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The wonderful thing is that if a price tag was placed on the Linux Kernel, it would become worthless. Being free (monetarily and in philosophy) is what makes i

• Retric 17y ago
  If the licensing costs of the Kernel were 1 cent I don't think many users would switch to another system. You might see a significant drop in the embedded systems market, but only because there are other systems of similar value floating out there.
  • ZeroGravitas 17y ago
    Even at 1c everyone would switch. They'd all switch to an identical Linux fork though, which I think was part of the original point being made.
    • barnaby 17y ago
      Exactly, because in a highly competitive market (like software) prices always drop to marginal cost of production. Since copy/paste of software is free, the price inevitably drops to zero. The only way to charge a penny for the kernel would be to create artificial scarcity, or to create artificial legal restrictions to copy and paste... basically to override the free market.
    • Retric 17y ago
      Your missing the point, if every Linux Kernel cost 1cent due to patent issues many people would still use it. The option to switch to a "free" BSD Kernel would cause many people to use that for new systems. However, the value of a Kernel is increased by the other systems that connect to it. So if you had 10k systems and you could keep using them with zero transition costs for 100$ most company's would do so. The fact the Kernel cost's nothing does not mean it's value is zero.