On Wed, February 2, 2005 9:16 am, Carl Cerecke said: > Christopher Sawtell wrote: >> On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 21:17, Zane Gilmore wrote: >> >>>The company(s?) make way way >>>way too much money for the amount of good that is provided to our >>> society. >> >> Hear here! Well said Sir. >> >> >>>It's only software! >>>Why has it made some of the richest men in the world? >> >> To begin with, it was a good deal because the software was enabled >> people to >> do a better and cheaper job than that which could be done entirely >> manually. >> > > Also, one very important factor was that everybody treated (and most > still treat) software as a *product*. It isn't really a product, because > it isn't produced. Sure, it's created - but that's a one-off cost. After > that media duplication and distribution is very small. (There's > marketing to be thrown into the mix to complicate things a bit too) If > the selling price is large in comparison to this cost, then, once the > cost of creation has been covered, the profit margin is ludicrously high > compared to a real product like, say, a loaf of bread. > > It is for this reason that free/open source software exists - the > creation cost of the software is covered by the goodwill of the > programmer(s), and the distribution is done at no cost over the > internet. You've still got marketing in there, but that's usually > word-of-mouth (or the equivalent internet saying). > > This is also the reason that RIAA and MPAA are having fits. In fact, any > information (books, movies, music etc.) only have one major cost: > creation. After that, worldwide distribution can be comparatively cheap > because of the internet. This is why the organisations that currently > control distribution of information (and make a lot of money from it) > are upset. > > This has rambled on a bit long. Sorry. > > Cheers, > Carl. > Err...
1. Support 2. Maintenance 3. Development For a start. Also, even if you don't see the distribution costs, somebody has to pay for the bandwidth. And the project administration. It takes a huge amount of effort to get an open source project off the ground. Trust me, I'm in the middle of it ( and I'm just doing the technical side ). Why should all this be done for free - if it takes 60 hours / week of your time, why shouldn't it be possible to make a living out of it - OSS or not? OSS != proprietary. That's all. Steve -- Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
