The Simple Economics of Open Source

[Albert Wagner]

Raffael Cavallaro wrote:
> 
<snip>
> I think that many open source advocates have
> failed to apply simple logic to the economics of open source, believing
> that somehow, the internet, or software, is immune from simple laws of
> supply and demand. They are not.
> 
I am going to have to go back and reread all of your previous posts. 
You seem to be rebutting a point that was never made.  Of course, Open
Source software is not immune to the laws of supply and demand.  Who
said it was?  It is in response to those laws that it is free.  But free
only in the world of economics where dollar worth is all that matters.
It is this very world, where the only motivation taken into account is
money profit, that Open Source has escaped.  And the escape has been
dazzling.  
---
"But beware!  The time for all this is not yet.  For a least another
hundred years we must pretend that fair is foul and foul is fair;  for
foul is useful and fair is not.  Avarice and usury and precaution must
be our gods for a little longer still.  For only they can lead us out of
the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight."
-- Lord Keynes, 1930