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On Sun, 8 Jan 2006 14:21:58 +0000 Neil Williams <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Sunday 08 January 2006 12:39 pm, Henry Bremridge wrote: > > > Thats good. I was going to say, the school could charge say 50p to the > > > students to cover the distribution costs :-) although from what I > > > remember of school kids, they don't like paying for anything unless they > > > really need it. > > > > People only value things when they have to pay (time, money) for them > > or can understand the benefits. > > This generally involves someone having the benefit removed from them by some > third party beyond their direct control. Examples are specific to individuals > and that's where the generalised theme in this thread needs to become a > one-to-one conversation. > > We all have our reasons for moving to free software - we would not have moved > if we had not understood the benefits of such a change. Therefore, we each > valued free software BEFORE we had invested any time or money because the > move itself required an investment of time and possibly money that we had to > justify in advance. > > In many cases, the understanding of the benefits arose from conversations with > those who had already seen the value. In others, it came by reading such > conversations on publicly archived mailing lists. Freedom begets freedom, the > more open we are about why we do what we do, the more people become > interested. > > This is the flaw in promoting open source as a business model compared to free > software as a philosophy that has a business benefit. By narrowing the > arguments to only commercial / financial benefits, you lose the ability to > argue in favour of the small investment (time or money) that may be required > in the change. > > Open source proponents - especially in business environments - are too keen to > stress the immediate financial benefits. This leaves the philosophical > benefits untouched and when the business benefits come into question (from > competition or simply retraining costs), the decision to move to free > software has lost it's foundation. It becomes only a decision to use one > development model compared to another. This is currently how Microsoft see > free software - they've accepted the open source development model but failed > to grasp the dynamic of the community that makes the model work: that people > will only contribute if they feel valued and can share that value with > others. > > We must talk about more than just the commercial value / financial benefits of > our favourite OS. Free software is far more than "just another development > model" - it's also far more than just an OS - free software is about the > future, it's about an ideal and a philosophy that sharing is an inherently > GOOD thing to do. Sharing is an end in and of itself - it does not need to be > validated or artificially engineered, it DOES need to be reciprocal and this > is the only reason for the "restrictions" in the GNU GPL. > > Sharing is it's own reward. This needs to be our message, loud and clear. > Sharing is the right thing to do and is inherently beneficial for everyone. > Sharing requires freedom, sharing reinforces freedom and sharing benefits > freedom. The problem is that in commercial / business environments sharing > can be frequently seen as anti-capitalist, socialist or simply impossible. > Those are the barriers we need to break down - philosophical and political, > not financial. The business case for free software is grounded in sharing. > > Let's talk more about freedom and sharing - let's talk about what makes our > community work. People willing to share their time and effort for little or > no monetary reward, in order to help others, to respect the people who shared > their time and effort before them and to build sharing and freedom into the > future for the benefit of all. > > I'd sum up the entire GNU message in one line: > > You deserve free software and everyone deserves the right to share it with > you, now and for the future. I hope you don't mind, but I'm seriously thinking about using large parts of that in my OS classes. Cheers. Grant. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe. FAQ: www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html