Re: [Patents] Research on Free Software Economics

[Gregory Aharonian <srctran@world.std.com>]

From a paper Seth cites:
>.... "The emergence of free software, and the phenomenal success
>of its flagship- [a list of software] - should force use to take
>a second look at the dominant paradigm we hold about productivity.

All such papers are flawed for their poor historical research.  First,
the 1990s did not see the EMERGENCE of free software.  Free software,
more honestly and accurately labelled public domain software, has been
around since the 1970s.  Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, government
laboratories and universities in America and Europe distributed large
amounts of public domain software, some the excellent collaborations of
people (often by exchanging magnetic tapes) in many locations.  Some
of the this software was the basis of entire software industries (the
classic being Spice).  In the 1980s, I published a directory of 
public domain software available in source code form from all of these
facilities, at one point listing 15,000 such programs.

THere is no new phenomena here, such new public relations words.

Greg Aharonian