MESSAGE
| DATE | 2004-06-08 |
| FROM | From: "Inker, Evan"
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] The gift economy and free software
|
The gift economy and free software
Saturday June 05, 2004 (08:00 AM GMT)
Topics: Free Software , Software
By: Jem Matzan
http://software.newsforge.com/software/04/06/04/142238.shtml?tid=150&tid=82%
3E
A "gift economy" is a social system in which status is given by how much one
shares or gives to one's community, as opposed to an "exchange economy"
where status is given to those who own or control the most stuff. In today's
world we're used to the latter economic philosophy, as it has been closely
affiliated with the capitalist system since at least the Industrial
Revolution and the invention of the corporation. But the Industrial Age is
over -- this is the Information Age now, and things are changing.
The
gift economy concept does not interfere with capitalism at all, despite the
general misunderstanding and mythology that surrounds it. There are already
many microcosms that thrive on the concept of the gift economy, the
scientific community being the most famous. Scientists generally receive
status from their peers by contributing the greatest ideas and inventions
and allowing others to use them in the creation of more ideas and
inventions. The benefits from this method of idea propagation are
immeasurable. Can you imagine the setbacks that the world of physics would
have experienced if Albert Einstein had been willing and able to restrict
the use of his theories and formulas?
It's about progress
Capitalism was founded on the premise that money would encourage people to
be more productive; the key here is encouraging people to be more
productive, not the means by which it is achieved. A productive society is
also prosperous.
There is no comparison between a gift economy and a socialist economy --
communism requires a forced redistribution of wealth and a decided lack of
status among all people. The gift economy philosophy wants us to do better
and achieve wealth through contribution, to create more things for the
purpose of achieving status and benefiting our community and society in
general.
The trouble with an exchange economy is that it discourages the formation
and support of the community structure, encouraging the personal greed of
the individual instead. If someone has an idea in an exchange economic
structure, he has incentive to keep it secret until he can find a way to
safely use it to gain power over others. Examples of this are the concepts
of "trade secrets" and patents. If you have a great idea and can patent it,
you are in position of power over anyone who wants to use that idea for the
next twenty years; they are not free to use it, modify it, build on it, or
sell it without your permission. The trouble with this social system (or
rather, antisocial system) is that ideas rarely flourish in isolation --
they require the input and insight of several others to truly evolve and
become valuable.
A software corporation in an exchange economy is like an isolated community
where ideas are passed around and improved upon internally before being
developed and sold as a licensed software product. In the gift economy of
the Free and Open-Source Software world, the community is larger, more open
and non-exclusive, thus tapping a larger reserve of intelligence and
experience to formulate and cultivate ideas and implementations. So the gift
economy approach is more conducive to the formulation and development of new
ideas and technologies, and in that respect it is beneficial to both the
consumer and the developer.
When put into this kind of perspective it's easy to see why the executives
of large proprietary software corporations are scared silly of the Open
Source philosophy. How can they compete when they're using inferior methods
to develop new ideas, and with significantly fewer people contributing?
The benefits of the gift economy
While it may mean the eventual end (or at least shrinkage) of the big
proprietary software corporations, the Free Software community is an
invaluable resource to companies and end-users. Instead of paying a huge
amount of money to a big proprietary firm for a specially designed
rights-restricted software application, a business can take and modify a
Free Software project to meet its needs at a lower cost and with greater
control over its own software. Individual users are also free to use,
modify, and distribute Free Software programs as they see fit. So the gift
economy philosophy benefits the end-user, and that benefit is more immediate
and definitive than it is for the development community that creates the
software.
But what do the developers get in return? What is the benefit in producing
Free Software? That seems to be the primary concern among programmers who
work for software corporations, who scorn and ridicule the Free Software
movement.
It's not necessarily the development philosophy that scares them so much as
it is the erroneous idea that Free Software must be free of charge as well
as free as in rights, and therefore there are no benefits for the creators
and maintainers of the software. This is, as modern philosophers often say,
"old thinking." It's a form of outdated reasoning from the Industrial Age.
