>... if some of them find ways to circumvent these limitations so as to
>enrich their contributors across the board, then that could be the seeds
>of a serious change--a de facto acknowledgment that publicly licensed
>contributions can serve as the effective equivalent of capital. don't
>get me wrong, i'm not making this out to be the End of Capital or somesuch
>other hogwash, far from it.
I agree there's a potential shift here, and I agree that it's not the end of Capital, but I am still troubled by two pieces of this argument: "enrich contributors" and "licensed." Nothing against people making a living off their work, but "enrich" seems a bit more than is called for if the OS/FS model is to actually be different in even a shade--Capital's too insidious for it to work any other way. And when we start talking about licensing, well, then it really sounds much like the same old game, the one that will throw Red Hat et al onto the same capitalist shores where so many post-60s idealists have found themselves, where the company (aka, return to shareholders) means so much more than the people who fuel its success.
In truth, watching the media blitz for the RH IPO made me feel as if the RH folks are already there ("oh, our friends who contributed to make this all possible don't meet the underwriter's requirements? Gee what a shame, but let's not stop the party!"), but maybe others will not be so easy. But even if others work the underwriters better, the RH IPO saddens me because it symbolizes the end of another dream, one that I felt had some chance because it was happening near the beginning of a huge social change and thus had less entrenched gunk to remove while making its path. But in the end, we all want to Bill, don't we?
Patrick