<quote who="Grant Shipley"> > On Apr 7, 2005 2:40 PM, Michael Halcrow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> I do not expect this to be a very popular position to present to this >> audience, since most everyone here finds himself in Bill's shoes, to >> some degree or other. Of course, Bill could always pick up >> landscaping -- after all, there's enough extra cash floating around >> now to furnish the demand. > > When I went to see RMS speak he stated this same thing as well. That > software developers can/should make money other ways (painting, > landscaping, etc). This is when I began to evaluate my position on > how I felt about him and his positions.
I'm going to cite Mr. Halcrow's well-though-out argument and apply it to contend that F/OSS does not affect the US or world economy. Let's look at another concrete example. Alice makes tha national average salary, around $30,000. Alice buys a new computer and software every two years. Its OS is Windows, which costs roughly $200 (liberally ignoring OEM agreements). She spends another $500 on other software (anti-virus, office productivity, etc). That amounts to $700 each two years, or $350 per year spent on proprietary software. That's 1.1% of her income, and that's being very very liberal. How many "normal" people do you know who buy a new computer and all new software every two years? Here are some other numbers to which we can compare the $350: a. The average American in 2001 had over $7,500 in credit card debt[1]. b. In 2004, the average home purchase price was $264,540 (approx $18,000 per year in mortgage cost).[2] I could go on. The fact is that commodity software purchase prices pale in comparison to almost any other item. Commodity software is just one of hundreds of industries and markets. As an asside, it is important to note that the kind of proprietary software that RMS opposes represents only about 2% of all software produced (per ESR's writings). The other 98%, ESR argues, is custom code, paid for by the hour, and never shrink-wrapped on a shelf. F/OSS does not affect the US or world economy. There, I got it off my chest. :) Flame on. [1] http://www.debtsmart.com/cgi-pl/debt_stats_02.cgi [2] http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/consumerawareness/a/avghomeprice04.htm .===================================. | This has been a P.L.U.G. mailing. | | Don't Fear the Penguin. | | IRC: #utah at irc.freenode.net | `==================================='
