[carandol]

Originally Posted by tompe

Or the writer is greedy that want money for his pleasure activities like producing art. He can take a boring job like anybody else. And if he want me to read his art he can pay for my time.

Actually, writing can be pretty boring too; 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration, as they say.

But that's not really a good argument because people read for pleasure, not payment (unless they're book reviewers, of course). In the traditional bookselling model you pay for a book then read it, and might find it wasn't worth it. If you get the book for free, you can decide whether it was worth paying for after you've read it. If you read it all the way to the end, it probably was.

Originally Posted by tompe

I think your definition of greedy is not so useful and not at all consistent with people intuition about the concept.

I think different people have different intuitions.

Originally Posted by tompe

And it they produce open source they have to distribute the source and then anybody can distribute it so it is a bit hard to sell the source.

Doesn't seem to stop Red Hat, Suse, Mandriva, etc., making a lot of money on it.

Originally Posted by tompe

I must say that if things are given with the expectation of something in return than they are not given for free. Actually I would feel bad paying for something that was free. It is like I do not trust the person that says it is free and I think he is lying or something. So I would never pay for something that was free. But i might donate money to the writer to be used for future work but that is something totally different.

We obviously interact with people in very different ways, or move in different social circles or something. But hey, if everyone thought the same, the world would be a very dull place. If you give money to writers for books they haven't written yet, and I give money to writers for books I've read but haven't paid for yet, the end result should be more or less the same!