X-Message-Number: 6958
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: Prometheus and GNU
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 21:46:38 +1000 (EST)

Paul Wakfer writes,

[on TimeCat's post]

>I disagree that this is the way to proceed. It is the operating principle of
>socialism, not the free market features of the Western World which have been
>proven to be best at safeguarding individual rights and ownership, while also
>providing wealth for all.

What TimeCat proposes has nothing to do with socialism - he's simply
suggesting that rights and ownership are irrelevant to good engineering.
There is a very successful precedent for such a position, and it has
nothing to do with socialism either: the GNU project. Engineers who
specifically license their technologies such that they are free to apply
and free to use as a basis for further engineering, PROVIDED that such
uses maintain this license. Almost all of the software that I use every
day only exists because of the GNU project.

It seems to me that socialism is about centralised governments
controlling resources. GNU is about engineers turning a buck on
specifics without limiting the application of their generic work. The
two ideas are not similar.

As to the Western World providing "wealth for all", I'd invite Paul to
visit South America, Africa, or India to experience some of the less
savoury aspects of free markets. If Prometheus research is really to
benefit "all", then there's no need to control it except in the GNU
sense, to prevent profiteers from using it to restrict further
developments and broader applications. It is difficult to see why
this should not apply in the case of Prometheus, whose pledgers are
obviously not driven by the motive of future profit.

>This might be true of Alcor and CI which *are* membership organizations and,
>at least, owe their members some return for their donations. It is not true
>for Prometheus which will be conducted by a for-profit corporations having no
>members and treating all buyers of its products (except for pledger/share
>purchasers) equally.

I confess that I haven't kept up with the Prometheus materials since I've
pledged. I'm not backing out, but I should say that this doesn't seem
to make much sense to me. What's the point of making this thing "for-profit"?
Is this really any incentive for any of the people who have pledged so far?

Peter Merel.


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