Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Free software: Free software refers to software that grants users the freedom to run, share, modify, and distribute it without limitations. It aligns with specific principles outlined in the Free Software Foundation's definition, ensuring users' freedom to use the software for any purpose, study its functionality, adapt it to their needs, and share improvements with others, fostering collaboration and openness in software development. See also Software._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Yochai Benkler on Free Software - Dictionary of Arguments
Benkler I 321 Free Software/Software/developed countries/developing countries/Benkler: In the context of development, free software has the potential to play two distinct and significant roles. The first is offering low-cost access to high performing software for developing nations. The second is creating the potential for participation in software markets based on human ability, even without access to a stock of exclusive rights in existing software. At present, there is a movement in both developing and the most advanced economies to increase reliance on free software. In the United States, the Presidential Technology Advisory Commission advised the president in 2000 to increase use of free software in mission-critical applications, arguing the high quality and dependability of such systems. To the extent that quality, reliability, and ease of self-customization are consistently better with certain free software products, they are attractive to developing-country governments for the same reasons that they are to the governments of developed countries. In the context of developing nations, the primary additional arguments that have been made include cost, transparency, freedom from reliance on a single foreign source (read, Microsoft), and the potential of local software programmers to learn the program, acquire skills, and therefore easily enter the global market with services and applications for free software. Free I 322 software may or may not involve an up-front charge. Even if it does not, that does not make it cost-free. However, free software enables an open market in free software servicing, which in turn improves and lowers the cost of servicing the software over time. More important, because the software is open for all to see and because developer communities are often multinational, local developers can come, learn the software, and become relatively low-cost software service providers for their own government. Other arguments in favor of government procurement of free software focus on the value of transparency of software used for public purposes. The last and quite distinct potential gain is the possibility of creating a context and an anchor for a free software development sector based on service. Software services represent a very large industry. In the United States, software services are an industry roughly twice the size of the movie and video industry. Software developers from low- and middle-income countries can participate in the growing free software segment of this market by using their skills alone. >Software/Stallman, >Open source software._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Benkler I Yochai Benkler The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom New Haven 2007 |
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> Counter arguments against Benkler
> Counter arguments in relation to Free Software
Ed. Martin Schulz, access date 2024-04-28