Free Software Law Analogy

Legislation and common law is available for anyone to use: there are, if you like, no license fees. Nevertheless, people obviously still make money out of the law, by making the information more easily accessible, providing expert advice and representation, and working in areas in which the law has not yet been discovered.

So, people can make money working with intellectual property even when the intellectual property is free.

This is one possible analogy for FreeSoftware: programmers can make money installing, customizing, explaining, and extending free software: just because the customer's allowed to do it themselves it doesn't mean they're interested in or capable of doing the work.

-- MartinPool

Not to mention producing custom software - the law analogy would be contract law, no? -- RobCrawford

Most lawyer jobs belong to the government too and the government is responsible for making the laws. We don't have a central regulating body making software, or one that requires programmers. Moreover, in Canada, when the federal government laid off large chunks of its staff, the average wage lawyers made dropped to less than minimum wage because there were so many of them. They had to work more hours than they declared in order to stay competitive. I don't intend to leave my fate up to a central regulating body with no accountability, especially one as ineffective as government. -- SunirShah

That's a very interesting rebuttal. I hate to think that things would work out like that.

I suppose I might say in response that software is essentially constructive, whereas law, though useful, can only regulate and redistribute the results of other work. There seems to be so much demand for software that it will consume all the resources likely to be available, though it's entirely possible that this will change. Still, most thoughtful people or companies in the industry could name at least half a dozen projects they'd do if they had the time/people/money. So hopefully people working more efficiently will produce better results with only a bit of turmoil.

The courts are overwhelmed too. -- ss

I don't think that, in general, the scarcity or salaries of programmers would (will?) be affected much by the use of free software. It seems to me that, for the most part, the only programmers who would be displaced are those who currently work for commercial software vendors. Does this really constitute the majority, or even a really large minority, of all programmers? I wouldn't think so. Just drawing from my own experience - of the couple of dozen or so programmers I know personally, only one actually works for a commercial software vendor; the rest all write custom software for companies that use that software to provide a service. -- MikeSmith

Don't forget the FreeSoftware Medicine Analogy.

CategoryLegal