Re: economic efficiency of free software

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Kragen Sitaker <[email protected]> wrote:

> In this scenario, of course, there appears to be a prisoner's-dilemma
> situation leading to a free-rider problem, leading to underproduction of
> Word improvements.  Cygnus's solution was to promote its service brand

Yes.  From Cygnus' business perspective, Free Software was not a
product that they'd sell, but rather their contributions to the
"Community" process of Free Software development (*) were a form
of advertising for their commercial service offerings.

There is no free-rider problem when you consider Free Software
development a form of advertising, and not "product development":

When you advertise, what you want is that as many potential
customers as possible should pay attention to your advertising.

Greetings,
Norbert.


(*) I mean those contributions which went beyond what can be justified
    economically by the benefit for Cygnus of being able to use the
    resulting Free Software.



- -- 
Founder & Steering Committee member of DotGNU, see http://dotgnu.org/
Free Software Business Strategy Guide   --->  http://FreeStrategy.info
Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet (near Zurich, Switzerland)
Tel +41 1 972 20 59        Fax +41 1 972 20 69       http://norbert.ch
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFAA83MoYIVvXUl7DIRAr72AKDlvqB9Z8FFLVuiEiCTFs+DXHiKzQCfVZoP
X+X2BGZhvnC/uS4NBXgFRJ4=
=p3Dv
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----