Economic Arguments for Free Software

[Bernhard Reiter]

On Fri, Jul 06, 2001 at 02:59:40PM +0200, Alessandro Rubini wrote:

> > http://www.freeos.com/articles/4087/

> Bernhard, one month ago:
> > [...]
> > Therefor we can find some arguments and nice analogies in there
> > to fight common mistakes about an economy of software has to work.
> 
> It's interesting, but it has a serious problem: it only considers
> "open source" as charity work. 

The author uses the suboptimal term for Free Software, but I
consider this a minor problem.

His aim of the article is: 
	Free Software makes sense 
	even if when there will not be a business model for it.

This is no statement about whether there is such a business model.
He does not answer yes or no only that no widely recognised one has been 
found so far.

Consider the following quotes it makes a lot of sense to envision
that there is a business model for sure:

" Is it possible to make money off Open Source? In the light of all
that we have discussed, this now seems a rather petty and
inconsequential question to ask.
[..]
There is great wealth that will be created [..]
and very little of that will have anything to do with money. 
[..]
this increase in the overall size of the
economic pie results in proportionately more wealth for all, then
that's the grand answer to our petty question
"



> While some is charity, more and more is not. 
> The fact that it can either be charity or paid work is what makes
> the real difference, in my opinion. 

There is also a difference between charity and getting other rewards.
The former is altruistic the latter not. He also talks about the latter.


	Bernhard

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