funding-art-vs-funding-software.html (9651B)
1 <!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" --> 2 <!-- Parent-Version: 1.96 --> 3 <!-- This page is derived from /server/standards/boilerplate.html --> 4 <!--#set var="TAGS" value="essays cultural funding" --> 5 <!--#set var="DISABLE_TOP_ADDENDUM" value="yes" --> 6 <title>Funding Art vs Funding Software 7 - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title> 8 <!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/funding-art-vs-funding-software.translist" --> 9 <!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" --> 10 <!--#include virtual="/philosophy/ph-breadcrumb.html" --> 11 <!--GNUN: OUT-OF-DATE NOTICE--> 12 <!--#include virtual="/server/top-addendum.html" --> 13 <div class="article reduced-width"> 14 15 <h2>Funding Art vs Funding Software</h2> 16 17 <address class="byline">by <a href="https://www.stallman.org/">Richard 18 Stallman</a></address> 19 20 <p>I've proposed two new systems to fund artists in a world where we have 21 legalized sharing (noncommercial redistribution of exact copies) of 22 published works. One is for the state to collect taxes for the 23 purpose, and divide the money among artists in proportion to the cube 24 root of the popularity of each one (as measured by surveying samples 25 of the population). The other is for each player to have a 26 “donate” button to anonymously send a small sum (perhaps 27 50 cents, in the US) to the artists who made the last work played. 28 These funds would go to artists, not to their publishers.</p> 29 30 <p>People often wonder why I don't propose these methods for free 31 software. There's a reason for that: it is hard to adapt them to 32 works that are free.</p> 33 34 <p>In my view, works designed to be used to do practical jobs must be 35 free. The people who use them deserve to have control over the jobs 36 they do, which requires control over the works they use to do them, 37 which requires <a href="/philosophy/free-sw.html">the four freedoms</a>. 38 Works to do practical 39 jobs include educational resources, reference works, recipes, text 40 fonts and, of course, software; these works must be free.</p> 41 42 <p>That argument does not apply to works of opinion (such as this one) or 43 art, because they are not designed for the users to do practical jobs 44 with. Thus, I don't believe those works must be free. We must 45 legalize sharing them, and using pieces in remix to make totally 46 different new works, but that doesn't include in publishing modified 47 versions of them. It follows that, for these works, we can tell who 48 the authors are. Each published work can specify who its authors are, 49 and changing that information can be illegal.</p> 50 51 <p>That crucial point enables my proposed funding systems to work. It 52 means that if you play a song and push the “donate” 53 button, the system can be sure who should get your donation. Likewise, 54 if you participate in the survey that calculates popularities, the 55 system will know who to credit with a little more popularity because 56 you listened to that song or made a copy of it.</p> 57 58 <p>When one song is made by multiple artists (for instance, several 59 musicians and a songwriter), that doesn't happen by accident. They 60 know they are working together, and they can decide in advance how to 61 divide up the popularity that song later develops—or use the 62 standard default rules for this division. This case creates no 63 problem for those two funding proposals because the work, once made, 64 is not changed by others.</p> 65 66 <p>However, in a field of free works, one large work can have hundreds, 67 even thousands of authors. There can be various versions with 68 different, overlapping sets of authors. Moreover, the contributions 69 of those authors will differ in kind as well as in magnitude. This 70 makes it impossible to divide the work's popularity among the 71 contributors in a way that can be justified as correct. It's not just 72 hard work; it's not merely complex. The problem raises philosophical 73 questions that have no good answers.</p> 74 75 <p>Consider, for example, the free program GNU Emacs. Our records of 76 contributions to the code of GNU Emacs are incomplete in the period 77 before we started using version control—before that we have only 78 the change logs. But let's imagine we still had every version and 79 could determine precisely what code contribution is due to each of 80 the hundreds of contributors. We'd still be stuck.</p> 81 82 <p>If we wanted to give credit in proportion to lines of code (or should 83 it be characters?), then it would be straightforward, once we decide 84 how to handle a line that was written by A and then changed by B. But 85 that assumes each line as important as every other line. I am sure 86 that is wrong—some pieces of the code do more important jobs 87 and others less; some code is harder to write and other code is 88 easier. But I see no way to quantify these distinctions, and the 89 developers could argue about them forever. I might deserve some 90 additional credit for having initially written the program, and 91 certain others might deserve additional credit for having initially 92 written certain later important additions, but I see no objective way 93 to decide how much. I can't propose a justifiable rule for dividing 94 up the popularity credit of a program like GNU Emacs.</p> 95 96 <p>As for asking all the contributors to negotiate an agreement, we can't 97 even try. There have been hundreds of contributors, and we could not 98 find them all today. They contributed across a span of 26 years, and 99 never at any time did all those people decide to work together.</p> 100 101 <p>We might not even know the names of all the authors. If some code was 102 donated by companies, we did not need to ask which persons wrote that 103 code.</p> 104 105 <p>Then what about the forked or modified variants of GNU Emacs? Each 106 one is an additional case, equally complex but different. How much of 107 the credit for such a variant should go to those who worked on that 108 variant, and how much to the original authors of the code they got 109 from other GNU Emacs versions, other programs, and so on?</p> 110 111 <p>The conclusion is that there is no way we could come up with a 112 division of the credit for GNU Emacs and justify it as anything but 113 arbitrary. But Emacs is not a special case; it is a typical example. 114 The same problems would arise for many important free programs, and 115 other free works such as Wikipedia pages.</p> 116 117 <p>These problems are the reasons I don't propose using those two funding 118 systems in fields such as software, encyclopedias or education, where 119 all works ought to be free.</p> 120 121 <p>What makes sense for these areas is to ask people to donate to 122 <em>projects</em> for the work <em>they propose to do</em>. That 123 system is simple.</p> 124 125 <p>The Free Software Foundation asks for donations in two ways. We 126 ask for <a href="https://my.fsf.org/donate/"> general donations to 127 support the foundation's work</a>, and we invite <a 128 href="https://my.fsf.org/donate/directed-donations"> targeted 129 donations for certain specific projects</a>. Other free software 130 organizations do this too.</p> 131 </div> 132 133 </div><!-- for id="content", starts in the include above --> 134 <!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" --> 135 <div id="footer" role="contentinfo"> 136 <div class="unprintable"> 137 138 <p>Please send general FSF & GNU inquiries to 139 <a href="mailto:gnu@gnu.org"><gnu@gnu.org></a>. 140 There are also <a href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a> 141 the FSF. Broken links and other corrections or suggestions can be sent 142 to <a href="mailto:webmasters@gnu.org"><webmasters@gnu.org></a>.</p> 143 144 <p><!-- TRANSLATORS: Ignore the original text in this paragraph, 145 replace it with the translation of these two: 146 147 We work hard and do our best to provide accurate, good quality 148 translations. However, we are not exempt from imperfection. 149 Please send your comments and general suggestions in this regard 150 to <a href="mailto:web-translators@gnu.org"> 151 <web-translators@gnu.org></a>.</p> 152 153 <p>For information on coordinating and contributing translations of 154 our web pages, see <a 155 href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations 156 README</a>. --> 157 Please see the <a 158 href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations 159 README</a> for information on coordinating and contributing translations 160 of this article.</p> 161 </div> 162 163 <!-- Regarding copyright, in general, standalone pages (as opposed to 164 files generated as part of manuals) on the GNU web server should 165 be under CC BY-ND 4.0. Please do NOT change or remove this 166 without talking with the webmasters or licensing team first. 167 Please make sure the copyright date is consistent with the 168 document. 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