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Originally Posted by DaleDe
It is certainly economic since people do pay for software despite GNU. There is a commodity item that is driven by supply and demand like bread, gas, etc. Here the price of something is supply and demand oriented although the bottom price is based on overhead for the business. However there are plenty of unique items that are not based on supply and demand. Supply and demand assume that the one you can get down the street is just as good as the one that is priced higher. For software and eBooks that only applies to the dealer price which is their cost plus their markup. The dealer price is determined by the value of the product, that is the price the person or company sets on the product.
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No, supply and demand does not assume that. You are making the assumption that supply and demand applies only to "commodity" products, and that's not the case. Supply and demand describes the relationship between the two factors, and is valid regardless of the size of either.
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Value is the price a user who wants or needs a product is willing to pay for the product. Worth is what the owner of the product whether believes its value is.
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That's a unique definition I haven't heard before. "Value" is
relative. In monetary terms, a product or service is "worth" what a customer is willing to
pay for it. If you can't get any takers for your product or service at your proposed price, it's hard to realistically argue that your price is what it's "worth". Worth is what you
can get for it, not what you might
like to get.
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There are clearly two definitions of economics. One for commodities and one for unique items.
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Hardly, as there is the vast range between. Not everything is "commodity" or "unique".
Commodities are generic, available from multiple sources in equivalent forms, and have price as the dominant factor in customer choice. There are other things that are not unique, but are also not commodities. For instance, SPSS and SAS both make statistical analysis packages. They are comparable but not equivalent. You can't simply replace one with the other if it turns up with a better price. But they aren't "unique", because there are choices in statistical analysis packages. A unique product would be the
only one of its kind.
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This is where we disagree. The computers have value not because of free software. Computers have value because there is software that people can buy that will solve a problem or help them in some way. A source of free software can enhance the value of the hardware but is not necessary except for some who don't need the computer in the first place but want one for fun. Companies seldom use free software as they can't depend on it.
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Sorry, but the last bit is simply untrue. I think you'll find that majority of websites run on Linux, with web access handled by Apache, and very likely MySQL as a back-end database. Those are all "free software", and the aggregate value of the web business they power is many billions of dollars.
Free software
is far less used on the
desktop, though that is slowly changing, as things like Open Office mature to be viable alternatives.
The first question a corporate exec is likely to ask about "free software" is "Who do we call if it breaks?" They like the security of support contracts as prompt access to assistance and fixes. This is increasingly available for free software. Red Hat will be delighted to sell you a support contract for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. MySQL will be happy to sell you a support contract for MySQL (at a rather exorbitant price...).
Note that on the desktop, in a corporate setting, "support" will likely be provided by the company IT staff, not the software vendor. The company will likely have a support contract with the vendor, and escalate questions to them that their own staff can't answer.
People buy computers to do work, and that work requires software. It's fair to say that a computer without software is worthless, as it can't be used. The value comes from the combination of hardware and software. It largely muddies the waters at this level to distinguish between free and commercial software when talking about it.
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Dennis