http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/comment/0,1000002985,39541519,00.htm
Uses the term "free software" rather than "open source", and appears to mean libre rather than merely gratis. (Though the intro and outro use "open source." However, in context I think that helps establish that by "free software" he does mean "libre" rather than "gratis.")
- d.
"David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com writes:
http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/comment/0,1000002985,39541519,00.htm
Uses the term "free software" rather than "open source", and appears to mean libre rather than merely gratis.
Yes. He uses “free software” and contrasts it with “proprietary software”, which one would expect of someone using free in the sense of freedom.
The article makes the familiar argument that in a healthy market any goods will tend to be priced very close to their marginal production cost, and the marginal cost of producing a new copy of an existing program is effectively zero; this is acknowledged by free software vendors, and not by proprietary software vendors.
(Though the intro and outro use "open source." However, in context I think that helps establish that by "free software" he does mean "libre" rather than "gratis.")
The intro and outro smell more of something added by an editor, so that doesn't necessarily mar the credibility of the article.
Ben Finney wrote:
The article makes the familiar argument that in a healthy market any goods will tend to be priced very close to their marginal production cost, and the marginal cost of producing a new copy of an existing program is effectively zero; this is acknowledged by free software vendors, and not by proprietary software vendors.
That's not true; plenty of proprietary software vendors give their software away at no charge, and some (and not enough imho) free software vendors charge for theirs.
I have a deep scepticism for arguments which say all software should be given away at no charge. The fixed costs of development are such that the "trend toward zero" is never actually reached for any but the most popular of software.
Cheers,
Alex.
On Thu, Nov 06, 2008 at 09:16:10PM +0000, Alex Hudson wrote:
Ben Finney wrote:
The article makes the familiar argument that in a healthy market any goods will tend to be priced very close to their marginal production cost, and the marginal cost of producing a new copy of an existing program is effectively zero; this is acknowledged by free software vendors, and not by proprietary software vendors.
That's not true; plenty of proprietary software vendors give their software away at no charge, and some (and not enough imho) free software vendors charge for theirs.
where of course the ones who give away proprietary software at a 0 price tag do it just to establish or tighen their monopoly grip.
I have a deep scepticism for arguments which say all software should be given away at no charge. The fixed costs of development are such that the "trend toward zero" is never actually reached for any but the most popular of software.
if you count the LOC of openoffice and divide it by the number of m$-office installations you get a price tag of about 1 euro or below (as an order of magnitude).
software that is not used that much often is much smaler. similar orders of magnitude are possible here.
what the article does not mention but what is important here: with free software you only have to develop once and do not have 3, 4 or 5 parallel development teams who can not share their code and have to reinvent the weel each on their own...
also: the neoclassical approach to this kind of problems that sees the world from the view point of the bussinesmen is not very helpful for this kind of calculations. the bussinessmen says: ok. i have invested 1 million into the development of the software. every piece i copy does not cost me extra. of course he wants to recup his costs and he wants as much as he can get for the software but if that is not possible he can calculated with a price tag of 0 for each additional copy. (as the article says.)
the marxist view (labor theory of value) and the neoricardian view is more appropriate here when calculating overall utility vor society: you devide the number of working hours and multiply it with a price of workhour and devide it by the number of copies required.
still a good article, though
greetings mond.
franz schaefer wrote:
On Thu, Nov 06, 2008 at 09:16:10PM +0000, Alex Hudson wrote
That's not true; plenty of proprietary software vendors give their software away at no charge, and some (and not enough imho) free software vendors charge for theirs.
where of course the ones who give away proprietary software at a 0 price tag do it just to establish or tighen their monopoly grip.
It doesn't matter what the motive is; the point was about the cost of production.
if you count the LOC of openoffice and divide it by the number of m$-office installations you get a price tag of about 1 euro or below (as an order of magnitude).
Lines of code are not a good indicator of investment, and the number of installations of a competing product doesn't tell you much about the return on that investment. I'm not sure what your point here is.
what the article does not mention but what is important here: with free software you only have to develop once and do not have 3, 4 or 5 parallel development teams who can not share their code and have to reinvent the weel each on their own...
What, like GNOME/KDE/XFCE/GNUStep/...? Or OpenOffice.org / KOffice / Abiword & Gnumeric ...? Or all the different GNU/Linux distributions? Or Drupal / Joomla / CMSmadeSimple / TYPO3 / Plone / etc etc (there really are countless examples here).
Code sharing happens in the proprietary world - a lot of development tools companies make their money exactly that way - and wheel re-invention happens in the free software world.
I don't know if anyone has done a proper study, but it's not really obvious to me that proprietary software is any more wheel-reinventy than free software is...
the marxist view (labor theory of value) and the neoricardian view is more appropriate here when calculating overall utility vor society: you devide the number of working hours and multiply it with a price of workhour and devide it by the number of copies required.
Doesn't really give much insight to the commercial mindset though.
Cheers,
Alex.
Alex Hudson home@alexhudson.com writes:
I have a deep scepticism for arguments which say all software should be given away at no charge.
As do I. Selling software is an excellent and legitimate way to fund development of past and future software.
What is untenable is charging money for making and distributing a copy of software and then attempting to restrict the freedom of the recipient to make and redistribute their own copies. If the recipient can't be convinced to pay without artificially restricting their freedom in the work once legitimately received, you're doing it wrong.
Ben Finney wrote:
If the recipient can't be convinced to pay without artificially restricting their freedom in the work once legitimately received, you're doing it wrong.
Except the problem is probably more like they're being offered a discount for artificially restricting their freedom, because the entrepreneur is taking the up-front risk of development and banking on the later growth of the sales to receive the return.
Without understanding the risk/return model, you can't really understand the benefits to developer (and user, in fact) of the proprietary model, and are unlikely to overcome it :)
Cheers,
Alex.