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0 pointsbenched12y ago0 comments

I have very often worried about how much goes undone, because it can't be done for a profit. As a musician who has never made a cent from it, I know that I make what I make because I want to. I know there are people who make crazy art/tech installations, who probably don't make money.

Still, I always wonder, what if any amazing things are technically feasible right now, that nobody is doing because there's no clear business plan?

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JoeAltmaier12y ago· 2 in thread

Lots of things. But if there's no business plan, then you'd be doing it for yourself. And honestly, doing something for a lot of people is vastly more helpful to all of us, than sitting alone at home with your toys.

My friend Tom always asks me, when I'm suggesting rolling our own whatever (software) "Joe, we CAN do anything. What SHOULD we do?" meaning how should we spend our limited time and effort most productively. And the free market is a great measure of what's productive.

cottonseed12y ago

> But if there's no business plan, then you'd be doing it for yourself

That's a false dichotomy. Did Stallman write gcc and emacs for himself? Did Linus have a Linux business plan?

uiri12y ago

Linus wrote Linux initially as an exercise to learn about writing kernels for i386. That it was just a hobby and not intended to be professional was even in the initial release announcement.

It is also possible to view Stallman as having written gcc and emacs so that he could live according to his own moral views with regards to software. That other people benefit from these pieces of software seems to be an altruistic component of Stallman's ethical worldview but ultimately a side effect of Stallman's personal goal of not needing to touch proprietary software. If Stallman was willing to compromise on his moral convictions, it is likely that neither gcc nor emacs would exist as they do today.

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