Why can't the entire world work like this?

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DISCLAIMER: This MAY SEEM like advertisement, which it is NOT!
It is merely presented as an EXAMPLE, of something that WORKS according to what I want.
Btw. nobody earns any money on this.

www.blender.org

Blender is a free (in the sense of: Free of charge, free of ads, no limitations. Well, unbelieveable, but true) and pretty advanced 3D-modelling software that is gaining more and more ground in the
3D- and VFX-industry (Hollywood doesn't yet use it, but some smaller studios do use it, mainly in Germany and Netherlands).

Blender is entirely free. This means that everybody who can and wants to contribute to the project, can do so.
People collaborate to produce this magnificant software.

Now, why can't the entire world work like this?

Why can't EVERYTHING be free, like Blender? Why can't EVERYBODY contribute with what they can and want, like they do in Blender?

If the Blender Foundation project can work, why can't the entire world work like this?

There are a lot of good Open Source software packages that can do everything that their expensive counterparts can do.

Open Office=Microsoft Office
Gimp=Photoshop

And Firefox, of course. Though nowadays all the big-shots are just trying to make Firefox clones.

The only thing about Open Office is that it can't actually match Microsoft Office. GIMP can replace Photoshop, Blender can replace Maya, but Open Office IS crap.
I've tried it, and there lacks a lot of features, such as inserting an editable Table/Calendar in its equivalent of Publisher (can't remember what it is called).

But Open Source is relevatively better than commercial software, and I am emphasizing relatively, because it isn't actually better in terms of functions right now.
What I mean is that if the Open Source people had the money that commercial software companies has, they'd make much better software than anything Microsoft or other could ever imagine.

I am basing this assumption on the features the Open Source software has already, now when they don't have that much money to develop software/new features.

Actually, a lot of open-source software is heavily sponsored. Apache receives 100,000 dollars annually from Microsoft, and even more from Yahoo and Google. Linus Tovalds -- the king of the open-source community -- has a net worth of 150 million dollars, because of stocks in various developers who get by with sponsor and donor money.

Generally, for large scale, feature complete operating systems, advanced graphics software, and so on to have the same quality as proprietary software, a lot of money is needed. You can see all of the sponsors of Linux Mint (one of the few distros that's actually feature complete and valid substitute for Windows and OS X) here: http://www.linuxmint.com/sponsors.php

what about operating systems?

Why?

1. A person has a right to be paid for the product of his/her creativity and labor. If a person wants to work on a group project for free, he/she is getting the fruit of that labor...the gratification of doing something they want for free. It cannot be forced upon someone.

2. Open source has inherent flaws that MIGHT be fixed, but some things are best done in secret. Letting people see the source code means someone with a nefarious goal can find a way to circumvent or corrupt the product. Hence, open source is free, but you might be sacrificing security by using it. Some places can not or will not employ open source products because of this factor.

As opposed to every major software company ever which inserted backdoors into all of their software on purpose so you-know-who could peek in whenever they wanted.

Better to deal with a threat from one source than from thousands of sources.

I LOVE BLENDER!! !!

I totally suck at it, but it is a freakin' awesome piece of 'ware.

They can. But they don't want to without incentive. Money provides an incentive. Barter of goods and services is another incentive. In the case of Blender and other opensource projects (I am counting wikipedia too), probably the biggest incentive is so that the thing will exist. This works for some things and doesn't work for others. What is the incentive for somebody to spend a lot of time in an unhealthy, unpleasant mine? Well, somebody has to do it in order for computers (and so much else) to exist. But the people who actually do it probably don't even use computers themselves. They have to be incentivized by money (or violence, that's probably happened too). Who would be willing to do the unpleasant but necessary work to keep the world going if not for money?



Freeloader problem. This problem was tackled by small human tribes millenia ago with the obvious incentive of survival. But that only works on a very small scale. Blender just plain ignores the freeloader problem because in this very limited instance it isn't a problem. The people who wrote it don't depend on it to stay alive. But if "contribute what you want and it will somehow all work out" suddenly became the way we managed our food supply, waste disposal, energy acquisition, safety (including police, fire, military etc.), medicine etc. etc., the freeloader problem would become very important indeed. Small communities before the invention of money figured out a way (which probably included violence and kicking people out of the tribe for freeloading) but on a large scale it is unworkable.

