Licensing: Open Source, Commercial, etc.

[Sparky]

Let's discuss licensing, because I still think it has not reached an ideal situation yet.

Values

We should distinguish between selfish and altruistic values/motivations. More on that later.

First, I'll discuss "selfish" values/motivations, things that we tend to assume people do for selfish reasons.

Credit. In normal situations, credit is valued and easy to give. This is known as attribution in some circles, which involves using an area in the work where credit can be given through listing second-hand contributions and involvements in a project. So we have credits pages and such where you can see a list of what resources were used in the making of the project and who did what.

But there are many people who invest a lot of time and consider their work to be necessarily compensated monetarily. Basically, some people want to be paid for what they do. So there are two major situations: either the work is "closed source" and considered confidential work as a "trade secret", and/or parts of it are open source while certain parts remain closed source.

People have different values and lifestyles, so compensation is not always what they desire. Compensation can even be handled through attribution, especially when people consider it a part of building a reputation. Compensation is usually in these ways, then: Reputation Development through Attribution, Shareware/Demo/Trial (feature-limited or time-limited trials) where you pay after you've experienced it enough to find value in paying for a full (fully-featured) copy, and Commercial where you pay before you experience that for which you paid.

In Commercial projects, there tend to be a lot of returns to the licensor, since people are not even sure that the experience is to their liking. That's the basis for shareware development, which can then justify a no-return policy since the handling of the project is not necessarily a gamble for the consumer who would otherwise only have second-hand hearsay, documentation, and marketing by which to determine if they should buy a license for something. And in software, you typically purchase a license which is a limited right to use a copy of the program; in the physical realm, it's the same where you buy a copy of an object but you are not allowed to make more copies of it to usurp the copyrights of the original licensor.

Pacing Yourself

With software, the people who made the software should determine beforehand how much time they are able to contribute towards the development of the program and then towards its customer support. Of course, documentation like ReadMe files and those areas where you can also have public and singular discussions like e-mail, forums and wikis allow customer support to run well with minimal additional effort on the parts of the developers. After they can say to themselves that they will have enough time to see the development stages through to approaching where they want the software to be, then they can being working. After they begin working, they should continue to streamline their approach and revise their goals as necessary based upon the time they have available.

This is why paying someone a single set fee (ie. commercial and shareware) is slighting the developer, undercutting their efforts from making more of an ideal version of the software through continuous revision. Greed should not be a factor, since that will only distract the developer from other more important tasks in life to which they must dedicate their time appropriately.

How we enact our values

When someone decides to make open source software, they see the value of the program's existence as its own reward; these people generally use the programs they develop for themselves -- which is why open source contributions are based upon the usefulness and goals of the software at hand, since only those who use the software would contribute to its development. The reward comes not from money but from the ability to do new things with that software or from the time and effort (in my opinion, people tend to focus too much on money in these situations) they save in their own work while using that program. So they benefit themselves from its development, so they find selfish reasons to contribute.

In the case where you have people who do something just for fun or just because they can, other people (who are not really involved in the process) see this as delegating their time towards a leisure activity. In other words, most people don't value that in which they do not participate; they don't understand a person's motivations. In academic studies, this corroborates the basis for participant observation. In participant observation, you participate in activities that you also study through observation. This involves careful awareness of emic and etic perspectives; the student must seek to avoid all previous personal bias and seek instead to learn the values of those who are participating in events and learn what they value and why they value it. I say this so that it is understood how few people will actually be able to appreciate something they have not themselves experienced and they will likely be blind to altruistic fervor and endeavors. People assume greed when then do not understand. But if they saw with eyes of compassion, they would seek to understand... and through understanding, they would have more things to notice (if they maintained their "outsider" perspective also) and they would find more motivation for seeking what is important in life.

We should distinguish between selfish and unselfish values. Selfish values seek reward or compensation for effort, while unselfish values seek to do something worthwhile for others, to be altruistic, to do good things. Most people do not understand that which they have not studied and participated in, so they will tend to wrongly assume selfish values. God forbid they enact that stupid falsehood... because that's where wars and violence result from greed, fear and pride. People need to treat each other with Compassion and learn from God what it means to thrive in loving righteousness and true justice for all people. Seek understanding through showing compassion for other people, treating everyone with the same love you want them to treat you with. Of course, this can all be learned in the Holy Bible, which you should learn of course so that you don't suffer from people's false accusations against you when you try to do good things. Seek understanding through showing compassion towards all people.

Essentially what I'm saying here is that we don't normally value other people until we experience what they do through participating in and observing their lives, through enacting participant observation and learning their values and motivations in order to appreciate through understanding and compassion and love.

So what do we do to make this an ideal situation where we can do things that reflect altruistic values?

First, it seems that credit is only valuable for archival purposes, to say who did what and for those who want to better understand a person's motivations and work. To put your name to your work otherwise is static; it does nothing besides maybe develop reputation if you use the same name for everything you do. That's why I use a different alias for different tasks: Sparky for this community, variations thereof for other gaming communities, and several different e-mail addresses for their own purposes. This also keeps things organized. If you call me Sparky, I know pretty much what we're going to be talking about and the history of your knowledge of who I am based upon what I've done and how I've used that name. If you call me LiquidSpark or SilentWave, I'll know that you know me through another avenue of gaming. Vegerot and I were talking about this briefly, since he pointed out I use United Nations Space Command for my HDM username. I did that because UNSC is a Halo figure of government, and I'm the admin there, so it fits; it's also specific to Halo just like that wiki is. I use Sparky here because in my mind it connotes playfulness, and this is an alias I use for gaming; I first used it in GameRanger back in the day before Monoman made MGM. This is something I considered when making Zeus's project files, since it is an open source application: do I use my real name or do I use an alias like Sparky? I don't have an alias that I use for application development, like I see in the names Andor (Boolean terms) and nil and of some other MGM members. But since it's a collaborative thing, I figure Sparky is appropriate just like I do some collaborative modding here through providing concept template mods.

A name indicates a charge of purpose.

So in my mind, I'm not expecting money to be thrown at me for making Zeus. It's not a work of greed, but something I am doing because I see a need for it, I'll be using it myself and that is the main reward, it can be argued to be developed in my leisure time, and I am using what I learn from its development in other projects. Altruism is still there and that is what motivates its development more than even its usefulness or need for its creation; I'm not doing it for myself, but my goals for it are invented as I notice different needs. There are higher priorities in my life, though, which is the main reason why it has taken me this long. The main priority for me this past year was to figure out what is important in life and figure out how I'm going to approach things in that way; now it seems the focus is leaning towards how do I treat other people, and the shining guideline is becoming compassion... since I know from experience and from God's Word that this is the only way. So yes, I encourage each person to determine for themselves what is important in life (streamline that process by reading the Bible) and then using that information to develop core values, then acting upon those values in order to prioritize tasks and turn their goals into ideals and to seek to improve life on earth -- not to "fix" people, but to learn through compassion and understand so that they can help people.

Apply this to work, and you'll figure out how to create an environment where altruism can thrive.