|| On Mon, 26 Jun 2006 11:00:45 +0100 || Alex Hudson home@alexhudson.com wrote:
ah> Right. But I guess what I'm asking implicitly is, what is the ah> goal of the GBN?
Please see my mails of last week, they should be in the archive.
ah> Food also gives us other examples: [...]
All comparisons are limited. I find the comparison with food limited to the extent of being misleading, and not very useful, to be honest.
Software has very strong network effects, that apply force on others, and take away their freedom of choice in a digital society.
This is not the case for food in general. But if you wanted to compare software to food, you'd have to think of a world where a food supplier was threatening to become so dominant that it could force everyone on the planet to eat meat under threat of starvation.
And I guess you would care about that situation.
Proprietary software always seeks to establish a monopoly, and always means control over others on a very intimate level. So I don't ever think that doing business based on proprietary software a good or acceptable idea.
That said: Different forms of proprietary software have differences in the strength and range of impact. Also this world is not perfect, and change takes time.
So we should IMHO always criticise proprietary software, but give people a chance to change, supporting them for taking steps in the right direction.
Doing that collectively as a community of developers, businesses and customers is probably the fundamental idea behind the GBN.
Regards, Georg