From: Josef 'Jupp' Schugt Date: 2007-07-25T23:58:30+09:00 Subject: Re: [OT] licensing/copyright reading material (was: Ruby Editor) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Todd Benson wrote: > I'm mostly interested in Open Source Software concepts, which > obviously will make it hard to find what I'm looking for, namely, a > relatively unbiased look at them. If you want unbiased information you at least need three independent sources. One obviously isn't sufficient because then it is almost impossible to find out to which degree or even *if* it is biased. With two you can find out if at least one source is biased. But you still have no means to tell which one or - which is more likely - that both are biased. Only from three independent sources onwards you have a chance of extracting unbiased information from the biased ones. But you should be aware that on the one hand it is crucial that the sources are indeed independent (often not the case) and that on the other hand "unbiased" is a misleading term because the information that you extract is again biased due to your own point of view. To give a prominent example: The expected raise in temperature due to global warming does not increase the surface temperature of the earth beyond the highest temperatures since life begun to spread outside oceans while it *is* expected to go beyond the highest temperatures ever seen by mankind. If you call the temperature that will be reached "unprecedented" the bias is that you disregard anything that predates the existence of mankind. If you on the other hand say that such temperatures are nothing new the bias is that you do not see mankind as something special (about which most people would disagree even if their faith does not explicitly state that mankind is something special). I actually have no idea if an unbiased view on this matter is even feasible. Leaving that issue aside the question is what kind of economy you have in mind. You could narrow the subject to the software market alone. You could include the impacts of the software on other markets. The iPhone sales numbers were much different if it were not running an operating system by Apple but one developed by Hewlett-Packard or Lenovo. Finally you could go as far as viewing the influence of the software on global markets of any kind. Software can (and actually does) enable producers to directly sell their products to the end customer thereby bypassing traditional ways of trade. The effect of this is manifold. Josef 'Jupp' Schugt - -- Blog available at http://www.mynetcologne.de/~nc-schugtjo/blog/ PGP key with id 6CC6574F available at http://wwwkeys.de.pgp.net/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGp2UWrhv7B2zGV08RAorjAKC3pFcInVkPxN0mFmBFtcibhGRxDgCgsj7A ZyBWpHkGdFgtePKooAH8KJU= =TqKK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----