Nagarjuna G. wrote:
On Thursday 30 Sep 2004 6:17 pm, Mahesh T. Pai wrote:
Please comment on
http://paivakil.port5.com/writings/protectyourcode.shtml
Not yet published -- except here.
just glanced, not read completely. But thought why Eric's bazaar model may not work in the long run. cuold you comment on that.
If assignment is for reasonable consideration, it could evolve as a viable alternative to the Bazaar Model, that we can call the Institutional Model. Some essential projects just won't sell at the bazaar, and it would require institutional support for survival.
Eric S. Raymond, in his well known Software Release Practice HOWTO at http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Software-Release-Practice-HOWTO.html#HO... along with others have been suggesting for a long time, assignment of works in favour of FSF or like orgs to safeguard community interests in free software code. In the bazaar model, free code gets wrapped as open source, developed and "sold" in the market. The unsold stock gets discarded with no takers. The bazaar alone cannot be allowed to decide what develops and what does not. An alternative to the bazaar model has been around for a long time, but we need to give a formal shape to the Institutional Model, and get things moving. The Institutional model is necessary to ensure that the developers are assured of a fair compensation for their work, regardless of how it fares in the bazaar.
Many students and developers frequently ask anxious questions in mailing lists about how free sofware could feed and support them. The bazaar model certainly serves businesses well, but it does not assure individual developers reasonable compensation for their contributions to the free software pool.
Recently, Vel Murugan, a Loyala College student, who contributed substantially to the Tamil PC project that enables users who know _only_ Tamil to use OpenOffice and other tools, fell ill, having lost both his kidneys. A plea for funds was put at the ILUGC list by Bharathi, Hari and writer Sujatha, the well known Tamil writer behind Tamil PC project also asked his readers to contribute. Thankfully, a philanthropist has come forward to meet the expenses of the treatment, and funds that were received towards treatment have been listed at: http://www.ambalam.com/sujatha/2004/september/sujatha26_02.html Projects such as the Tamil PC, and its developers certainly deserve a substantial grant or compensation for their work.
Fredrick Noronha and many have been suggesting micro-grants, and others kinds of fundings for free software projects. RMS mooted Software Tax. The free software code base is public wealth, and it is fair to expect governments to become the major source of funds and grants, that could be disbursed to deserving projects through FSF or other responsible institutions through the device of assignments.
E gov software is worth about Rs. 1400 Crores per annum in India. Surely, much of e gov software could be built from the free software directory, and for utilising free software, the gov could doante anything from Rs. 10 to Rs.100 crores, to start with. These would enable FSF India to have its own hardware, mirroring facilities, state of the art distros, and provide fair compensation to developers who maintain the free software pool in good shape. The gov could save more than Rs.1000 crores or use it to meet infrastructure needs. Individuals or private entities would seldom be able to match the gov in funding and the gov has no other viable software source for its needs.
The question does arise, at what stage assignment of copyright or funding of a project is appropriate. Eric's bazaar model gives good clues:
<quote> Early reviewers and test audiences for this essay consistently raised questions about the preconditions for successful bazaar-style development, including both the qualifications of the project leader and the state of code at the time one goes public and starts to try to build a co-developer community. It s fairly clear that one cannot code from the ground up in bazaar style [IN]. One can test, debug and improve in bazaar style, but it would be very hard to originateoriginate a project in bazaar mode. Linus didn't try it. I didn't either. Your nascent developer community needs to have something runnable and testable to play with. When you start community-building, what you need to be able to present is a plausible promise. Your program doesn't have to work particularly well. It can be crude, buggy, incomplete, and poorly documented. What it must not fail to do is (a) run, and (b) convince potential co-developers that it can be evolved into something really neat in the foreseeable future. </quote>
Merely because a software is good, it won't automatically find takers under any model. Since free software is based on meritocracy, there is a better chance for good appreciation of meritorious projects.
Good funding along with assignments for valid consideration would help to evolve a good Institutional Model that will maintain and strengthen the foundations of free software.