Date: Sun, 13 Jul 1997 11:45:53 -0500 From: Bob Willcox <bob@pmr.com> To: joelh@gnu.ai.mit.edu Cc: davidn@labs.usn.blaze.net.au, devnull@gnu.ai.mit.edu, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: My opinion about freebsd (fwd) Message-ID: <19970713114553.01088@pmr.com> In-Reply-To: <199707130219.WAA10280@ethanol.gnu.ai.mit.edu>; from Joel Ray Holveck on Sat, Jul 12, 1997 at 10:19:23PM -0400 References: <199707130818.SAA01309@labs.usn.blaze.net.au> <199707130219.WAA10280@ethanol.gnu.ai.mit.edu>
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On Sat, Jul 12, 1997 at 10:19:23PM -0400, Joel Ray Holveck wrote: > >> I wish everything could work by anarchy. > > And so do I. Actually, a "free market" is the epitome of an 'anarchy', > > or at least, an organised one. :-) > > Not the epitome. A working example, perhaps. > > >> But I think money will always > >> be dominant. I don't think we can get free food the way we have > >> free software, because software is inherently easy to copy, and > >> restirctions that make software non-free are artificial. By > >> contrast, food production has always been time-consuming. > > Ouch. And developing software is not? Time for a reality check. > > There's a difference here. 'copying software' relates to 'food > production' roughly as 'developing software' relates to 'discovering > that milk tastes good'. > > > There's probably not much difference in the production rates either > > way. The "artificial" restrictions are restrictions in distribution > > (which is easy with software), but there are very real costs and > > overheads involved in production of software per se. It isn't magic > > - it isn't all done with mirrors. > > The development of software does cost. But once written, everybody > can benefit at a very low cost. Hmm, this ignores the cost of support/service. Depending upon the level of support offered this can be an on-going expense that gets very expensive. Free software relies upon (mostly) free community support. Commercial software usually (in my experience) cannot. Vendor's generally either bundle it in the price of the software or charge separately for it. During my tenure at IBM working on AIX, we wrestled with this problem constantly. One of the principle factors that drove the development of the 4.1 release of AIX was that the 3.2.5 release was bundled with free support, and that the cost of that support was sky-rocketing (and becoming unaffordable). Since IBM's business practices folks would not let us change the terms and conditions of a point release of the OS (so that support could be separately charged for) we had to come out with a whole new release to do so. -- Bob Willcox Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread bob@luke.pmr.com to determine which side it is buttered on. Austin, TX -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
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