>shag wrote:
> >
> > >
> > Doug: I only find it annoying that people want everything for free and
> > refuse to see how they're paying.
>
>I don't see how they are paying except in some metaphysical way. I think
>I agree with Doug: Who cares. Even those mining for information don't
>give a damn. What if a few people out 300 million waste a lot of time
>and effor in hiding. No realdifference. Those are the ones who _payint_
>in the most valuable coin there is: Time, their time.
>
>Carrol
they are paying b/c the whole thing contributes to the increasing devaluation of labor. they are paying because there are some people who think that, because they blog without advertisements, they are superior to those who blog with them or who actually get paid to blog.
i'm not going to elaborate since by your very comments above, it's clear that i spoke in far too much short hand to convey my meaning. and i'm not specially interesting in having what amounts to an 'insider's' discussion with dwayne and others familiar with open source, internet biz models, etc. with people for whom that is of no interest.
nothing against you. i'm just busy.
to dwayne:
no, the folks at work are decidedly *not* open source purists. indeed, there is only one fellah who is even vaguely familiar with the open source ethos -- and he does not go on like this. these folks, rather, are youngsters and those new to the intertubes who've never known anything other than windows. they work in PHP and Mysql and use tools like putty and svn, but they haven't the vaguest klew about any of it.
they do think that free as in beer free is the awesome, and don't every think about free as in freedom. discussions of say the superiority of open source for bug catching, tracking, and resolution are decidedly not on the table.
it's an interesting phenom, to me, that has to do, i think, with the professionalization of IT occupations. Or perhaps, rather, the mundane-ification. As more and more people go into it as just another job, rather than as this peculiar thing near zealots were interested in, it takes on the character -- and dilemmas, contradictions, etc. -- of any other occupations.
that is my inchoate thesis as it's been rolling around me pea brain.
shag-a-delic-needs-to-unbuzz-from-the-gym