Re: [ox-en] Centralized peer production
- From: Diego Saravia <dsa unsa.edu.ar>
- Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2010 09:56:16 -0300
Nope, that's simply wrong. Free software is _not_ a "free good", it
comes with certain rules codified by a license, and the possessor can
not do whatwever s/he wants.
Do "whatever you want" is not the definition of a free good
this is the "normal" and "pacifically accepted" definition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_good
"Free goods are what is needed by the society and is available without
limits [1][2]. The free good is a term used in economics to describe
a good that is not scarce. A free good is available in as great a
quantity as desired with zero opportunity cost to society"
This is the common confusion of res nullius ("no man’s land") with res
communes (a commons based on a common pool ressource). The first is
unregulated while the latter is regulated (here: GPL).
This confusion was prominently given by Garret Hardin in 1968 with his
influencial paper "The Tragedy of the Commons". Instead of a commons, he
uses an unregulated "free good", a "no man's land", which indeed falls
into the tragedy. Many of the liberal economic theorists (except Elinor
Ostrom) are following this tremendous fault until today, because they
can argue: A good must be privatly or state owned, otherwise it will be
subject to a tragedy as Hardin showed.
hardin is like malthus re-loaded, we have now better understanding of
sustainability, and ecological-economic relationship of
man-society-nature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability
There are huge political/economical/social/scientific/human movements
outside working on that issue.
We can not present "new" ideas to society, that do not have a
reasonable response to "sustainability" issue.
By the way, the dynamics of a common good has nothing to do with the
dynamics of a free good, like free software.
physical vs virtual goods.
different animals.
I do not see nothing like the "tragedy of commons" in free software
world. And of course free software is not private, nor public. And of
course is not common at all. Its free.
Please do not repeat this confusion again and again.
You could try to change definitions of things proposing better ones.
But that is not easy to achieve if you don't recognize the ideas
running in the previously accepted ones. New definitions -to be
accepted- must reinterpret the old facts under a new light or be
useful to interpret new facts
free vs scarce:[common|public|club|private] goods classification are
accepted denominations of different human economic behavior in
relationship with "limitedness" -as you called- of goods produced
under a specific capitalistic (and perhaps others) economic
infrastructure.
perhaps p2p could bring to us, new kinds of behaviors, or behaviors
better represented under a new scheme.
But we cannot show and shout that to all the world saying that all
"conventional" wisdom is deadly wrong. We must fill the gaps. All that
is if we really need a new scheme. But that need to be proven.
In either case we must fill the gaps.
--
Diego Saravia
Diego.Saravia gmail.com
NO FUNCIONA->dsa unsa.edu.ar
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