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Cyhist Dec 6, 1998 I
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========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 11:04:23 -0500
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: "G. L. Sicherman" <gls@ATPSOL.CVU.LUCENT.COM>
Subject: economics of free software
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Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
To: CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 00:26:37 -0800
From: David Smith <smithx@SFU.CA>
... As a former(?) economist I've
always been interested in the idea of free software. It seems to be a real life example of the economic principle that something which has a zero marginal cost should have a zero price. (I believe most of the economic arguments for selling software have to do with the cost of improving it in the next version?)
I would guess that this is an FSF argument (?)
I can't speak for the Free Software Foundation, but I've read about the freeware culture and occasionally produced some freeware myself. On the whole, the movement seems to care not at all about conventional economic considerations.
In the old days, we programmers were very rare. (Sometimes I think that now "we programmers," in the old sense, are rarer than ever!) It seemed appropriate for us, the blessed ones, to create programs out of nothingness and shower them on the world gratis. Did God bill us for six days' labor, F.O.B., 2/10 n/30?
I detect in electronic culture an emerging suspicion that money may be obsolescent--a surmise that out-mcluhans McLuhan. We devote so much attention to transferring, counting, and manipulating money that it may already be more efficient to abolish the monetary economy outright. But the concept of a post-monetary economy is so alien to modern economics (not to mention our way of life) that few people can even consider it. Most hear only a vain lament in Wordsworth's lines:
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers....
G. L. Sicherman
work: sicherman@lucent.com
home: colonel@monmouth.com
______________________________________________________________________
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: "G. L. Sicherman" <gls@ATPSOL.CVU.LUCENT.COM>
Subject: economics of free software
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
To: CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 00:26:37 -0800
From: David Smith <smithx@SFU.CA>
... As a former(?) economist I've
always been interested in the idea of free software. It seems to be a real life example of the economic principle that something which has a zero marginal cost should have a zero price. (I believe most of the economic arguments for selling software have to do with the cost of improving it in the next version?)
I would guess that this is an FSF argument (?)
I can't speak for the Free Software Foundation, but I've read about the freeware culture and occasionally produced some freeware myself. On the whole, the movement seems to care not at all about conventional economic considerations.
In the old days, we programmers were very rare. (Sometimes I think that now "we programmers," in the old sense, are rarer than ever!) It seemed appropriate for us, the blessed ones, to create programs out of nothingness and shower them on the world gratis. Did God bill us for six days' labor, F.O.B., 2/10 n/30?
I detect in electronic culture an emerging suspicion that money may be obsolescent--a surmise that out-mcluhans McLuhan. We devote so much attention to transferring, counting, and manipulating money that it may already be more efficient to abolish the monetary economy outright. But the concept of a post-monetary economy is so alien to modern economics (not to mention our way of life) that few people can even consider it. Most hear only a vain lament in Wordsworth's lines:
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers....
G. L. Sicherman
work: sicherman@lucent.com
home: colonel@monmouth.com
______________________________________________________________________
