Over the years, a few people have criticized me for “selling” software I’ve made. I’m a strong advocate of capitalism, have always been, always will be, so feel free to take this with a grain of salt if you must.
The gist of others people argument is that scripts/programs I’ve create, rely on “open source” free software such as Apache, PHP, MySQL, so why shouldn’t my scripts be released for free. In my opinion, encouraging people to use the GPL and release code for free is just encouraging people to value only physical labor and not intellectual property. Other then the fact that time and effort went into the code here is my reasoning.
My belief is that eventually open source will fail. What people consider success in open source are projects like ones which I mentioned above that remain free to the public and accessible. However, what people fail to realize is that these projects are kept funded by donations from private incomes, NOT other open source projects. Currently open source is kept alive by funding from outside sources such as an individual’s income who values the service the open source product provides for him.
That is not to say that a collective approach to a product means the product will be worse off, however it is so say, that these projects while claiming to run without profits, is realistically relying on funding from private individuals and their individual jobs. It is not self-sufficient like a sold product. Arguably one may claim that an company that charges for its products also is not self-sufficient, however this is not the case. Self-sufficient is being able to pay bills, and generate a profit if so desired. If software does not have value which people are willing to pay for, it surely will fail. Eventually in the very unrealistic possibility that open-source creates kills the market for a paid product in all field, and the software industry goes bankrupt, so will open-source products as most donator and creators of open source are infact tied to the industry.
Theoretically speaking: An completely open source software environment can roughly be equated to socialism, where intellectual property has no value. It’s a recipe which is just asking to be vulnerable to the free rider problem.
More in a bit.