Are Bad Economic Times Good for Free Software? 357
Dog's_Breakfast writes "In a declining economy, software licenses become a luxury. Linux and the BSDs offer free alternatives. As the USA toys with the possibility of defaulting on its national debt (and thus risking economic collapse), the author wonders if this might not, at last, lead to 'The Year of the Linux Desktop.'"
Just in case... (Score:3, Informative)
Just in case people don't get the reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window [wikipedia.org]
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Wasn't there a guy just recently that "robbed" a bank of $20 and waited for the cops or something?
-nB
I think you mean this guy [slashdot.org]. He robbed the bank for $1 and surrendered, in order to get free health care in prison.
Jokes aside, the idea that robbing banks can help the economy sounds suspiciously like the broken window fallacy [wikipedia.org].
Political decisions (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, this depends heavily on the political climate. In most countries, there was a time of two or three decades after the Second World War when wealth flowed downwards overall. It was a slow movement to be sure, but when you look at indicators like inequality, or the share of national income that goes towards wages (as opposed to rents) the trend was clearly in favor of the "small guy".
Then the politics changed, and for the last few decades we have seen the same movement but in reverse.
What this boils down to is that there is nothing inevitable about a flow upward. It comes down to political choice - though one thing that I would agree with is that a government that does not enforce strong regulations tends to favor flows that go upwards.