[OGo-Discuss] Some impressions and comments about OGo

[Bart Schouten]

> However, IMHO "your" ;-) basic problem (an extremely widespread one) is 
> that you equal FOSS == free as in free beer. Why should someone giving 
> you the stuff for free held responsible in any way? 

Well, suppose we lived in a world where everyone gave everything for 
free. If you don't have to pay for anything, you don't need to get payed 
for anything either. So what would that change about the concept of 
responsibility? There'd still be jobs but nobobdy would be doing any job 
  they wouldn't want to do. So it's a bit like contributing to an open 
source project. But I think, that because many services are vital to the 
workings of a society, that people accepting those jobs would be asked 
to commit themselves to it, just like volunteers within a volunteer 
organisation are asked to show some commitment and some responsibility. 
If a volunteer demonstrates himself to be unable/incapable to bear the 
responsibilty, he will be relieved of his duty and no long be asked to 
fulfill that task. So yes, I think there can be some notion of 
responsibility even if you are a volunteer.

Well, to me, the biggest charm of open source is not that I can modify 
it, but that I don't have to pay for it, which means that nobody is 
trying to make a profit on me, which means they are not trying to 
manipulate me, which means I can engage in a *human* relationship with 
them, the developers/producers, instead of becoming simply a means to an 
end. It means they are not lying to me, and trying to use me.. it means 
they are not my enemy, but my friends and co-creators. That's why I feel 
at home in the concept of open source. And also, because of human 
empowerment, of course. Transparency, and ability. In commerce, in this 
digital age, it is often vital to deny consumers some ability or the 
other, so that they may then buy it from you. Like, there is software, 
it is 'freely' available, anyone could start using it, but you don't 
want them to because they haven't paid you for it yet. So even if they 
cannot afford it, you would prevent them from using that software to 
accomplish what they want to accomplish, because allowing them to use it 
would harm your business model. So in effect... they are your enemy, or 
you are theirs, because you are trying to sabotage their goals - prevent 
them from using software that would enable them to accomplish their 
goals. Business relies on artificial scarcity, which to any casual 
observer would seem completely at odds with the interests of society at 
large.

And I think a different 'business' model could be possible, in the long 
run of human development (that is, a different model of production and 
distribution, and also a different model of human relationships 
altogether), and I think that open source is one of the phenonena that 
hints at the possibility of this and in any case introduces some of the 
concepts that would be central to such a way of living. So I would not 
so easily dismiss the kostenfrei dimension of open source.

> As a simple analogy, you can certainly go to a shop and buy a car frame 
> and all others parts you need to build a car. But this still doesn't 
> enable you to build one.

I would ask my father to do it for me ;). He used to be a car mechanic. 
:P. But I think even he would skip on that task.. ;)

> (eg personally I still HATE setting up mailservers. I never got into 
> this and I would always pay for it :-)

Yeah I don't mind to pay for services either. I just don't like to pay 
for software most of the time, e.g. pay €30,- for WinRAR just to be able 
to use compressed archives. I mean, how long would it take to create a 
program like that, just the basics, with zip, rar, and tgz and tar 
support? Completely incomparable to the development of a web browser, 
for example, IIRC the Opera browser was only €40 or €50 or something of 
the kind (did they become completely free?).

> 
> 
> Anyways, despite all that ;-), I still have the opinion that OGo 
> *should* provide some kind of shrinkwrapped product which can be put to 
> use by endusers. That would certainly be a good thing to promote the 
> project as a whole.
> In fact I have a few ideas on how to do this ... next year ;-)

It sure would :).

greetz, Bart