BWAHAHAAA !!!

Story: When It Comes To FOSS, Who Don’t You Trust?Total Replies: 11
Author Content
henke54

Jun 10, 2013
5:17 AM EDT
The bunch of BSA (including Oracle) has made a report :
Quoting:increasing use of properly licensed software by 1 percent would add US$20 billion to the U..S economy, US$7.6 billion to the Japanese economy, and US$1.2 billion to the Indian economy, according to the joint report Competitive Advantage: The Economic Impact of Properly Licensed Software released in May.
http://www.zdnet.com/in/use-of-licensed-software-can-boost-i...
linux4567

Jun 10, 2013
8:39 AM EDT
> "increasing use of properly licensed software by 1 percent would add US$20 billion to the U..S economy"

It wouldn't add anything to the economy, it would simply DIVERT money from other purposes to the pockets of commercial software companies.
Fettoosh

Jun 10, 2013
8:55 AM EDT
It is more accurate to say, increasing use of properly licensed software by 1 percent would rob that much money from local economies just like oil is sucking the blood out of many local economies.

Bob_Robertson

Jun 10, 2013
9:01 AM EDT
> It wouldn't add anything to the economy, it would simply DIVERT money from other purposes to the pockets of commercial software companies.

It never ceases to amaze me how easily people fall for the "something for nothing" fallacy.

Every penny spent one way must therefore not be spent some other way.
brideoflinux

Jun 10, 2013
9:02 AM EDT
Ha! This might be true if every time someone purchased a software license that meant another product being made, which meant people being employed in manufacturing, transportation, etc. However, buying a licences for bits and bytes would do just as 4567 and Fettoosh say.
CFWhitman

Jun 10, 2013
9:56 AM EDT
To be completely fair, the same study also claims that an increase in the use of pirated software would also boost the economy, just not as much. Of course it's still a completely biased study, so it's rather meaningless.

I love how the study calls the BSA a 'non-profit organization.' Sure, the BSA is a 'non-profit' that just happens to promote the interests of a bunch of for profit companies, and those companies just happen to be the members of the BSA. I'm not really sure how that qualifies as 'non-profit' in the real world, but then I remember that the BSA creates a fantasy world to issue its reports from. Perhaps they could attach a disclaimer to all of their reports that said something along the lines of, 'The BSA is not a real non-profit organization. We've disguised it, badly, it as a non-profit organization because we think you're all too stupid to know the difference.'

I know, in reality it doesn't matter in business and politics whether a pretense actually fools anyone or not. The various business and political organizations involved all agree to participate in the pretense, and that's all that matters.
Fettoosh

Jun 10, 2013
11:21 AM EDT
Quoting: I'm not really sure how that qualifies as 'non-profit' in the real world,


May be just because all the funds they reap from donations and revenues are totally spent on salaries and misc. expenses (parties & compensations) and the balance sheets shows zero amount and no profit left to be considered a "for profit organization". :-)

jdixon

Jun 10, 2013
1:33 PM EDT
> To be completely fair, the same study also claims that an increase in the use of pirated software would also boost the economy, just not as much.

But since the amount of software which can be pirated is much greater (probably by at least an order of magnitude) then the amount of software people can afford to buy...

Obviously everyone should immediately start pirating as much software as possible in order to improve the economy.

> I'm not really sure how that qualifies as 'non-profit' in the real world.

It's strictly an IRS designation indicating that donations to that organization aren't taxable. Recent news stores indicate that further discussion of the ins and outs of that would rapidly lead to TOS violations, however.
CFWhitman

Jun 10, 2013
2:13 PM EDT
My point about the BSA being not really 'non-profit' was not because I didn't understand how it's a non-profit organization for legal purposes (I would have thought the third paragraph would make that clear enough). My point was really about the fact that the published reports claim to come from a 'non-profit organization,' which is not really true in that context. They may be able to claim it legally, but that doesn't make it true.
jdixon

Jun 10, 2013
3:52 PM EDT
> They may be able to claim it legally, but that doesn't make it true.

Well, that was sort of my point too. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear. Their claim is strictly a legal one, having little to no bearing on reality.
BernardSwiss

Jun 10, 2013
7:30 PM EDT
Quoting: >> It wouldn't add anything to the economy, it would simply DIVERT money from other purposes to the pockets of commercial software companies.

> It never ceases to amaze me how easily people fall for the "something for nothing" fallacy.

> Every penny spent one way must therefore not be spent some other way.


This seems like a variation on the "broken windows" fallacy. I'm not sure what it should br called. Perhaps the "casino fallacy"? The Walmart fallacy"?

Or just maybe even, all things considered, :-P the "cigarettes fallacy"?
Bob_Robertson

Jun 11, 2013
8:23 AM EDT
Bernard, I agree it is the Broken Window(s) fallacy. It takes far longer to explain "what is unseen" than to say "trying to get something for nothing".

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