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Why The GPL Is Bad For The Economy
Introduction
The General Public License (GPL) is a software license from the Free Software Foundation (FSF).
Using property rights to stop power, the GPL has begun a social unfolding that threatens the future of our economy.
Some have been misled into thinking the GPL destroys property rights. But, as with any license, the GPL is powerless unless ownership is retained.
In this document, the term 'The Economy' is applicable to any of capitalism, globalism, free trade, etc.
States of Software
Discussion of software licenses tends to revolve around whether or not the source code is OPEN.
But licenses also independently address whether or not the software is LOCKED.
These 2 attributes may be combined into 4 states:
1. LOCKED CLOSED: [Users may NOT apply their own lock and source is NOT available]
Proprietary software is locked closed. It is illegal to open the gate (reverse engineer) or to apply your own lock. Proprietary software (traditional 'off the shelf' software), and most freeware or shareware are under these terms.
2. UNLOCKED CLOSED: [Users may apply their own lock but source is NOT available]
This rare state describes software where source is not available, but the binaries may be used for any use (including reverse engineering) and released under your own license. Some freeware is available under these terms especially abandoned projects where the source was lost or destroyed.
3. UNLOCKED OPEN: [Users may apply their own lock and source is available]
Any "source available" license that allows subsequent locking falls into this state. Even though copyright ownership is retained, the license allows others to lock improvement to that property under their own terms. For example: a BSD license allowed Microsoft to build on the work of others, and then lock closed their TCP stack. OSX used parts of NetBSD and FreeBSD, but hold the changes closed.
Public Domain software is also UNLOCKED OPEN simply because copyright ownership has been relenquished.
4. LOCKED OPEN: [Users may NOT apply their own lock but source is available]
This once rare state is enforced primarily by the GPL. Proprietary software shops dislike this state because it stops them from locking it closed, and because it builds Swadeshi.
Software that is locked closed has many advantages for owners. Similar to corporate tax relief, locked closed software rewards the owners, while disempowering the workers and users. This means higher employment, higher quality, and lower cost.
The locked open model destroys this important hierarchy by giving access to every computer user.
Artificial Scarcity
Artificial scarcity has been used throughout history to drive a populous to achieve goals they may be otherwise disinterested in. This ancient, powerful incentive is sometimes called hoarding by those wishing to eliminate it.
While artificial scarcity is not required by capitalism, it is allowed, and accelerates the economy in many ways.
Locked closed software utilizes Artificial scarcity in all its forms:
Form Example
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Access restriction: Per use licensing.
Faulty by design: Purchase our other product.
Planned obsolescence: Time limited version.
Feature dearth: Incentive to buy "Pro" version.
This allows owners to create enormous taxable revenue from far less ingenuity and work. We pretend this revenue will trickle down to the workers, but, being the owners, we can always do as we please.
Some GPL workers are paid, but GPL owners can never utilize artificial scarcity. The GPL disables usury.
Finite Resources
Finite resources include:
natural resources
land: Henry George attacked the land hoarding in the 1800's
inanimate matter
air
water
soil
minerals
gems
fossil fuel
organism genetics: The DNA of plants, animals or fungus
pollution capacity: Far more finite than advertised.
intellectual resources: Optimal solutions are finite in number.
software: the design, not each particular copy
hardware designs: washing machines, cars, hammers, etc.
media (music, video): see creativecommons.org
anything traditionally considered Intellectual Property
radio frequencies
IP addresses
Artificial scarcity of reproducible items (such as a grain of wheat) can be a temporary incentive, but are difficult to enforce if the worker has access to finite resources.
The only way to guarantee the incentive is to lock finite resources closed.
Continuing with the example of a grain of wheat, locking finite resources closed guarantees the incentive in the following ways:
1. Artificial scarcity of land has been without a doubt the most successful incentive. Land hoarding has been used since the beginning of time to create indentured servitude, and is still a major factor in perpetuating our vibrant economy. Without land, the worker has nowhere to plant the wheat. He can rent it from us, but then we can set the price to ensure he never gets too far ahead.
2. Water privatization is used in many parts of Africa, in Bolivia, and at an accelerated pace throughout the world to get more work for less money. Without water the wheat will surely die. The exemplary Bechtel was especially dilligent in Bolivia: the privatization contract included charging for water collected from rooftops into cisterns. It is this kind of management that makes America what it is, and is the reason for such strong feelings about us all around the world. The World Bank, the IMF and ENRON should also be condemnded for pathing the way for these transnational corporations by perpetuating the debt that causes countries such as Argentina to finally sell off their natural resources, and enter the world economy.
3. Organism genetics are being locked closed by Monsanto and many other economy minded corporations to increase dependence, lower security, and guarantee profits. The Iraq COALITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY ORDER NUMBER 81 ensures "patent, industrial design, undisclosed information, integrated circuits and plant variety" are LOCKED CLOSED to ensure our domination of this people we have starved and bombed for nearly 20 years through the UN enforced sanctions continues.
