surprisingly good
open-source encyclopedia (see Wikipedia.org[2]) is another example.
Like software, it is modular, which allows different people to work on
different bits. Drugs, too, are information-rich goods, and searching
for candidate molecules and performing clinical trials may be amenable
to open-source-style distributed collaboration. So far, so good. But
building, say, an open-source car is rather more problematic, since
information (in the form of design and specifications) constitutes only
a minor ingredient: the costs of materials and manufacturing would
remain. Until someone invents a "universal replicator" capable of
synthesising any object from software specifications, it is hard to see
how the open-source model can be applied to manufactured goods.

The model has other limitations as well. It is not clear, for example,
that the open-source model can be genuinely innovative--most
open-source software merely imitates existing commercial products.
Furthermore, the open-source software movement is driven by the desire
to dethrone the proprietary software model, embodied by Microsoft. This
shared goal makes its members more willing to contribute their efforts
to the common cause, which may not apply in other fields.

A FORCE FOR GOOD
Is open source really a new post-capitalist economic model? In fact,
open source might be said to be parasitic upon capitalism. IBM, for
example, pays an army of programmers to work on Linux, both for the
greater good and as a competitive ploy against Microsoft. And many
people who contribute to open-source projects do so with the approval
of (and using the resources of) their employers, be they universities
or firms. Ultimately the open-source approach may prove to be symbiotic
with capitalism. Computing firms including Novell, Sun and Apple are
adopting hybrid models in which they "open source" (yes, it is a verb)
some bits of some of their products.

Even where the open-source model is not adopted, however, it can still
have beneficial effects. The very existence of open-source alternatives
often acts as a force for greater openness and transparency. Microsoft,
despite its hatred of open-source, now allows certain large customers
to inspect its source code, though not to share or modify it. A similar
"open-sourcesque" concession was recently made by Reed Elsevier, a
publisher of scientific journals. Stung by comparisons with the
openness of internet-based journals, it will now allow academics to
post papers that have been accepted for publication in its journals on
their own websites too.

The open-source model will never replace capitalism or live up to the
most Utopian claims of its most enthusiastic supporters. Nevertheless
technology-enabled collaboration among large groups of people working
without pay for a common aim, whether it is called "open source" or
something else, can be a powerful force for good, and is to be welcomed.

-----
[1] http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_ID=2724525
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page


See this article with graphics and related items at 
http://www.economist.co.uk/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2747734

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