i don’t think we’re a million miles away from each other and there’s loads of opensource stuff that has no support and lacks quality etc

You have an interesting conundrum. Both publishing and software are impacted heavily by the open everything, sharing, DIY culture. I’m really curious if there is less paid journalism or if it is just more dispersed? That’s not a loaded question, i really have no idea and would love to know.

You seem to be saying that given your lack of funds you can’t afford to build a perfect site, so you have to compromise with wordpress. I think that’s a false choice.

I’d still say that wordpress would be a good option for the perfect site. I’ve got a few wordpress sites that i run and all of them have, at some point, had some work done by the significant community that make their living by supplying professional services to wordpress users. They’ve built modules and refined templates and functionality etc. I can’t help but think that this hybrid of free (as in beer) as well as open source and professionally paid for work helps me get a far superior product at far reduced cost.

There is a mass mixing of open source given for free and propriety and paid business ecosystems. i feel that by and large its the collaborative stuff that is lowering the bar in terms of access. Even if you paid a top designer to build your site. you can bet your bottom dollar that he’ll be cutting pasting code from loads of different sources. sharing makes that possible and saves every single coder having to write every single line. what a waste of time that would be.

curious to know if you’ve received notification of follow up comments?

thanks loads….

Shane

Anyway, thanks to both of you for you responses to my comment. I think that much of the time, although it may not seem like it, we’re arguing for the same things – I love the idea of crowd-funding and I am very aware that intelligent employed people contribute to open source software because it is the ocean that lifts their boats, and that’s great, and beautifully collaborative!

That doesn’t negate my concerns, though. Lanier has better arguments than mine, and therefore I would suggest that you read his book, rather than me interpret and regurgitate them here, but I’ll just cover one point:

You mentioned that these open source developers are employed. But how are they employed? Because they have an end product that someone was willing to pay a load of money for. Their logic, rightly, is that it doesn’t matter if they give away a small proportion of the basic parts of their work, because the bits that are specialist to where they are getting their money from are not free. But there are risks associated with this. WordPress is a great example, because it’s good, but at the same time, it’s not the perfect solution for many everyone who uses it. It’s not the ideal model for my own website, but since it would be way too much work to build a new CMS than just compromise and use WordPress, I use it. It’s making the internet less imaginative, since it stops becoming worthwhile for someone to design something ideal for their application, whilst there is something which will work, even though it is not ideal.

What’s more, it gives those who are developing the platforms a large degree of control over what is and is not possible, and can use that control to manipulate the market for certain products that they do get their money from. For example, Google has APIs for maps. If someone is going to develop a simple maps project, it makes no sense to write your own when Google has an API for it, but then, that means that when someone wants to develop something a bit more specific to their application, but that Google maps doesn’t currently do, then there’s no “sea of mapping” to base it on, because Google have a monopoly on how their API is configured, and only they can decide on the new functionality to be added.

As you may be able to tell, this is an argument more against “free” software than “open”, but I said that in the original post. Lanier lumps them together. I don’t. But that’s why we should be aware of the differences between the two and the wider implications of offering things for free. It might cost us less in the meantime, but it also costs us our freedom.

“Many of the successes of the collaborative movement are because collaborative businesses perform better than the non collaborative business and so they, to a certain extent, excel under free market conditions.” Agreed.

thanks for your points and their pretty traditional arguments but it just doesn’t hold true. in some cases, like wordpress for example, the software comes with the most amazing support. A second point which we have to get our heads round is that, in the previously land and material based economic era, scarcity added value. but in the information era sharing creates value. it’s a whole new set of rules.

There’s one point that i think i need to correct. I’ve stated that ” collaborative meta narrative for the economy is starting to replace the out dated free market competitive one.” well that’s not exactly true. Many of the successes of the collaborative movement are because collaborative businesses perform better than the non collaborative business and so they, to a certain extent, excel under free market conditions.

So i think that the new collaborative meta narrative is like another layer on top rather than a replacement of free market principles.

Thanks
Shane (i did write this article rather hastily)

“we will only get the kind of quality of service that we desire if the intellectual property that makes up those services is paid for.”

This is the sort of argument Britannia Encyclopaedi used to wheel out all the time, but it simply isn’t true. If it were true how would you explain how vastly superior Wikipedia is compared to Briannia?

“How is the next generation of intelligent people going to sustain their livelihoods if there is no mechanism to get paid for the work that they do.”

Who says there is no mechanism or that charging for info is the only workable mechanism?

Why could people not say (as more and more forward thinking intelligent people now do): pay me x amount of money now, and I’ll write this book/ make this film and then freely share it.

Given the widespread poliferation of crowdfunding platforms etc this is easier than ever.

“Lanier’s criticism of open source software is that intense development that may require the employment of many minds, especially where the solution ends up being quite simple, will never be a viable project under an open source business model. It requires the guarantee that those who set their minds to it will be rewarded for their efforts.”

You are seemingly not aware that about 70% of linux has been written by people employed by the likes of IBM etc (beacuse they realise it is an ocean that lifts their boat 😉 )

“If everyone shared all their intellectual property, their thoughts and ideas for free, then we impoverish those with intelligence”

What evidence can you point to that supports that ascertion?

Have a look at this TED talk about Arduino? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoBUXOOdLXY

Do that look and sound like impoverishment to you?

“those with the best ideas would be even more selfish than they already are”

Go spend some time over at http://opensourceecology.org/ and see if you still hold that view 🙂

Smiles,

Josef.

PS I didn’t write the article (I think Shane Hughes did)

I’ve just finished reading You Are Not A Gadget, and have reviewed it on my blog. The book includes many criticisms of the free and open culture present in Silicon Valley, and maintains that we will only get the kind of quality of service that we desire if the intellectual property that makes up those services is paid for.

I tend to agree. How is the next generation of intelligent people going to sustain their livelihoods if there is no mechanism to get paid for the work that they do.

However, I think there is an important distinction between free and open, which Jaron Lanier (the author) does not really appreciate in the context of the book. As you point out, proprietary software sits within an open source world, not the other way round. Lanier’s criticism of open source software is that intense development that may require the employment of many minds, especially where the solution ends up being quite simple, will never be a viable project under an open source business model. It requires the guarantee that those who set their minds to it will be rewarded for their efforts.

A useful analogy is the one of all the boats on a body of water rising on a high tide, the water, in this case, being the open and freely available software, and the ships being proprietary software. It is not useful to have an ocean liner sat in a puddle (which you could call the Microsoft model of business), but nor is it useful to have an ocean with no boats, and therefore no useful application. What we really want is a solid base of open functions, freely available to all and paid for communally, on which to build the specific functions that will be paid for by the specific users who want to use those tools.

I disagree, therefore, with the idea of Open Everything. If everyone shared all their intellectual property, their thoughts and ideas for free, then we impoverish those with intelligence, whilst those with the resources to do so will make a quick buck by stealing other people’s ideas and monetising them. In the end, this would just lead to fewer good ideas, or those with the best ideas would be even more selfish than they already are, for fear that their ideas will be stolen and used by others.

Having said all that, Up With Collaboration!!

P.S. Who wrote this article? I can’t seem to find a by-line.