[H]omer <spam@xxxxxxx> espoused:
> Verily I say unto thee, that Roy Schestowitz spake thusly:
>> Open Source and Microsoft Free
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | For companies with huge budgets it might make sense to continue down the
>> | Microsoft path.
>
> Why?
>
> Just because one can afford to buy something expensive, that doesn't
> necessarily mean that "thing" is worth buying.
>
> I'm sick of this prevailing attitude that something *must* be better
> simply because it costs more. It's a simplistic and distorted view.
>
> Most commodities are priced according to marketing data analysis that
> suggests how much consumers are willing to pay, and is influenced by the
> current market rate, *not* according to any inherent value. After the
> recovery of investment capital and overheads, everything else is just
> profit (or taxes), so consumers pay over the odds for products that
> could literally be given away after a certain point.
Your paragraph just above highlights a major point in economics, which is
about the concept of "inherent value". Economics doesn't recognise this,
of course, as it is a fallacial economic concept. Money is derived from
bartering systems, and bartering is the underlying force of a market,
hence the economic term "market value". So, goods, services and pretty
much anything can have a market value, but there is no inherent value
in anything, at least in terms of economics.
Inherent value has meaning in terms of the usefulness of something to
someone, but that is a quite different concept to an economic one in
terms of what it could be bartered for. That usefulness is one of the
factors which will be considered when setting a market price for
something, but it is not the sole determinant.
>
> Of course some companies start with loss leaders to kill the
> competition, with the intention of making up losses at a later stage.
> Such commodities may be "bargains" for the consumer, but think about the
> ethics of the company you're supporting by buying such products. IMHO
> such tactics are immoral.
It's about the network effect, though. The wikipaedia entry on this is
a good simple definition:
" A network effect is a characteristic that causes a good or
service to have a value to a potential customer which depends
on the number of other customers who own the good or are users
of the service. In other words, the number of prior adopters is
a term in the value available to the next adopter. "
So seeding markets with goods or services is a really useful thing to do
in order to encourage later adoption. You can see that this is exactly
how Microsoft have built much of their empire, particularly in emerging
markets, where they are happy for people to make unlawful copies of
Windows, on the basis that they will "collect later"; this network
effect will cause more and more people to use Windows, then Microsoft
can come along and start demanding cash.
Linux has grown in much the same way though, with initially the only
real entry barrier being technical rather than cost; this translates
for most people into a time penalty (you have to install it yourself, or
at least, you had to), which has a cost economists call the "opportunity
cost", since you could have been doing something else at that time.
However, the lack of other costs, licensing, upgrade cycles, downtime,
viruses, exploits and so on has resulted in linux being adopted by more
and more technical people. This created some of the network effect, and
linux adoption is, as per the normal network effect, growing at some
exponential rate since most people know several others, so each adopter
can influence eg., 2 other people.
>
> Rarely is the price of a commodity a true reflection of it's inherent
> value, and Microsoft products are surely the most typical example of
> this, since IMHO they are worth zero ... less than that, in fact, since
> Microsoft would have to pay *me* to use them ... and I'd still refuse.
>
This is the nub of the issue... to you, Windows is worthless, so you pay
nowt (good choice imho :-), whereas Linux is useful to you, so you are
prepared to pay something. In fact, I've been purchasing Linux-based
goods for a long time now, here're some:
Software:
ID Quake3
Loki Rune & Halls of Valhalla
Loki Heretic 2
Devices:
Nokia 770 (2)
Motorola A680 phone
Game Park GP2X (2)
Archos Media Player
TomTom GO700 (2)
Excito file server
Linksys WRT54GL (2)
Efficient PC MythTV/Ubuntu
Sony PS3 (because it can run it)
Other:
Plus a few debian T-shirts and things to support the project.
I'll be setting up an Asterisk based on a TranquilPC machine soon,
although I'll probably buy it OS-less and install Ubuntu or Debian on
it.
Over the years, for personal use I've bought one copy of Microsoft
DOS6.21 and one copy of WFW3.11. I would never buy another Microsoft
operating system unless they were to go open-source with the GPL or a
GPL compatible licence.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
| Cola faq: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/ |
| Cola trolls: http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/ |
| My (new) blog: http://www.thereisnomagic.org |
|
|
