FC: Cato's Julian Sanchez replies to CEI on Linux suitability

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Wed Sep 25 2002 - 22:14:11 PDT

  • Next message: Declan McCullagh: "FC: UCSD orders student group to delete links to terrorist sites"

    [This is an interesting exchange because Cato and CEI are both prominent 
    libertarian think tanks in Washington and typical allies who agree on many, 
    many topics. Then again, not everyone at a think tank agrees with all their 
    colleagues, let alone their allies. Previous Politech message: 
    http://www.politechbot.com/p-04007.html --Declan]
    
    ---
    
    From: "Julian Sanchez" <jsanchezat_private>
    To: <declanat_private>
    Subject: DeLong on Linux
    Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 12:43:51 -0400
    
    Declan:
    
    I had a few thoughts on Jim DeLong's anti-Linux essay.  Feel free to post if
    you think Politechnicals might be interested.
    
      A preliminary observation: Jim closes with the suggestion that government
    keep its "hands off." As a reply to the Times's vague statement that
    government should "support" the development of Linux -- which could mean
    sending Linus Torvalds a monthly check, for all I know; they're not too
    specific -- that's sensible enough. But if the question is just "Which OS
    should government use?" then the state quite literally cannot "keep its
    hands off" without abstaining from computer use altogether. If it goes with
    any proprietary software, after all, the state necessarily acts as a market
    participant, and becomes a huge buyer of software licenses. This cannot help
    but affect software markets: the question is not "should the government have
    an influence here?" but "how can that influence be minimally pernicious?"
    The most plausible answer would seem to be: by spending less taxpayer bucks
    (viz., using software that doesn't need to be licensed) and, most
    importantly, by not excessively subsidizing any one firm (viz., Microsoft).
    It's also a little odd that DeLong cites IBM and several other large
    companies' recent calculations that, even given the money they'll have to
    spend on in-house coding and development, it's more cost effective to go
    with Linux than to pony up the money for licenses from Microsoft. It's not
    enough, after all, to point out that those who adopt the OS may have to pay
    for some programming or support work; one has to further ask "compared to
    what?" DeLong, as far as I can tell, doesn't.
    
    
    We also see the incentives point trotted out: when software is
    non-proprietary, programmers won't be willing to develop applications. Given
    the large number of Linux applications, especially when one considers the
    relative youth and small percentage of computers running the OS, this claim
    seems premature, if not in outright defiance of reality. The proper response
    to an observed empirical fact inconsistent with your expectations is not:
    "but I've got this theory!'" Barring good reason to be suspicious of the
    facts, one ought instead to wonder what might be wrong with the theory. NYU
    law prof. Yochai Benkler's piece "Coase's Penguin"
    [http://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.html] provides a reason to doubt the
    conventional wisdom on this: when the production function is sufficiently
    granular (viz., capable of being split up into small tasks) and potentially
    distributed over a large programming community, the incentives problem
    becomes trivial. Pure coding pleasure, reputation effects, or any number of
    other incentives can do the trick. The "viral" nature of the GPL license,
    which DeLong sees as a bug, is actually a feature in this regard. It means
    that even when a firm must pay a coder to develop something they need, the
    rest of the user community gets to "free ride" on that innovation. That may
    sound a bit commie, but it's also the way cultural production has worked for
    millenia. Whenever we enjoy works in the public domain, we free ride on the
    efforts of previous generations. It may be true that, even once Benkler's
    analysis is taken into account, the inability to fully internalize all
    benefits will result in somewhat less code produced at the margin. But as
    economists are forever telling us, one has to look at both sides of the
    ledger: weigh the difference in code produced under proprietary and open
    models (if Benkler's right, maybe not nearly as large as DeLong seems to
    think) against the benefit to the thousands or millions who can benefit from
    that code without cost and, perhaps even more importantly, use it as a
    stepping stone to further innovation by incorporating the source in new
    programs. I suppose it could turn out, once these things are considered,
    that DeLong's still right.  But on the basis of the analysis he's given us
    so far, the only verdict we can return is "not proven."
    
    pax-
    -js
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Julian Sanchez  -  jsanchezat_private  -  http://juliansanchez.com
    "Everyone may seek his own happiness in the way that seems good to himself,
    provided that he infringe not the freedom of others to strive after a
    similar end consistent with the freedom of all."
                                   -Immanuel Kant
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    
    
    
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
    You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
    To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
    This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
    Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/
    Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan
    CNET Radio 9:40 am ET weekdays: http://cnet.com/broadband/0-7227152.html
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Sep 26 2002 - 02:33:05 PDT