Re: redisplay system of emacs

[Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 7:36 PM, Óscar Fuentes <ofv@wanadoo.es> wrote:
> "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> writes:
>
> [snip]
>
>> "Open source" is
>> based on an economic argument that software freedom is profitable.
>
> About this specific topic, is there any serious economic analysis of
> Free Software? Because it is not clear to me that some people would get
> the software they need on the world envisioned by the FSF.


I do not know of any, but it is an interesting subject.

Doing a reasonable economic analysis is difficult and it seems like it
often fails. Compare for example todays news: 37 miljon US citizens
need economic help to get the most basic food they need. Something
must be utterly wrong in an economic analysis that leads to such a
situation.

To me the important factor to analys today is redistribution because
that is where the market economy fails. Redistribution means
redistribution of power. Economic power. Political power. Power to
tell about experiences.

I think for some of us there is an ethical problem that when trying to
help with free software we can't avoid also helping those we think is
fighting against freedom. But it is the net effect that counts in the
end. An economical analysis should look upon that.

I could go on writing about this, but I guess it would be
uninteresting here ... ;-)