To wash the taste of 180 proof ignorance out of my mouth that the last post left, I was happy to find a nice discussion of the GPL Barter Cycle on Groklaw.
The GPL Barter Cycle
What’s so great about the image is the discussion it breeds.
Everyone can benefit
Several people pointed out that the blue arrow should reflect that anyone can benefit from the Linux project, not just “Linux contributors”. This is actually a core part of the GPL, and what pushes GPL projects beyond a “members only” situation into a widespread, robust and successful endeavor.
Explaining Cooperation vs. Competition
An anonymous commentor left a compelling thought:
I have been thinking about the difference between cooperation and competition. The simplest description is:
- If you and I cooperate, then when you win, I win too. If you lose, then I lose.
- If you and I compete, then when you lose, I win. If you win, then I lose.
Destruction is easy, while construction is hard work. So competition leads to desperate attempts to destroy the other party, even if I cause damage to myself in the process: as long as I manage to do more damage to you than I do to myself, then I win!
Competitors cannot understand the GPL, they say things like: “Why would I give away my code?”. In reality, you do not give away your code: you still have all the code you release under the GPL!
But releasing code under the GPL helps other people: if you are competing, then helping someone else causes you to lose. If you are cooperating, then helping someone else helps everyone, including yourself, to win.
The GPL is like a lottery in which everyone wins: “give away” your $1 and get $10,000,000 in return. Who wouldn’t want a deal like that?
The beautiful thing is that I believe more and more people are coming to understand the power of cooperation, and realizing that not only can it equal competiton in terms of benefit for the user, but can often exceed it!
The Cycle
With the modification to represent non-contributing users, I think a strong visual is produced illustrating the cycle of value that GPL-based projects enjoy.
An interesting point to consider is if you think of a similar graph for non-copyleft Free Software projects. Do you view non-contributing corporate users in the same light as non-contributing individual users? How about non-contributing corporate users that consume Free Software and only release to a limited sub-set of paying customers? I think that represents taking value out of the cycle, like energy lost to heat and friction.
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