On Tuesday, 2. October 2012. 18.52.10 jdow wrote: > On 2012/10/02 13:17, Marko Vojinovic wrote: > > On Tuesday, 2. October 2012. 20.56.34 Roberto Ragusa wrote: > >> On 10/02/2012 03:45 PM, Alan Cox wrote: > >>> Another factor is that the drivers may contain a lot of clever stuff. A > >>> long time back one of the problems raised was that vendor A had the > >>> better hardware but vendor B the better drivers. Vendor B's product won > >>> all the benchmarks. If they open sourced it then vendor A would duly > >>> have > >>> borrowed all the software tricks and then won hands down. > >> > >> So final users would have had the best hardware running the best drivers > >> (open source too). > >> This is something which must not be permitted to happen. :-/ > > > > That is one of the features of civilization based on capitalism --- the > > target is to gain most money, and to make life miserable for the > > competition. The actual needs of the end-users are completely irrelevant, > > as long as your product sells more than the competitor's product. ;-) > > Without the capitalism the customer can expect zero improvement, > particularly with hardware. What incentive would I as a person trying to > make a living off clever video drivers to continue doing so? How would I > put food on my table? [snip rant about Communism] How about government funding? There is a tried&tested scenario used for some time now all over the world, say in science. For example: * You need money, and you have some skill to do something better than others. * You apply for a research&development project; if you have a good idea, you get a grant. * You use your knowledge to do something creative and useful. You share the results of your work with everyone else (you're being paid by taxpayer money, so this is fair). * You apply for the next R&D project, and the next, and the next... You build reputation according to your performance, and in time get bigger grants, bigger money, etc. * As a side-effect, you also get fame&glory (if you did something very useful), respect by other people, etc., which can be a strong non-financial motivation to continue to do even better. This scenario is not optimized to make most money, but to make best quality products. Others can build on your work and your knowledge, and you can build on theirs. It's a model which promotes cooperation instead of competition. Similar ideas work in the FOSS model for software development. ;-) > If I know how to do something that people really want and can live > comfortably on what I can earn doing this, by what right does anybody > come in and tell me I have to share my know how with all and sundry > so that I'm stuck cold and hungry because I can no longer earn money > performing my unique service? That is the foundation if the concept of > intellectual property. Umm, no, what you are describing is called a "trade secret". And it is completely ok, even necessary, to have trade secrects in the free market scenario (as opposed to the government-funded R&D scenario that I described above, where trade secrets are disfavored and disfunctional). OTOH, "intellectual property" is the scenario where you tell everyone else your trade secret, and then require everyone not to use that information for their benefit, or otherwise you'll sue them in court or require them to pay you royalties. I see no reason for that to exist, other than making more money based on the abuse of the current legal system. Best, :-) Marko -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
