From: Max Moller Rasmussen (maxm@normik.dk)
Date: Wed Aug 02 2000 - 06:13:27 MDT
From: Ross A. Finlayson
>After the fixed costs, reproducing software is basically a costless
operation.
>I see those as obvious statements.
Yes but the fixed price in music is very high for an individual without hope
of making money back.
>Linux or the other free UNIXs were not free, they are made from thousands
upon
>thousands of programmer hours and precursor code, they were just freely
given.
They were freely shared. That is different. You share and you get something
back because of the GNU license. Thus everybody gets a better tool to work
with.
Music is (usually) neither freely given nor shared. A musician who's music
is copied does not get anything back from the comunity. He might himself get
free music, but that doesn't buy him bread. It's sort of a reverse "Tragedy
of the commons". He looses and socity wins. In the short term at least, as
he would quickly stop producing music.
Linux has been paid for one way or another. The price might be hidden but it
has been paid and it has been thriving on the swing/carrousel principle.
>There is a concept of sum societal utility. Linux, free, has contributed
to the
>sum societal utility many times over its investment given by volunteer
>programmers and supporters, some might say. Some statistics have it
running
>half the Internet.
It has made it cheaper to run an IT business yes. But not more than that.
>Copyright laws are in place for a reason, and most of them are good laws.
Some
>patent laws, in my opinion, are cumbersome and infringe upon the growth of
sum
>societal utility, and any patent should expire in twelve years.
Ahh... we probably agree here.
Max M Rasmussen (Denmark)
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