Thursday, April 24, 2008

The GNU all seems a little self righteous and impractical. I understand Stallman's 'moral' qualms with charging people for things that can be used for the betterment of society, but to say that a programmer would be selfish to desire reward for his work is just absurd. The truth of the matter is that we live in a capitalist society and that means money and competition are everything. The amount of talented programmers there are right now is because of the fact that programming has become such a successful career. If you cut their paycheck then the amount of people desiring the job will diminish significantly. I think it would be great if advertising and donations could support the necessary staff to keep up with today's demands, I just don't think it is feasible. Another thing that must be considered is the fact that if people want free software it is easy enough to get it. Most softwares only require a serial number and those are not difficult to get a hand on. I agree that the system now is not great, the prices for most software are outrageous. However it is a cycle, the high prices force people to download softwares illegally. Through doing this though they also keep the prices high. So I am not sure what the perfect system is. It would be great if programming was paid through fame and recognition, and that the programmers could all be paid their fair share. In the end their job is extremely important for the world because they do in fact make many jobs way more productive through their softwares. They impact many markets and many lives, so they should be rewarded in some form. I just think Stallman has gone a little too 'free' in his idea, especially for the western world.

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