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<title>The Linux Philosophy: Part II</title>
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<H4>
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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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<H1><font color="maroon">Free Philosophy: Part II</font></H1>
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<H2>Cooperation vs. Competition</H2>
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<H4>By <a href="mailto:jwp@awod.com">J. W. Pennington</a></H4>
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"That most of us consistently fail to consider the alternatives to competition
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is a testament to the effectiveness of our socialization."
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<BR>-Alfie Kohn
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</CENTER><P><HR><P>
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This is the second article in a series exploring the philosophy of
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<A HREF="http://www.gnu.org/">free software</A>. The first, entitled
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<A HREF="../issue37/pennington.html"> The Beauty
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of Doubt</A> and published in the February 99 issue, covered the concept of
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doubt, and discussed the improbability that good software can be developed if
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one does not have the ability to doubt that one's code, work, theory, or
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whatever may be flawed. The arrogance that a final product is unimprovable is
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something rarely if ever seen in the free software community (FSC). This
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allows for the continued improvement that we all see, and for the quick
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reaction to problems.
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<P>
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In this article, I discuss competition with the intention of making
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a case for the FSC's necessity for cooperation in order to exist/succeed.
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Again, I tell the reader that I am primarily an anthropologist, and as such
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have little experience writing a technical article. This is written quite
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theoretically and argumentatively (if I may make that word), and I have
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written at great length on the competition/cooperation argument itself,
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preserving its association with the FSC until the end. I have done this not
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to bore or to preach to the reader (well, maybe a little) but to introduce as
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much of the full argument as possible in as little space as possible.
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<P>
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Note: I will warn the reader that this article is a
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bit reactionary and outspoken. I do not write like this to strike fear or any
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other emotion into the hearts of the reader. I only do it to underline the
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somewhat insidious problem. I apologize in advance for yelling. With that
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said, and before I begin this month's discussion, I'd like to clear
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up some issues. I received a great deal of email regarding the last article.
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Most of it was positive, and I thank all of those who sent it. Some was quite
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critical, and I <I> really </I> thank the critics. I do want this to be an
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open discussion, and it would be quite blind of me to argue for humility while
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refusing to accept that my ideas are flawed. For this reason, I would like to
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address the two major points discussed in the many email critiques. In the
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interest of space, however, I have placed this in <A
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HREF="./pennington2.html">another
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location</A>. Hopefully this will make it easier for those who are not
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concerned about these criticisims, but not too difficult for those who are.
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<B>People new to the Free Software Community or to Linux are urged
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to<A HREF="./pennington2.html"> read it</A>
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however, as there are some important points made.</B> Suffice it to say here
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that I am not the official spokesperson for the Free Software Movement, nor are
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my opinions official in any way. For the official opinions and philosophy of
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the GNU foundation, visit their website at <A
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HREF="http://www.gnu.org/">www.gnu.org</A>.
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<P>
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<B>What are Competition and Cooperation?</B>
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<P>
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In order to adequately condemn competition (which is honestly my intention)
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and demonstrate the advantage of cooperation, I must first take the time to
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define and explain the two opposing ideas. <B>Competition</B>, technically
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stated, is striving to outdo another. Put another way, it is the attempt to
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accomplish something at the expense of others, or in such a way as to make it
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impossible for another to accomplish the same thing. The bluntest,
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and most unattractive manner in which to say this is that my success
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<I>requires</I> your failure. This is what Alfie Kohn calls <I>Mutually
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Exclusive Goal Attainment</I>, MEGA[1]. Put this way, competition doesn't sound
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as healthy as it's cracked up to be. It is trying to do something specifically
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so that others cannot. It being better (often at any cost) than everyone else.
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It is proving to oneself, if not to anyone else, that the world is beneath
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them- if only in one particular circumstance. It is constant, it is
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pervasive, and it is the American way.
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<P>
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Okay, I'll rephrase that: It's the Western way. One would be hard pressed
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to find a culture who does it more than we do. We've found ways to compete
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that are completely mind boggling, including such dubious honors as "He who
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can cram most processed meat into his mouth in the least amount of time,"
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or, the good old hot dog eating contest. We compete for everything: Most
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sales in a given month, hottest chicken wings (I'm from Buffalo, no
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wisecracks), fastest car, even biggest breasts and shortest shorts. Contests
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for beauty, size, speed, notoriety <I>ad nauseum</I> exist in modern culture,
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and this is no less true in the software world.
