badgolferman said:
You are obviously an intelligent person and have a Utopia in mind as
indicated by your headers. But the reality of the world is that people are
not as altruistic as you wish them to be.
The reason why people cannot be as nice and altruistic as they
actually would like to be is a cultural pattern they are being taught.
It is not something we are born with. Our children and youngsters are
forced to become tougher and more devious year after year.
They can no longer react naturally, and they have suspicious minds.
Why can't we have public domain freeware, which would enable us to
develop software together in an optimal way?
Because people react to the idea with: "But then somebody would take
it and sell it."
Well, so what?
We would just make even better programs together than anybody ever
could write alone. Who cares if somebody can make money on it too?
There is no real reason to worry about that possibility. But people
are so much trained in being suspicious so they are hindered from
cooperating in an optimal way.
Every programmer is working alone, suspiciously guarding his source
code, putting all kinds of limits on his software.
We see every day on television how dangerous and devious people are.
People are trained by media and the social world to never relax, to
always keep their weapons ready. It is a cultural ideal.
It is manly. It is about the manly honor.
It is all about what means people can allow themselves to use.
When people no longer use harassments, mobbing, threats, violence, to
achieve what they think is necessary, then we can start living for
real, then there is no need for money or weapons anymore.
