[Search-l] "directory" vs. "search engine"

[Seth Finkelstein]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2007 at 09:02:57AM +0200, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> And I think this contrast between "working for free" and "working as
> an employee" just entirely misses the point.  I don't do anything
> for free, and I don't do anything for pay.  I just do what I think
> is fun, and sometimes I get paid and sometimes I don't.

http://www.snopes.com/glurge/glurge.asp

"What is glurge? Think of it as chicken soup with several cups of
sugar mixed in: It's supposed to be a method of delivering a remedy
for what ails you by adding sweetening to make the cure more
appealing, but the result is more often a sickly-sweet concoction that
induces hyperglycemic fits."

> The approach to open source software and free culture which gets
> hung up on this "working for free" question always leaves people
> baffled, because there is something fundamentally wrong with looking
> at it that way.

	I think some of the problems of analyzing open source come
from too much of an emphasis on the business model of artificial
scarcity applied to software. Of course, it's a common business
model. But it's not the only workable business model. And it shouldn't
be heretical to conclude it doesn't work well in many contexts. That's
often a rather difficult point, since in itself it's tied in with many
other topics, such as the artificial scarcity model applied to music
or books (not the same thing), or elsewhere, the very understandable
desire of business owners not to pay workers.

	Free culture, however, is an entirely different matter.
Open-source contributions can be very economically rational
for programmers in ways culture contributions really aren't - e.g.
the service market for programmers is far, far, more lucrative
than the service market for culture-producers themselves.

> Consider bowling.  Some people get paid a lot of money to bowl.   

	The fallacy in this analogy is they get paid a lot of money
because others like to watch them bowl, and hence their performance
has an economic value. Whereas there is very little economic value
in the average bowler's performance.

> No one would think of going into a bowling alley to interview the
> customers with questions like "Why do you do this for free, when
> professional bowlers are paid to do it?  Don't you feel exploited?"

	Because the bowling alley owner is not making a fortune
charging *other people* to watch the *bowlers*. If the owner were
doing so, if, for example they set up a business broadcasting
"America's Funniest Alley Bowling Reality Show", absolutely that
question would arise (yes, there's various complexities here about
celebrity vs. pay, we're-going-to-make-you-a-star, but it'd be a *question*).

> Some people get paid to write.  Others do it for free.  Others are
> willing to pay to have an environment where the writing is supported
> in certain ways.

	And one fuel of blog-evangelism is in part the phenomena that
*many* people can be fleeced by dangling in front of them the social
status associated with published writers, and then profiting from them
in various ways.

	Not all "entertainment" providers are doing laudable things.
Very few people have seriously harmed their lives from compulsive
bowling. Just as an example, quite a few have done so from the
"enjoyment" of lotteries or slot-machines or horse-race betting.

-- 
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  http://sethf.com/
Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/
Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php