

Getting Rich off Those Who Work for Free - maurycy
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1590440,00.html

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parker
I'm sorry, but saying that when I use sites like Flickr for free I'm lending
them free labour is like saying I'm an employee of NBC for watching TV.

~~~
astine
Not quite. Flickr, Youtube, et al. all derive their most value from user
contributions. What good would Youtube be if users didn't upload videos?

When described economically, labor is a resource and is one half of the
production function:

P = c K^a * L^b

where a, b, and c are constants. P is production, K is capital, and L is
labor.

Youtube provides the capital, their site, and the users provide the labor, the
adding of value through their videos.

Granted, the actual division isn't so clear cut in this case, or most cases,
but by using these sites, you add value in a way that is fundamentally
different than when you watch television.

~~~
parker
I'm not adding value to NBC's bottom line by watching their television
program?? It's called ratings. On the internet, we call them page views.

Either way, I think the equation is changed fundamentally when labour does not
need to be incentivized with money. The labour in this case is users, who
choose to create value with their own time. How can we have a discussion about
efficient inputs of labour when the price tends towards nothing? See, look,
I've gone and made my brain hurt!

~~~
astine
Who said you don't add to NBC's bottom line when you watch television? Of
course you do, otherwise they wouldn't show it. However, what you don't do is
you don't improve the quality of their programming, at least not directly.

The equation doesn't change I don't believe, just it's implications. You no
longer buy L, you have to earn it with K. Labour isn't free, even when you
don't pay for it in money. Its dynamics are just more complicated.

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craig-faber
The author doesn't quite get, or fails to mention, that many companies that
use Linux or make money from it, like Google, IBM, Motorola, Red Hat,
Trolltech, etc., invest money and programmer time back into the open source
projects they get software from - and this is not exactly altruistic. Still,
not a bad article.

~~~
jeroen
Indeed he doesn't mention it, but this gives me the impression that he does
_get_ it:

"Clever entrepreneurs and even established companies can profit from this
volunteerism--but only if they don't get too greedy. The key, Benkler says, is
'managing the marriage of money and nonmoney without making nonmoney feel like
a sucker.'"

When IBM invests in OSS the above is exactly what they're doing: giving back
part of their profit to keep everybody happy.

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Herring
Still equating OSS to anarchism & altruism, I see. The lessons of capitalism
vs communism must have been very hard because lots of otherwise intelligent
people can't frame OSS any other way.

