In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:41:56 +0000
<9208515.glHq8ObqqA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Thanks to Gillette, the idea that you can make money by
> | giving something away is no longer radical. But until
> | recently, practically everything "free" was really just
> | the result of what economists would call a cross-subsidy:
> | You'd get one thing free if you bought another, or you'd
> | get a product free only if you paid for a service.
> |
> | Over the past decade, however, a different sort of free
> | has emerged. The new model is based not on cross-subsidies
> | - the shifting of costs from one product to another - but on
> | the fact that the cost of products themselves is falling fast.
> `----
>
> http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=all
Gaaah.
I should post a response "Why $0.00 is a misleading
number". I'll admit I'm not at all sure how to properly
account for all development costs of a freeware project;
the developers are so spread out and disorganized one will
be lucky to get anything near accurate. The distribution
costs are going to be interesting, too; the main expenses
appear to be server power, server bandwidth, and server
support.
Somebody has to pay for that -- so it's *still* being subsidized.
(I do a lot of Flash gaming, and frequent a number of
websites. These websites are laced heavily with ads.
Guess who pays for those websites, in the hope of realizing
some sales revenue.)
One of the problems, of course, is that the user gets,
but the supplier pays. While this is nice for the user,
it does introduce certain distortions in efficiency; the
ISPs for example have to contend with botnets, which are
leveraging this "free" bandwidth to do various naughty
deeds, such as DDoS attacks. Whether the alternative is
palatable is not clear to me, though; the mobile phone
charging system in particular appears totally out of
whack, with a preponderance of "plans", and the botnets
could still leverage it, since they're in effect stealing
someone's bandwidth anyway.
And of course the ISPs get a monthly stipend anyway, for
their service. This stipend is paid whether one uses
the bandwidth or not -- which could lead to some ugly
scenarios if the ISPs start to skimp.
And then there's some interesting quirks in the products
proper. Log4j in particular has deficient documentation
(it's not totally unusuable but the more complex stuff is
a little hard to figure out) unless one buys the docs,
funding Log4j's "free" development. JBoss is probably
funded (now) by RedHat Enterprise sales; it did have a
similar funding model, if I'm not mistaken.
Still, there's a lot of "product" going around, much of
it given away. (It's not brown and runny, either. It's
pretty darned solid stuff.)
I'm not sure how much of the quality of that product is
from the responsiveness to bugs shown by the developer(s)
in the freeware model, and how much of it is care by the
developer in the first place, as he has to walk the net
without a QA tightrope, and any major missteps result
in his tool being laughed off the face of sourceforge,
or other such places. (Minor missteps can be tolerated,
of course.)
[snippage for brevity]
> When Patents Threaten Science
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Patents should not be used to protect laws of nature, products of
> | nature, or mathematical formulas.
> `----
>
> http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/314/5804/1395
Pedant Point: we are *all* products of nature, as are
our laptops, phones, ceramic mugs, paper clips, paper,
book, etc. There's no supernatural entity involved
(debating such is for other newsgroups!), and certainly
nothing magical (though at times it seems such, to those
who are not informed).
Granted, there's a difference between nature constructing
a rat (FSVO "constructing", or for that matter "nature")
uniquely adapted to, say, its desert environment --
kangaroo rats in particular drink no water during their
lifetime and have no sweat glands -- and manufacturing a
laptop by human activity.
And of course the phrase "laws of nature" is simply a
restatement of "we've found that if we do A B happens" for
various values of A and B; some of these are leveragable
into profitable product (e.g., the initial discovery that
one can reduce iron ore into iron or steel by heating
with coal has led to the modern steel coke furnace and
steel mills). No House or Senate need apply here, though
there is a review process for scientific papers espousing
discovery of a new "natural law" (or refinement of an
existing one); I don't know the details.
I'll be hard-pressed to characterize the difference between
"by nature" and "by human effort" properly, since there
are human activities that lead to events/constructions
(e.g., the burning Thames) that are clearly unintentional,
and of course we all have to eliminate solid and liquid
waste, like most other animals. (In fact, we *are*
Therapsida, along with a bunch of other non-mammals.)
The only difference? We're eliminating human waste,
as opposed to elephant dung, dog doo, or bird droppings.
(Of these, elephant dung is of most worth to gardeners,
presumably.)
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Linux. Because Windows' Blue Screen Of Death is just
way too frightening to novice users.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
|
|
