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From: jim@THRUSH.STANFORD.EDU (Jim Helman)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: reinventing the wheel (was Re: Software Tax: how and why?)
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Date: 24 Aug 89 18:59:44 GMT
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jes@mbio.med.upenn.edu (Joe Smith) writes:

	There are lots of resources considered important enough for
	society to subsidize a significant fraction of the costs,
	especially start up costs.  Interestingly, all the examples I
	can think of co-exist with various privately funded
	alternatives which cover more specialized niches.

Yep.  Free and commercial developments are not by any means mutually
exclusive.  In my opinion, the GNU effort is worthy of receiving
subsidies from government, universities and industry.  And in various
forms, mostly through donation or use of equipment, it apparently has
been receiving such assistance.

The difficult question is whether this should be formalized on a large
scale, e.g. a software tax.  The proper allocation of resources for
building highways is relatively obvious given the existence of major
cities and traffic patterns, but the choice of proper directions in
"free" software development is not.  Government usually screws up when
it allocates resources for problems where the solutions are not
completely apparent, and frequently even when they are.  (You can
tell, I'm no socialist.)  I don't think a National Software
Foundataion could ever do an adequate job of it, besides which the
acronym NSF is already taken.

Perhaps, some government subsidized programs are in order, e.g. the
existing NSF funding FSF, but privately funded development by software
hoarders out for a profit will always be around, and thank God (or
human nature) for it.  The more the merrier.

Jim Helman
Department of Applied Physics			P.O. Box 10494
Stanford University				Stanford, CA 94309
(jim@thrush.stanford.edu) 			(415) 723-4940