The "gift" part of "gift economy" should not be taken literally. This social
system does not demand that people work as slaves with no compensation,
their needs being met only by karma and magic manna falling from the sky.
The "gift" in "gift economy" does not equate to a birthday gift or a wedding
present; it is an entirely different context.
The payment of prestige
A Free Software project may not yield much (if any) direct and immediate
monetary profit, but not all that glitters is gold. We're so entrenched in
the exchange economy that we assume that money is the direct and only
benefit that working produces. We go to our jobs during the day and for our
efforts get paychecks at regular intervals, and the more important our work
is judged to be, the more we get paid. So following this logic, if someone
designs an important Free Software project they should be paid a lot of
money, right? Well, not exactly.
The payment for volunteer or nonprofit work comes in many forms, and often
pays back for years to come. Richard Stallman, the president of the Free
Software Foundation and the original developer behind many of the most
important parts of the GNU/Linux operating system, doesn't think of any of
this in terms of economic theory. "The main benefit for me," he says, "is
that I can use a computer without starting through an act of betrayal --
promising not to share." So the first benefit to developing Free Software
is, of course, to be able to use it yourself without having to accept an
unreasonable license agreement. Stallman adds, "I also like the admiration
that some people feel for my work. Of course, other people have scorn for
me, but I don't care much what they think."
Stallman's status is so high in the software community that he can travel
virtually anywhere in the world and admirers will offer him a place to stay
and a meal to eat. He's received numerous fellowships, awards, and honorary
degrees, and is often asked to speak at conventions and conferences. He's
also worked as a consultant to several companies. MIT has allowed Stallman
the use of an office on their campus for the past two decades. He's even
spoken privately with leaders of countries and other important dignitaries
regarding software philosophy and policy. While a few of these things
translate directly into money, some are measured in resources and others
have a value beyond dollars and cents.
Theo de Raadt of the OpenBSD project survives off of monetary donations and
sales of OpenBSD CD sets. But there's a lot more than money that makes it
all worthwhile. "To a large extent we exist because we are tired of running
corporate produced software ... not because it costs, but because the
quality of it is lower. We are just tired of running low quality crap, and
hence, are writing our own," he says of OpenBSD and its associated software
projects. Like Stallman, de Raadt sees the primary benefit being the ability
to use the very software that he helps produce. While a great deal of
hardware is donated to him, Theo still has to spend thousands of dollars per
year buying hardware for testing and development, and at times has
difficulty finding a place to keep it all. What money is left pays for
rental space and accommodations for "Hackathons" for the project, which are
large get-togethers for OpenBSD developers to work on modifying and
improving the software for extended periods of time. Although to some that
probably sounds like work, developers fly from around the world to sit among
their friends and colleagues and hack OpenBSD code -- it's a lot of fun for
those who enjoy programming.
Eric Raymond of the Open Source Initiative, author of several books and the
developer responsible for key networking and programming tools and
technologies, is able to more easily capitalize on his status: "I sell a lot
of books and people fly me to places. And there's my stock from the boom
days, though that's not worth what it was." The OSI survives on monetary
donations -- sometimes very large ones -- from individual donors and large
corporations who have or will soon benefit from Open Source Software.
Several leaders in the Free and Open Source Software community (including
Eric Raymond and Linus Torvalds) received large allocations of IPO stock
when companies -- such as Red Hat -- that depend on that software went
public. While the tech boom is over and the stock has devalued somewhat,
it's still worth money.
Raymond also originally introduced the distinction between gift and exchange
economies into the theory of open source, and objects to the view that
markets are destructive of community; he sees the open-source community and
its gift economy as a natural production of the free market as opposed to an
enemy of the exchange economy.
The power of status
The gift economy pays in status, and status pays in many ways -- sometimes
with money, sometimes with donations of hardware or offers for help. Those
who do a lot of good work will see their efforts returned to them over a
long period of time -- and I'm not talking about magic karma and rainbows
and hippies. Good work is noticed, admired, and rewarded by those who
benefit from it.
Status is something that fades little with time, and in fact can grow if it
is not fulfilled. Unrequited status creates legends; by dying before he can
receive a return on his contributions, a great community contributor becomes
legendary after his death. The community rewards him with the only method
that is left -- to make him into a legend.
