Things i Hate (Or: Rants by an Old Man) Post: 303030386

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The Lounge What is on Your Mind? Things i Hate (Or: Rants by an Old Man) Post 303030386 by bakunin on Friday 8th of February 2019 04:04:51 PM

02-08-2019

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Corona688

Looked at in that light, they're as pure-as-snow as they were in 1998. They're still chugging along "for free", and if their search isn't what it's was, it's still on the "good" side of okay. We just finally understand the implications of what they've been selling, and to whom, all along.

Well, this is simply capitalism in action: a capitalist company has one (and only one) purpose and that is generating revenue for its owner(s). Everything else is just a means to that end. A supermarket doesn't want to get fresh vegetables for you, but selling them is their way of getting to your money. The same with Google. They are not a "search-engine", they are a company looking for profit and the search engine is just their means of making it. That means, as long as people use it in large enough quantities they couldn't care less about how successful these people are in finding what they search for.

Google is nothing like "pure-as-snow" at all. It is just that the profit rates in this specific kind of industry was big enough for them to feel no pressure to "optimize" (say: enlarge the amount of revenue per transaction) their business and still make a lot of money. Once that changed and competitors were there they did exactly that and did like any other company. Like the insurance company that advertises "we want you to feel safe" while minimising their expenditures and maximising your rates. After all, the difference between what you pay them and what they pay you back is what they make.

So, bottom line: if you don't like how football is played you cannot ask teams to use suboptimal strategies, you have to change the rules. These rules are responsible for some strategy being optimal and if you change them some other strategy will become optimal. If you don't like how capitalism works you cannot rely on companies discovering their "heart" but you have to change the rules of how production and consumption in our society works.

Be prepared, though, that this will not work peacefully at all. Our society is based on rules which guarantee that with much money also comes much power. To undertake to wrestle power from the hands of those who have it has always been a violent episode in history. The ones with power usually cling to it and don't want to give it to others.

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LEARN ABOUT ULTRIX

fsf-funding

FSF-FUNDING(7)                                                          GNU                                                         FSF-FUNDING(7)

NAME

       fsf-funding - Funding Free Software

DESCRIPTION

       Funding Free Software

       If you want to have more free software a few years from now, it makes sense for you to help encourage people to contribute funds for its
       development.  The most effective approach known is to encourage commercial redistributors to donate.

       Users of free software systems can boost the pace of development by encouraging for-a-fee distributors to donate part of their selling
       price to free software developers---the Free Software Foundation, and others.

       The way to convince distributors to do this is to demand it and expect it from them.  So when you compare distributors, judge them partly
       by how much they give to free software development.  Show distributors they must compete to be the one who gives the most.

       To make this approach work, you must insist on numbers that you can compare, such as, "We will donate ten dollars to the Frobnitz project
       for each disk sold."  Don't be satisfied with a vague promise, such as "A portion of the profits are donated," since it doesn't give a
       basis for comparison.

       Even a precise fraction "of the profits from this disk" is not very meaningful, since creative accounting and unrelated business decisions
       can greatly alter what fraction of the sales price counts as profit.  If the price you pay is $50, ten percent of the profit is probably
       less than a dollar; it might be a few cents, or nothing at all.

       Some redistributors do development work themselves.  This is useful too; but to keep everyone honest, you need to inquire how much they do,
       and what kind.  Some kinds of development make much more long-term difference than others.  For example, maintaining a separate version of
       a program contributes very little; maintaining the standard version of a program for the whole community contributes much.  Easy new ports
       contribute little, since someone else would surely do them; difficult ports such as adding a new CPU to the GNU Compiler Collection con-
       tribute more; major new features or packages contribute the most.

       By establishing the idea that supporting further development is "the proper thing to do" when distributing free software for a fee, we can
       assure a steady flow of resources into making more free software.

SEE ALSO

       gpl(7), gfdl(7).

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (c) 1994 Free Software Foundation, Inc.  Verbatim copying and redistribution of this section is permitted without royalty; alter-
       ation is not permitted.

gcc-4.3.0                                                           2007-05-12                                                      FSF-FUNDING(7)