In a Time article about the future of journalism — the problem of course is that it is free online — Walter Isaacson writes:
Others smarter than we were had avoided that trap. For example, when Bill Gates noticed in 1976 that hobbyists were freely sharing Altair BASIC, a code he and his colleagues had written, he sent an open letter to members of the Homebrew Computer Club telling them to stop. “One thing you do is prevent good software from being written,” he railed. “Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?”
Many people do professional work for nothing: the creators of open-source software, for one. Not to mention bloggers who write about their professional expertise (such as me) or my friend Carl Willat (who made a commercial for nothing). Many book writers do professional work (in the sense that what they write is based on their profession) for next to nothing.
According to my theory of human evolution before occupational specialization came hobbies — skilled work done for nothing. The mental tendencies that led us to do hobbies are still within us
Interesting to think about software and Open Source in comparison to journalism. I want to point one thing out, though, about Open Source. Though many Open Source projects are open to, and receive input from, a wide variety of contributors, most of the huge Open Source projects, like Linux, are being developed by paid, professional coders employed to do so by large corporations.
Why? Because it is in the interest of the corporations to do so. Yet, they return their contributions to the public (usually under some sort of Open Source license), where anyone can use them.
Point is, it’s possible that in the future people will make money being journalists, but that their incomes will not depend on restricting access to the works they create.
You can “give away” your work, and still make money from it.
Well, but Gates’ question remains: who can afford to do professional work for nothing? Such producers still have to eat and pay the rent. One can choose to give away some part of what one produces, but not all. You may do a lot of work for free (including this blog, for which I am grateful), but you certainly don’t do ALL of your professional work for free.
One question I have is this: in Gates’ world a man can love his work and simultaneously get paid for it, whereas in the free software world, one will never be paid for work one loves because someone is already doing it for free. So doesn’t it follow that in the free software world, programmers have to do work they detest so they can give away the stuff they love doing?
I guess that’s not so far from the real world, is it? It’s great for the consumer, but is it really all that wonderful for the producer?