4. Many designs for tools such as plows, seed drills, irrigation systems, are luckily already locked closed, so the laborer won't be able to build his own unless he creates a new design - but even then it is likely to infringe on patents. In the end he may rent for whatever price we name and work for whatever wage we name or be looked down upon as a homeless slob.
Artificial scarcity causes workers to toil more than would otherwise be neccessary to sustain their current quality of life. This allows us to give a higher profit margin at a lower price. This is exactly why we Americans enjoy such low prices from imported products, and why our corporations make such a killing overseas. Bananas from Honduras, coffee from Nicaragua, cocoa from Daloa, Disney shirts from Bangladesh, Nike shoes from China. It is a powerful incentive to work that is the very foundation of our high standard of living. How dare these hippies attack our kingdom!
Some use derogatory terms such as sweat shops, slave labor, slavery, trafficking, etc., but it is through these very processes that so much has been accomplished. Otherwise why would they begin working at the age of 9 at 15 cents per hour for 16 hours per day until they finally die? Artificial scarcity is a legal, honest, moral means of extracting the most good from this otherwise idle vermin.
Teary eyed pleas from groups attacking this system include:
'"Today, there is more food per person on earth, yet more people are hungry than ever before. Advocates of profit-driven, global 'free' trade promised that this form of globalization would ease food insecurity. Instead, it has led to even more malnutrition.'" -- foodfirst.org
What they don't mention is that food insecurity of the worker is the very foundation of our high quality of life. These proponents of so called "sustainable" practices are attempting to free workers from their duties by calling for land reform, permaculture, technology transfer, locked open education material and other finite resource access. If successful, this give access of basic human needs to the worker; damaging, and eventually destroying the powerful incentives of artificial scarcity.
So far they have had very little success because:
1. A large percentage of the privately held land of most countries - even in the United States - is already owned by a very few.
2. Land reform is depicted (in a media typically owned by the wealthy land owners) as an attempt by the lazy workers to take what is not theirs.
3. Agriculture is not taught as the organic foundation of human life.
4. Guaranteed access to finite resource is not taught as a neccessary prerequisite to sovereignty.
Threat of further generalization
The GPL is a much larger pattern than the current form it takes. Efforts are already underway to create many 'open' designs, hardware, communication networks, procedures.
It could easily be generalized to realistically apply to almost any resource - both finite or capital in a variety of rulesets. In fact, the General Public Lease (GPL) locks open any material or immaterial thing except human labor.
These resources will be available at-cost to all qualified workers.
The most dire concern is unfettered access to finite resources such as land, water and genetics. Land has always been the definer, the divider, the diviner. Sifting the good from the bad; the upper from the lower.
Owners should not be allowed to share in this way. Allowing the poor to help themselves to a fair share of all that they need is irresponsible and unbusinesslike.
Home mortgages are the backbone of dependence. If workers could have permanent shelter for no more than cost of materials and labor they may awake from the dream we weave.
Many food and drugs could initially be grown, and eaten right from the organism! Eventually, as the availablity of genetics, designs, media, education, etc. became more prevelant, the workers could create more and more complex solutions. Clothing, housing, tools, transportation, health care, would all be available for the cost of production, without paying us a fee. The vital point here is ownership. While these things are already available from us, if the worker can do it for themselves, they will no longer need to purchase the solutions from us, and we will no longer be able to employ them for such economical wages.
The GPL opens a Pandora's box of unfettered freedom, where not just anarchy, but the far more dangerous autarchy would unleash those now committed to their jobs. They would have options, and could choose to simply not go to work! They may eventually lie in the sun and pick almonds and peaches. This would cause consumer prices to skyrocket, and profit margins to plummet. Bush himself has said "There ought to be limits to freedom." and has counseled us to do our part by continuing to purchase. Those attempting this undependence should be considered terrorists - as they are attacking our economy from two directions!
Our country, the very model of dependency, is under seige by these self serving thinkers. Nearly every residence and business has relied upon our delicate electric grid, but more and more are attempting to get "off the grid" by collecting (from the wind, sun etc.) and storing that power. Imagine a storage system that lifts a heavy weight when excess power is being collected, and uses that weight to drive an electric generator during low power availability. Utter disaster! Our plantations dwindle.
Locking open not just the intellectual property, but physical property will give these autarchists the power to finally say 'no' to the international bankers that have done so much for our planet. With land, buildings, tools and materials available at cost, the worker will flood the market as a phoenix of unbridled creativity.
Simple hybrids from used vehicles retrofitted with recycled electric generator/motors and flexible photovoltaics covering body panels to trickle charge the deep-cycle car batteries - creating transportation that adds almost nothing to the economy! Fun passenger workout contributes power while keeping the citizen from the profiteering gyms!