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<P>
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Most companies, including our "beloved" software companies, spend
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literally billions of combined dollars trying to, in effect, put other
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companies out of business. By selling their software at "competitive prices"
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and trying to prove the unworthiness of their rival's work, companies compete
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for "product placement," "competitive positioning," "prime marketshare," or
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any number of obscure euphemisms, all of which mean selling "our" product and
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causing "theirs" not to be sold. There exists a large undercurrent of greed,
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espionage, dishonesty, and hostility in this endeavor, and many will
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understand that I do not write that in paranoia. Companies are often forced to
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bundle certain software/hardware or risk losing business, paying outrageous
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prices (read: fines), or any number of other negative outcomes. Naming no
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names, there are magazines and computer journals which are paid, literally, to
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not advertise the products of various companies, to not offer the option or
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information necessary to consider an opposing product. It is not only the
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rival company which loses in this competition. In this, we all lose.
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<P>
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Diametrically opposed to this is <B>Cooperation</B>, which is, again literally
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stated, the endeavor to work together for a common goal or purpose. Much
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more broadly put, it is the act of aiding another in the pursuit of a goal in
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such a way as to promote the attainment of a goal which you are pursuing. In
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other words, I may not be trying to achieve the same thing that you are, but my
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helping you may further my cause as well. The most positive factor in
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cooperative endeavors is their ability to ensure mutually dependent success.
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If my helping you furthers my own goal, then I become fully committed to your
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success, and you to mine. If you fail, then I fail. The benefits of
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cooperation, when stated without the trappings of culture, are abundantly
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clear; however, they are often ignored or forgotten when competition places
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its very effective blinders on us.
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<P>
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<B>Why is Competition So Bad?</B>
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<P>
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When all but the most cynical of us think of competition, many ideas swim
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forward in our minds. The accomplishment of the pioneers of America, baseball
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and the Yankees (or whomever you may root for), the victory of World War II,
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the possibilities are countless. What all of these thoughts share is that
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they applaud the winners, who rarely make up more than 50% of the total. The
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situation which is always created is one in which there is an inevitability
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of failure. <I>There will be a loser.</I> Why do we accept this? Because the
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positive spin on the many benefits and few negative aspects of competition
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that we have all grown up seeing, and which all but 2% of you reading this
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firmly believe, are akin to brainwashing.
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<P>
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Now don't crucify me, or at least wait until I'm finished. When I use the
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term brainwashing, I'm not saying "all of you are mindless idiots, the
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pawns of the media." I am only saying that our belief in competition
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perpetuates itself in the media, and we see it literally hundreds if not
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thousands of times a day, so much that we come to think of it as the "natural
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order" of things. We have been socialized to accept it. In our minds,
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competition has become the healthiest way to better any situation, be it the
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consumer's choice, the product's effectiveness, or the game itself. It is
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normal, it is healthy, and it is "human nature." I can assure you, as an
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anthropologist and as an anticompetitive person, that competition is
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<I>not</I> a natural human tendency, it is <I>not</I> human nature. (In
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fact, I have yet to see anything that has been labeled human nature actually
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be so, mainly because human nature is most often used as a justification for
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something that is otherwise negative, how many times is the donation to a
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charity shrugged off as "human nature?")
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<P>
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I should here note that there are two main forms of competition which can be
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discussed. The first I'll call <B>Situational Competition</B>.
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This is competition based on an external, unavoidable situation, such as
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competition for food where there is little. Basically, this is a struggle for
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survival, and I would argue that in this sense competition emphatically
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<I>is</I> human nature. We are all animals (theological arguments aside) and
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we will therefore do what we must to survive. Strangely enough, it is often
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these situations which cause humans to cooperate completely. Weird species, us.
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<P>
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The second form I call <B>Conceptual Competition</B>. This is competition
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based on an internal, conceptual situation. Here, we find the competition to
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which I am opposed, that being the desire to be the only holder of a status or
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conceptual prize, be it money, power, fame, etc. Ironically, it is this form
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of competition which is often cited as human nature, a supposition for which
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there is little, if any, support in the social or natural scientific
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literature [2]. If there is to be a single dominant principal of human nature
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in this argument, it would most certainly be cooperation; however, to argue
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that <I>anything</I> is just human nature is to forget that every individual
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will act differently, however slightly, in every situation. There is no single
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"human nature" because the topic is so vast, and so dynamic.
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<P>
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<B>How the Free Software Community (co)Operates</B>
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<P>
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I would argue, as I believe most social scientists would, that the natural
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tendency of human beings is in fact cooperation. This tendency manifests
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itself nicely in the practices and beliefs of the Free Software Community.
