Brooders

After starting a course on Microeconomics for my uni course, it struck me how free software really doesn’t quite fit in.

I’m not an economist but here’s my take.

Subsitence/real world:

• Bob has 10 Apples
• Alice has 10 Oranges

They trade .. both barter 5 of each.

• Bob now has 5 apples, 5 oranges
• Alice now has 5 apples, 5 oranges

A physical handover has occured reducing what they originally had, but gaining something they didn’t.

Free Software world:

• Richard has an software
• Peter has nothing

Richard gives his software away. He still has the original quantity of software. Richard was going to use/create it anyway because he was solving a problem.

After barter:

• Richard still has his software
• Peter now has Richard’s software

Weird huh ?

So what are we trading here .. time ?

Probably with the key emphasis, for free software, that the author was going to write the software anyway. Maybe this sounds like freeloading ? In some ways it is. But the Author is possibly being rewarded or paid in non monetary terms like kudos, peer recognition, self promotion for potential jobs and opportunities.

So it does seem disproportional that software can be infinitely copied and used.

So maybe software is more like sharing knowledge or how to solve a problem, than actually a product.

It’s not like a builder who spends 1 month building a house. A house can’t be instantly copied and used by someone else. You don’t physically give something away.

But what about Quality ?

Quality is a reflection of the artesan or the group. Quality and time of implementation are not necessarily related. A more experienced artesan may produce a better result quicker than a more inexperienced player. People who have been doing something for longer will generally be better at it probably because they can reflect and find patterns in tasks. The path to quality workmanship and experience remain the same in both worlds.

So maybe this circles back to letting others who a better skilled at producing software to do so. And then hopefully learn from them. Maybe contributing to a software project helps gain that experience, and then give back a little of what has been taken. This then leads back to Writing software you need. So maybe the best contribution back (if you feel inclined) is to solve a problem you have.

Open Source projects with good intentions can often be left abandoned. While there are many explanations one of them is “Maybe the author did not need the software” ! Jamis talks about his confessions in regards to writing software that you need.

This got me thinking, maybe it’s about Eating your own dogfood .. like DokuWiki. DokuWiki is a great wiki, but Andreas Gohr actually uses it on his own site. Ruby on Rails uses Instiki Wiki and Hieraki, A online book system, both of these built on top of Rails. And then some more examples:

• Kwiki uses Kwiki
• Wordpress uses Wordpress.
• Wikipedia uses Mediawiki.
• Firefox is probably used by the people who write it, because they want a better browser.
• And the list goes on …

Some applications I am sure will only be used within organisations, still published, yet the need for the software in regular use will exist.

Would somone maintain software if they didn’t use it ? Possibly not.

Would they find bugs if they didn’t use it ? Probably not by themselves. Other people might find issues, but there is less motivation to fix other peoples bug when you’ve got other things to do.

This make’s sense .. If something is useful to you, its probably useful to other people. If it’s bugging you, you’ll probably fix it. So the more features you need and implement, the more others may benefit.

More importantly, if you use the software you will maintain it. It won’t be some stagnant site that is never killed even though they only released a barely functional alpha version.