Spend some time in a commune (which I did back in the day) and you will get a better sense for how vital it is that contributing "what you want" doesn't become the way things are run. There are unpleasant tasks that must be done and the hope that some people will just somehow like them and want to do them just never materialized. And that was on a small scale with like minded people who did not attempt to freeload (which would have got them kicked out).

If you were talking only about code and not literally everything, then other posters have brought up excellent points about security and quality.

Actually, because of the budgets and the fact that there are people who continuously oversee the development, there aren't that many flaws. The only recurring flaw I can think of, is that a lot of it is written in C rather than C++ or C#.

C code is a pain in the ass to work with, it's nightmarish to debug, it slows down development a lot (because there's often an elusive variable causing memory leaks, which you have to search for days to find). No userspace application for x86 architecture these days should be written exclusively in C.

When it comes to security, a lot of enterprises actually develop their own security systems or improve upon existant systems with proprietary code. That way, all kinds of people can't get in.

Because not every job is a fun, intellectually challenging activity which people will happily do for free, as a sort of collaborative hobby. In fact, very few are.

I know a bunch of research scientists. If they all won the lottery or something, I think quite a few would keep on working anyway, because they love their work. Likewise some teachers, some medical professionals, musicians, craftsmen who make furniture or violins in a basement workshop. But people who collect garbage, operate factory machinery, drive a truck or a combine harvester all day? They work to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. Good luck getting a plumber to come fix your toilet just for fun.

Maybe in some distant Star Trek future, all tedious or unpleasant tasks will be done by robots or rendered unnecessary by replicators, and people will be able to spend their lives doing whatever they please. In the meantime, nothing has been found to be superior to money as a medium of exchange and an incentive for people to do what others want done.

Why is this mine unsafe to work in? Who had a say in the architecture? Was it the workers or the owner?

Last edited by RushKing on 21 Apr 2014, 2:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Because of Taylorism

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa4_ihxT9rI[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNqwiRTo64k[/youtube]

Mines are inherently unsafe. They are just holes in the ground and prone to cave-ins. Things can be done to make them not quite as unsafe but they will never be as safe as working above ground. The company that digs it and puts stabilizers in has a say in the architecture but even with stabilizers there is risk. In order for a hole in the ground to be very safe, it needs complete structural support. The catch is, once complete structural support is in place, it's no longer a mine because the walls are sealed off.

Janissy


RushKing

I am not saying what is or isn't unpleasant based off of what I personally like to do. I am basing it off of what large numbers of people are willing to do for free. If a job won't get done unless somebody is paid, then it must be unpleasant. Plenty of people pick up litter for free for a little while (I've done it mself) but how many people are willing to work with raw sewage for free? Or dispose of medical waste? Or work in a mine? (had to say it). For any unpleasant job I can think of, you can probably google up an example of somebody who did it for free. But a person here and there isn't enough. These jobs have to be done routinely and by a far larger number of people than the ones who may have volunteered for an hour here and there.

And then there are the jobs that are not dangerous or icky but certainly are annoying- annoying enough that people won't do it without compensation. Luangizbao gave an example upthread of a plumber coming over to fix your toilet. That isn't as high on the ick list as working in a sewage treatment plant, but it's still not the sort of thing that large numbers of people are willing to do for the sheer joy of it. Those toilets also have to be connected to the town/cit system by large pipes. Who will choose to do that just because it needs doing?

Luangizbao gave a good way to measure whether a job is unpleasant or not. If the people doing it won the lottery, would they still do it? Some people in creative, rewarding jobs definately would. But I have yet to hear a city worker say he would keep hauling pipe if he won the lottery.

Taylorism gave us the "cog in the machine" aspect of many jobs and that is definately unpleasant. Nobody likes being a cog in a machine. But even without his way of doing things, lots of jobs still aren't fun, intellectually challenging activities people will happily do for free as a collaborative hobby. The Amish barn raising way of doing things does make some jobs more bearable than they became after Taylor. But a lot of things are just not going to be like that no matter how you spin it. There is just no way of making the disposal of waste a job that people clamor for but civilization collapses without it. Sewer pipe raising doesn't have the homespun charm of barn raising but the Amish must have had to do it too. Or outhouse raising. These things have to be done but they aren't something many (or enough) people like doing.