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Unfortunately, I am unable to state honestly that either free software
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advocates in general, or Linux users in particuliar, are individually
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non-competitive. I have seen far too many instances of "number dropping [a]"
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and other things to say this with much conviction. The truth is that there are
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very few people as [crazy, pointless, stupid] anticompetitive as I am,
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making it a rule to help an opposer beat me at a game in order to better
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their game. The very great majority of people are individually very
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competitive. And the acts of the FSC itself are, in a sense, competitive. They
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are competitive in that they try to offer a substutite for a proprietary
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product, admittedly, a weak argument, but that pleases me. The <I>goal</I> of
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the FSC, however, is free access to information for everyone. The desired
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outcome of the endeavor is not to convince people that a given free product is
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in any way "better" than a proprietary product (though very often it is), it
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is only to offer the product freely and openly to all.
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<P>
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Also, competition is (at least as far as I can tell) anathema to the
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innerworkings and the dynamics of the FSC. Competition as a principle cannot
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survive in this community. This is because the entire community fails in its
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desired goal if those within the community fail. The general rule in the
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free software community (and in the broader hacker community [b] as well) is
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cooperation, or my answer to Alfie Kohn's idea of MEGA, that is
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<I>Mutually Achievable Goal Attainment</I>, MAGA.
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<P>
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The rules as I have come to learn them are as follows:
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<OL>
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<LI>Learn everything you can about [fill in blank with programming,
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electronics, computers, or whatever else you fancy]
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<LI>Never exclude another
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from learning about [see above] <LI>Offer freely what you learn/do, so that
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others might use/learn from it <UL>
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<LI><FONT="-1"><B>Note:</B> Charging enough money to put food on your table is
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acceptable. The corollary to this rule is "help your fellow hacker by giving
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him enough money to put food on his table." The philosophy being that if he
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dies of starvation there's one less good brain on the task :-)</FONT>
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</UL>
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<LI>Never destroy/break the work of another person. That's a cracker's job,
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and we often don't like them.
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</OL>
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<P>
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Of course, this list is neither exhaustive nor exclusive, but it shows the
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inherent cooperation involved. The idea of the Free Software Movement is to
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allow free information access to all, this precludes the idea of competition. If, for instance, I make information free to all, then I include potential rivals,
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and rivals cannot be rivals if there is nothing to fight about. This, of
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course, ignores the constant fear in the FSC that a proprietary company will
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take work done by honest FSC members and make it proprietary. There <I>are</I>
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rivals here. The hope is that adequate protection can be found so that what
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<I>is</I> free, <I>stays</I> free.
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<P>
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<B>Concluding Thoughts,<BR>
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or,<BR>
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The Last of the Diatribe</B>
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<P>
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There is competition everywhere, and companies promote this. How many times
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have we heard that something will "increase competition" in [insert business].
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It's a fallacy. One company owning everything is indeed bad. In that case we
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rest at the mercy of an "overlord," but many companies competing is not
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necessarily a better situation. The argument for competition is that a company
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will always produce better and more cost effective goods, in order to entice
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the buyers more than another company. Anyone who believes that this is what
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happens is- and I am <I>really</I> risking crucifixion here- fooling
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themselves. The real outcome is that companies bury patents so that you keep
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buying their goods (Westinghouse and the lifelong lightbulb), downplay or
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negatively affect the development of various beneficial techniques (American
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automobile companies, and petroleum companies would not want you to know
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about the 100+ miles to the gallon a ceramic engine and patent-buried cooling
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system can get you, and a notably efficient electric car is available in only
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two U.S. states, and then only because its availability is legislated), and
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use every method possible to remove all rival companies from their path to
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total information control (the real goal of MicroSoft and other large
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companies?).
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<P>
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Competition is, without fail, a negative proposition to the consumer and to
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the development of any technique/product. We hear constantly that competing
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companies produce better products because of competition, and that they do it
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"all for the benefit of the consumer." Imagine what could be produced if they
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were all honestly working together. Maybe one day the Free Software Movement
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will show us.
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<P>
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<HR>
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<B>Notes</B>
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<P>
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a: A variation of name dropping which involves the participant giving the
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number of the first Linux kernel he (I have yet to see a female name) used.
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This is always lower than someone else's number. What's the point fellas?
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<BR>
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b: Please do not confuse this with "cracker!" A hacker is, simply put, someone
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who revels in understanding. For a more definitive description of the
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difference between the two, see The Hacker Anti-Defamation
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League's <A HREF="http://members.xoom.com/jcenters/HADL.html">website.</A>
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<P>
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<B>References</B>
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<P>
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1: Kohn, Alfie. 1992. No Contest: The Case Against Competition. New York:
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Houghton Mifflin. p 4.
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<BR>
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2: See note 2, chapter 2 in Kohn.
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<!--===================================================================--> <P>
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<hr> <P> <center><H5>Copyright © 1999, J. W. Pennington <BR> Published
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in Issue 39 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, April 1999</H5></center>
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