about Marxism.

Rob,

I reject your assertion that the public, or the public domain, has any claim whatsoever to wealth that I produce.



If I create something of value, it is mine, or my heirs', so long as I have decendants to inherit it, or a foundation to pass it on to (unless I sell it to you, in which case it's yours). Where is the "loss" to the public domain? What did they have, that they no longer have? What did they once possess that I deprived them of by keeping what I produce?

And if anyone thinks the word "Marxism" is hyperbolic, or too harsh, consider Jeff's earlier post in this thread (Subject: "Huh?").



What is this if not, "From each according to his ability. To each according to his needs."

If I take what is yours by force, that's theft and it's wrong. Whether by legislation or by gunpoint, it's wrong. That one may be lawful and the other not in no way changes that fundamental truth. Wrong is wrong, legal or not.

Rob, you wrote


In point of fact we do know. Marxism, Communism, has either failed, or is failing, everywhere it has been tried. Conversely the economies which drive and support the historically huge population of this planet were all, without exception, built on free market capitalism. The more they adopt socialist philosophies the weaker they become. Conversely, the more formerly communist economies become free markets the stronger they become.

As for the specific case of software, competition makes for better software, not open source. There have been a number of threads on this forum complaining about the big EDA software houses. And I'm chief among the complainers. But stealing the code to OrCAD isn't the solution to the problem, no matter how old or outdated OrCAD becomes. The solution is to assure those grad students in their garage that if they write an EDA package that works well, they can sell thousands of copies of it to people all over and no one will ever be able to take it away from them.

And there's the key in a nutshell. Give everyone the right to take market share, not property (intellectual or otherwise). Then some college dropout nerd will be able to topple the biggest behemoth corporate giant on the planet, until he becomes the biggest behemoth corporate giant on the planet (Bill Gates v IBM).

How much did Ante-Microsoft Unix cost? Wasn't it on the order of magnitude $O(10^4), or was it $O(10^5)? And, grousing and complaining notwithstanding, how much does Windows XP cost? (Hint: It's $O(10^2) retail, O(10^1) as an upgrade).

Now I have one final point. I believe it was Erik who, earlier in this thread, referred to the open source phenomenon with a religious metaphor, even using the word "violence" in the context of that metaphor. I found his choice of metaphor interesting. Today, people think of religious violence quite a lot. Whether the radical Muslims who wage Jihad against the west (and the rest of the infadels too I suppose) today, or the Christian Crusaders of past centuries that so many try to cite in a effort to obfuscate the case against radical Islam, people tend to think of intolerant violence as being perpetrated by religious zealots in service of their God. But the truth is that more people were killed in the 20th Century alone in pursuit of, in an effort to establish and impose, Socialist-Marxist-Fascist-Communism, than have been killed by all of the Muslim Jihadis and Christian Crusaders combined, in all of history.

If you add up all of the people killed by Muslims and Christians, in the service to their religions, throughout history, you're only going to get into the hudreds of thousands, O(10^5), maybe into the millions, O(10^6), but I doubt it. I would have to see the tallies to be convinced. But in the 20th Century alone, between the Bolshevik Revolution, Stalin, The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong, Pol Pott, any number of Third World coups, etc., the number of murdered tallies far into the 10s of millions, O(10^7), even approaching (and very possibly reaching) the hunderd million mark, O(10^8).

So to all the French and European socialists, and the labor unions of Michigan, and to all of you who are dreaming of your Open Source Eutopia, I say be careful what you wish for. You might get it.