By helping the software community through contributions of time, work,
money, or other resources, you become eligible to receive help from members
of the community -- you've "given," so you will "get" as well. The above
examples are of people who have given a lot to the community and continue to
do so; they consider this their life's work. The majority of the community
is not composed of people who give this much, so how much would you as an
individual developer be entitled to receive and what could you expect as
payment for your efforts?
Status eventually leads to money if you continue to grow it. If you have
something to sell, such as a CD copy of your program or a T-shirt with your
program's logo or motto on it, or books on related subjects, you can
capitalize on your status in the gift economy. Even if what you're selling
has nothing to do with the software you're creating, you can still use your
status to make money. It's also perfectly acceptable to solicit monetary or
other donations from those who use the software you've created. Pamela Jones
hosts her Groklaw site on donated Web space and bandwidth, and NetBSD
developers often rely on donated hardware to port their operating system to
new architectures.
There are also a large number of technology and services corporations who
need experienced programmers who are familiar with the world of Open Source
Software. Such companies include AMD, Intel, IBM, Apple, HP, and many
others. By doing good work on Free Software projects you making yourself
more valuable as a potential job applicant. For a long time it's been a
common and accepted practice for recent college graduates to accept unpaid
internships as a method of gaining industry experience. If you're a
programmer, working on a Free Software project can be just as beneficial to
your career as a standard internship.
There are also software bounties out there, and it's not uncommon for a user
in need to offer money to fix a problem with or add a feature to an Open
Source program.
Gifts and sharing
The Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) provides access to enterprise-grade
hardware and infrastructure resources to Open Source developers who wish to
add support or write software for such devices. OSDL relies on money from
its members, which are primarily computer hardware manufacturers and service
providers who benefit in some way from Free and Open Source Software. Tim
Witham, an Open Source advocate and Chief Technology Officer of OSDL, sees
Open Source Software as a quid pro quo, a classic business relationship
where you get and give in return. By sharing source code like scientists
share their theories and discoveries (as mentioned above), greater solutions
can be reached. "A gift," he says, "comes with no attachments. Software
licenses add attachments; they allow you to keep your intellectual
property." So even though you're sharing your ideas and methods, you're
still retaining the rights to your work. "I think every major player in Open
Source has business in mind," Witham says. "No one is giving anything away."
Instead, developers create software which is useful; if it is useful to
them, then, like Theo de Raadt, that is the return and if it is shared then
others may capitalize on it in the same way. If it was created to be useful
to others, then that developer or business generally works on the project
with the expectation of some kind of compensation in return. In both cases
the return of the Open Source development method is also that other
programmers can make your program better for free. So while they get to use
it, you get to have it updated, expanded and improved -- again, quid pro
quo.
Tim Witham is right, certainly, in the sense that the term "gift" doesn't
really fit in "gift economy." It's a sort of misnomer in the same way that
"Free Software" is -- it misleads if misinterpreted. Of course no one really
wants to work for free and we're not slaves, but volunteerism and Free
Software programming is not a gift in the sense that no return is expected.
Whatever we do with our time, we always expect a return of some kind even if
it is only to have fun, such as the OpenBSD programmers do at their
Hackathons. Generally there is more at stake than that, but the point is
that there is always a reason, always motivation for what we do. Usually
there are several distinct motivating factors involved when someone
dedicates time to writing a software program, so the returns can be many and
varied.
There are myriad ways to achieve a return on your investment in Free
Software. Great work earns prestige and status, which translates into
opportunity. Useful programs help you be more productive and allow you to
use your computer without starting with an act of betrayal. Sharing ideas
helps to develop news ones. Software bounties offer money for work
performed. And certainly not to be overlooked is the satisfaction of a job
well done.
You don't have to be poor to contribute to Free and Open Source Software,
but by the same token you don't have to be rich. The gift economy is the
system that will succeed for software development in the Information Age
because it is about sharing information and ideas instead of locking them up
to wield power over others.
Jem Matzan is the author of three books, a freelance journalist, and
editor-in-chief of The Jem Report.
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