Like Professor Moglen, I think that human beings like to share. I wonder, though, if the abundance of free software is dependent on the large number of people who have studied computers for profit-seeking purposes. Creating software requires technical expertise. People sought this technical expertise in order to increase their monetary gains. If the computing industry becomes less profitable, there will be fewer computer programmers. There will, consequently, be fewer computer programmers to write free software. Ultimately, the removal of profiteering opportunities would reduce productivity.

Although the free distribution of software is more optimal for the production of software in the short-term due to the increased number of people who can offer improvements to the code, it is less productive in the long-term since fewer people will obtain the technical knowledge required to write code if it is less profitable. Like statistics and mathematics, it will be extremely important, but fewer people will try to obtain the technical expertise required to offer innovations in the field. Curious students all over the world will still want to learn how to write code, but the absolute number of software programmers will decrease as people look for other ways to feed their families. Software innovations, like mathematical or statistical innovations, will occur, but at a slower pace.

My argument assumes that software innovation, like mathematics, is difficult and requires a great deal of expertise. If everyone, regardless of education level, can contribute to writing code, then my argument would be significantly weakened. Personally, I feel like if I wanted to contribute to the free software movement, it would have to be through legal services or monetary support and that I offer little value to the code itself. I want to share, but I do not know how. I think that it will require significant additional education, education that I will not obtain due to the costs involved.

Even if it were true that people like me could help write code, we would have to empirically weigh the benefit of a greater number of people working together against the loss of a larger number of people who have devoted their entire lives and livelihood to this field. I believe that Professor Moglen likes to analogize computer code to mathematics. To an outsider like myself, it seems like mathematics is a decrepit field that few people will study whereas software programming is a robust field with constant innovation. Of course there are significant and important differences between mathematics and software programming, but are these differences relevant to ensuring that coding will continue to be profitable?

What do you guys think?

-- StevenWu - 05 Oct 2009

• This is not correct, because you have again made the counter-factual assumption that people don't get paid for making goods that are produced in commons. As I pointed out last class, when nobody was listening because they were all so busy talking at the tops of their lungs about irrelevancies, free software is integral to more than $100 billion in annual global commerce. Large firms pay thousands of people to work on free software, as well as the hundreds of thousands of people who earn money in all areas of IT and who work on free software in their non-salaried time, as well as hundreds of thousands, now millions, of students who work on free software as a way of learning. You have invented a world in which your questions are meaningful rather than asking meningful questions about the actual world in which you live, and about which I am trying to teach you. Does that seem smart to you?

I could be wrong, but I bet most programmers in industry don't work on out-of-the-box consumer software, but rather making custom applications for businesses. That work won't go away as the plug is gradually pulled on software as a consumer good. It is, however, hard to seriously argue with the conclusion that MSFT and Oracle employ a lot of programmers, and if you set their revenue to zero, they will employ a lot fewer.

But, my thinking during the lecture was similar to yours (roughly "boy, we're going to need a lot more programmers.") Becoming a programmer is actually pretty cheap, I think (see MIT's open courseware, for instance) although graduating from, say, Columbia with a degree in Computer Science is a somewhat different economic proposition. Of course, "cost" also encompasses time and effort. It should also encompass opportunity cost, or the cost of misallocation: I am a bad programmer, but I may be a decent lawyer, and it would be a waste to force everyone to become programmers. It is as if to abolish store-bought bread and decree that everyone shall learn to bake their own.*

I'm pretty sure I watched some nerdy science fiction movie/tv that showed programmers from the future, hard at work. They were sitting in VR booths and manipulating colored shapes with funny gestures. I don't know if eventually most programming will get away from staring at phonebooks of syntax, but perhaps in the future we shall. See: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/joann_kuchera_morin_tours_the_allosphere.html

*I am not a good baker, either.

-- HarryLayman - 06 Oct 2009

Hey Steven,

Hmm... I'm not really sure if what I will say agrees or disagrees with what you said above, but that's a good point about software innovation -- currently, most people view writing code/computer programming as a difficult activity, so there might be less investment in that skill if there is a view that one cannot gain much from it.

My suspicion though is that more and not less people will learn writing code and programming because all sorts of knowledge is becoming freely available (like in MIT's open courseware, as Harry noted). And if those who are skilled in it are able to have a means of widely sharing their goods (let's say anarchic distribution becomes the norm) and they are able to devise a way to make writing code/programming easier, then programming will move into a world of anarchic production. I suppose this theory is supported by the phenomenon of Wikipedia -- because it has become so easy to contribute, and because no one really owns the data we put up there, we're not scared or we don't hold back from sharing.

I think "sharing" (or more properly, the model of anarchic production) will really destroy certain industries and make certain industries that were profitable, become unprofitable. Wikipedia for example has probably destroyed the encyclopedia industry, both paper and online version. However, since there is more knowledge floating out there, there is greater demand for even more specific types of knowledge than what is available on Wikipedia. I guess we make money, as lawyers, that way. Even as the average person now knows a whole lot more about the law right now, their demand for legal services has not decreased.

Guess these thoughts are pretty raw. Good thing we're doing the same reading in the coming class.

-- AllanOng - 06 Oct 2009

Hey!

a couple of comments on Allan's propositions: a. RE "If the computing industry becomes less profitable, there will be fewer computer programmers. There will, consequently, be fewer computer programmers to write free software. Ultimately, the removal of profiteering opportunities would reduce productivity." Taken to its extremes, this proposition lacks credibility (- If the software market was completely commoditized, would this mean the end of software production?). I am not sure that the profitability of the software industry is a necessary prerequisite for the production of free software, much like the profitability of the music industry is not a prerequisite for the production of music.

b. RE "My argument assumes that software innovation, like mathematics, is difficult and requires a great deal of expertise. If everyone, regardless of education level, can contribute to writing code, then my argument would be significantly weakened." I completely agree with this statement. Software innovation depends on the number of people involved in software production, which, in turn, depends on the level of expertise required for actively participating in the community. The lower the threshold for participation, the bigger the outcome of social production (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons-based_peer_production)

-- NikolaosVolanis - 06 Oct 2009

Nikolaos -- the comments you reacted to are Steven's comments, not mine!

-- AllanOng - 06 Oct 2009

• Everything below Steven's initial comments makes the same mistakes he made, and is useless for the same reasons.

Thanks for the clarification. I apologize for not catching your statements initially. I don't know about the world as it actually exists so I appreciate the insight you are providing. I did not listen carefully and I assumed that "anarchic" meant "unprofitable."

If I am extrapolating from your statements correctly, you are arguing that it is not a question of whether persons will continue to make money from coding, but a question of how persons will make money in this new environment. Instead of writing strictly proprietary code, companies will have to change their business model to engage in more productive ventures with free software.

-- StevenWu - 06 Oct 2009