I was just reading this entry about Richard Stallman visting ANU on Gurkan’s blog. I’ve never seen Richard present before but I can imagine that he would be dynamic and charismatic. Although he is responsible for one of my favorite text editors (emacs) I find that alot of the writings of the man just don’t do it for me – or rather I just can’t figure out the economics.
Richard is one of the few lucky individuals in the IT industry who can survive just by talking and writing, because according to his dogma the software he writes is free, free to use, free to copy and free to change.
In order to feed my family and maintain our standard of living I need to make a wage. I do that by knowing things – about technology – I know how to extract requirements, design software to satisfy those requirements and then build that software based on those requirements. Thats a skill that I have that organisations are willing to pay me for. Because they pay me for it they don’t necessarily want me to give that IP away to others – so the software is not free. Its not free to use (they paid me for it), its not free to copy (I can’t give it away), and since I can’t give it away, no-one else but the organisation I gave it to is going to change it.
As a developer, the only asset I have is the intellectual property that I create. The knowledge that I have are you raw materials and the software I produce is nothing more than a manufactured good. Unless the rest of the world is going to change to an alternative economy I simply cannot afford to give my manufactured goods away for free – especially when my raw materials are so expensive (time to learn).