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I agree with all of that, but the very crude issue here is one of sunk/capital outlays vs. unit costs. Good software requires incredibly investment, even if th
by jariel 6y ago
I agree with all of that, but the very crude issue here is one of sunk/capital outlays vs. unit costs.
Good software requires incredibly investment, even if the 'unit cost' is nothing.
Books aren't sold for $25 because of the cost of paper.
I think we are wired to think in such material terms, which is why maybe why we have an instinct towards the notion of 'free' software as being somehow special, when really it's not that much different than many other things.
- webmaven 6y ago> Good software requires incredibly investment, even if the 'unit cost' is nothing. True. But with open source that investment is of labor (sometimes it is volunteer labor, in part), and is usually incremental, there is often little in the way of large up front capital outlays. Most of the exceptions would be a commercial company making a "Big Bang" initial release. This is just to say that the concept of "marginal cost of producing another copy" needs some contextual adjustments. For F/OSS, it might be better to think instead of "the marginal cost of making a new release", since at the point of making the release the marginal cost of all subsequent copies becomes zero.