“What would happen if arithmetic hadn’t been in the public sphere?” he asks. “What if, before doing something that involved arithmetic, you had to stop at the arithmetic store? Over time, the arithmetic owners would get very rich, but there would be a noticeable gap in the production of arithmetic, which would get more expensive without getting better.”
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scarpent
17 years 1 week 3 days 14 hours ago
Excellent: "But what about the
Excellent:
"But what about the profit motive? Surely, people won’t invest their valuable time and energy to write software without some hope of financial benefit.
Of course they will, Moglen argues. In the same way that 18th century trading companies created machines to calculate tide tables in order to reduce the number of shipwrecks, people will invent tools that make their businesses more successful. Software will become an enabler for bigger economic gains rather than being a goal in itself."