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Date:      Sat, 12 Jul 1997 22:19:23 -0400
From:      Joel Ray Holveck <joelh@gnu.ai.mit.edu>
To:        davidn@labs.usn.blaze.net.au
Cc:        devnull@gnu.ai.mit.edu, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: My opinion about freebsd (fwd)
Message-ID:  <199707130219.WAA10280@ethanol.gnu.ai.mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <199707130818.SAA01309@labs.usn.blaze.net.au> (message from David Nugent on Sun, 13 Jul 1997 18:18:37 %2B1000)

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>> 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.

Happy hacking,
joelh

-- 
http://www.wp.com/piquan --- Joel Ray Holveck --- joelh@gnu.ai.mit.edu
All my opinions are my own, not the Free Software Foundation's.

Second law of programming:
Anything that can go wrong wi
sendmail: segmentation violation -- core dumped



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