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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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