Growing gardens can be damaging because they teach the basics of agriculture and get people accustomed to that feeling of power. Luckily gardens are almost always small, back yard projects that seem more work than they are worth. It might be best if we keep them busy struggling with maintaining a high maintinence plot of annuals. The extreme danger comes in the realization that perinneals can be used as ornamentals. Permaculture, or gifting landscaping - where every ornamental is useful for the fulfillment of basic human needs - is the evil we must suppress. Imagine your workplace growing grapevines and hops, strawberries and almonds. Imagine driving down a city street of pecans, walnuts, pears and chesnuts. The plants along a freeway might be hemp and anise, cumin and jojoba. What if household bushes were blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and cotton? What lawns were wheat and oats, barley and rice? What if the little ornamentals throughout the commuinity were basil, angelica, caraway, all varieties of mushrooms, fennel, mustards, black pepper, endive, purslane, cardomom, cilantro, flax? The terror! The unfair advantage! A fatal blow to globalism.
The pets they keep will also be gifting. Bees for wax and sweets, goats for milk and cloth. Chickens for eggs, meat, down/feathers; silk worms.
Think what would happen if the citizens were self sufficiencient in a country our righteous leaders* have declared a threat?
We have used sanctions against Iraq since the 80's to eliminate 1/2 million or so under the age of 5, many times that overall. When attacking Iraq to save them from Saddam we used cluster munitions in major cities, small nuclear bombs, 10's of thousands of land mines, extensive use of depleted uranium, even napalm. But the most successful cleansing has come through the destruction of the facilities used to supply organic needs.
Bombing power plants, water purification facilities, agriculture centers including poultry farms, fertilizer and pesticide factories, and water pumping stations has increased the UN's total death projection to 10 million by the end of this year.
As with most peoples, the Iraqis don't have many local solutions. They were cutting down pistachio groves to keep warm during the winter because the hard working Halliburton needed to increase the price of kerosene.
How could we kill so many so cleanly if we couldn't simply destroy their access points? What if every Iraqi household were landscaped with food, drug, and cloth plants? What if they could collect any rainwater into cisterns and each owned water pumps, and were each able to meet their own energy requirements? The anti-American peace protesters sometimes complain about the hundreds of billions being spent there, but the cost of eliminating every person of that country would be far more if we had to bomb every household!
But the danger doesn't end there. A sovereign populous is Military reqruitment in US cities such as Flint Michigan are so successful because the reqruited have little choice.
Action
Here are some tactics to ensure our reign. We can't just stop education, we must actively misinform.
If they don't understand the workings of the plants or if they don't choose plants suited to the location they may need to spend too much time and capital on watering and care. If they don't plan for the mess the plants may make by taking meticulous care of slope, rock, companion plants, irrigation choice etc. - the program will seem a misguided disaster.
Wealth concentration creates corporatism which disables democracy by allowing the rich few to draft self-serving legislation.
A civilization can protect democracy by insuring every human is personally sovereign. This empowers the masses while disempowering the elite. How will we exploit the many when the power is spread so thin?
Personal sovereignty may be achieved through access to finite resources. We must lock every finite resource closed to ensure our continued rule.
Patents are a current front line of attack.
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*Some may not believe Bush speaks directly to God as he claims. But it is easy to see he must. How else would he know to be on Cipiro over a month before Anthrax was detected on Capital Hill? How else could he have seen the first collision on TV before entering the Booker Elementary classroom?
Related:
FreeAudio.org/fbastiat/candlemakerspetition.html
"'The GPL, Stallman, and the persistence of evil'" -- http://asay.blogspot.com/2006/06/gpl-stallman-and-persistence-of-evil.html
"'Bid to outlaw GPL
October 24 2002
Leaders of the New Democrat Coalition in the US Congress are seeking to have licenses such as those in the GNU and GPL outlawed on the grounds that they are "restrictive, preclude innovation, improvement, adoption and establishment of commercial IP rights."
In a letter to fellow members of their coalition, the three members of Congress leading the charge - Adam Smith, Ron Kind and Jim Davis - claim that "the terms of restrictive license's (sic) - such as those in the GNU or GPL - prevent companies from adopting, improving, commercializing and deriving profits from the software by precluding companies from establishing commercial IP rights in any subsequent code."
The letter says: "Thus, if government R&D creates a security innovation under a restrictive license, a commercial vendor will not integrate that code into its software. So long as government research is not released under licensing terms that restrict commercialization, publicly funded research provides an important resource for the software industry."
Davis and Jim Turner, Ranking Member of the Reform Subcommittee on Technology, have drafted a letter to be sent to Richard Clarke, chairman of the President's Critical Infrastructure Board, expressing these sentiments, saying " it is essential that the National Strategy affirm federal tradition by explicitly rejecting licenses that would prevent or discourage commercial adoption of promising cyber security technologies developed through federal R&D." '" -- http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/10/24/1035416921766.html
"'Is GPL Evil?'" -- student.oulu.fi/~harriha/en/comp/is_gpl_evil.html
groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.advocacy/browse_thread/thread/1376ab51db5b87d3/aa76c271183c705c?q=economics+gpl#aa76c271183c705c