Law in the Internet Society

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TomGlaisyerPaper1EbensArgument 21 - 22 Dec 2008 - Main.TomGlaisyer
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Introduction

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<		In this paper I examine Eben's argument that anarchism produces inherently superior functional goods when the marginal cost of production of each new unit equals zero. Specifically, I employ the arguments of David Stark and Gina Neff in their article "Permanently Beta" and Eli Noam's arguments in "The Economics of User Generated Content and Peer-to-Peer: The Commons as the Enabler of Commerce," and suggest that there are conditions at the micro level which provide additional insight into the set of conditions under which Eben's argument works.
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>		In this paper I examine Eben's argument that anarchism produces inherently superior functional goods when the marginal cost of production of each new unit equals zero. Specifically, I employ the arguments of David Stark and Gina Neff in their article "Permanently Beta" and Eli Noam's arguments in "The Economics of User Generated Content and Peer-to-Peer: The Commons as the Enabler of Commerce," and suggest that there are conditions at the micro level which provide additional insight into the set of conditions under which Eben's argument works band that anarchism might not be the right way to describe the mode of production.
 

Efficacy and efficiency of anarchic production

Eben's argument rests on the efficacy and efficiency of the free software movement in a net enabled society. The evidence for such productivity has occurred following the adoption of the General Product License (GPL) and other variations of open source licenses across the movement. (Evidence is ever more plentiful - Samba, Mediawiki, Apache, Firefox - the list goes on.) Few are now willing to defend the "closed" proprietary model as advantageous (see Shawn Shell for an article) Microsoft does so yet even they have opened a open source lab which seemingly seeks to benefit from external contributions of resources though doesn't license them in a "free" manner. Moreover, it is generally accepted that the success of free and open source software proves that it is of a comparable quality and reliability as that of proprietary software. These functional advantages are underpinned by the fact that if the code doesn't quite work as needed the technologists have the ability to fix it themselves, and no less importantly, technology executives avoid the game playing inherent in selection and subsequent purchasing process for software licenses. Moreover free software users can be confident that they won't be left managing proprietary tools for which support is either suddenly no longer available or 30% more expensive as a result of an arbitrary commercial decision. Without question, the facts on the ground suggest that free software production works and works well.

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Revision 20r20 - 21 Dec 2008 - 23:16:16 - TomGlaisyer
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