Re: [ox-en] Re: Importance of price
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:08:55 +0100
Hi StefanS, Yuwei, all!
I agree very much with Raoul's last mail in this thread so I won't
repeat the points he made.
2 months (73 days) ago Stefan Seefeld wrote:
I do agree that it is very hard to do justice to such a complex topic
in so little time.
Good.
Stefan Merten wrote:
* The actual product is gratis
However: Price plays a role, but is not crucial
Given how confused most people still are about this
free-as-in-speech-vs.-free-as-in-beer ambiguity, I find the above point
not very helpful. What is "the product",
As long as we talk about Free Software there is a very easy answer:
the Free Software. I.e. the deliverables which are installed on my,
your, Yuwei's, ... computer. No doubt.
And Free Software is certainly a product because it is not given to us
by nature - instead it is produced by someone. Again no doubt.
Really: I can not see what your question is here.
It is, as I tried to explain, about the 'gratis' point. I'm not sure what
you are trying to say.
I wanted to make clear that there is a product that can be clearly
distinguished from other things mainly being services.
I'm stressing this because there were doubt whether Free Software can
be called a product (at the moment ignoring the Marx based perspective
of Graham that software generally should be named a service - though
this might be a valid point to discuss).
So can we all agree at least on that there are identifiable Free
Software products? (Although they can be patched and supported and so
on.)
and what is gratis about it ?
It is gratis when I can obtain it without paying money. Meanwhile this
is even literally true because I got a DSL flat rate so internet
connection meanwhile is part of the general preconditions of life.
Indeed for the Kubuntu I installed lately I paid exactly nothing.
Stop! I payed for one CD-R as a boot CD. But that's it.
For me this is gratis. No doubt.
That's rather superficial. The developer / artist has to live, too.
Pretending that he makes a living elsewhere and produces his work
in his spare time is superficial and dishonest (at the least, it
is even wrong in most cases, I dare to claim).
First I'd like to be clear on terms like "making a living". The point
you are really referring to is "making money". Whether this is enough
for buying goods for making a living is a completely different
question which on the one hand depends on the amount of money someone
earns and on the other hand on the mix of Free and commercial products
one needs for that living.
Second that developers / artists need some money is certainly true in
our societies but whether or not they sell *these* particular products
is only very loosely related to this. In fact in our societies there
are lots and lots of societal useful activities which are not paid -
often not even indirectly. Woman movement created figuers on that
calculating the amount of money a housewife should earn.
What I'm trying to say: That people need money to buy products and
services is obvious. That in general they receive money only for a
subset of their activities is also obvious. Given that, to me it is in
no way forcing that you draw a special connection between one type of
activity - namely producing Free Software - and making money. In the
contrary: It is completely arbitrary - especially for those people
which explicitly do *not* want to make money from their explicit Free
activities - like me.
Third I'd like to refer to the study for the EU from which I posted
the executive summary recently:
6 days ago Stefan Merten wrote:
> * Almost two-thirds of FLOSS software is still written by individuals;
> firms contribute about 15% and other institutions another 20%.
I think you, StefanS, and Yuwei are reiterating the ideology of a few
official Free Software evangelists. Which goes like: "*We* want to
make money with Free Software somehow so let's claim that Free
Software in general is actually not gratis." I'm not of this kind and
among the two-thirds above there are probably only a small number of
fools who give away their products gratis whereas they would rather
like to sell it.
In no way this is an contradiction that people can make money around
Free Software (mainly by add-on services) and even for Free Software
products (which are non-existant / not published yet).
I think it is a very practical one: Some people claim that Free Software
gets adopted because it is cheaper than its commercial / proprietary
conterpart. Others say it is because, because it comes with certain
freedoms (which you cite), it gives important advantages to its users.
I'm a strong supporter of the latter, in case this hasn't become clear yet.
I agree with you on this. However, currently I see how much
corporations (or in my case: public institutions) can pay on
commercial licenses for proprietary products *and* get a *lousy*
support for this (which to me seems to be the rule rather than the
exception meanwhile...).
2 months (73 days) ago Yuwei Lin wrote:
Independent free software developers who do not work for the governments or
big companies usually have to face an ignorant question from their
users/customers: shouldn't free software be free of charge? These customers
are misled to expect free labour (or cheaper labour) from these free
software developers. And it is frustrating to them having to explain this
all the time.
Certainly true. However, even in these cases if the Free Software is
published after a customer has paid for developing it, it *is* gratis
for the next one who needs it. Isn't it?
Back to the relationship between free software and art, artists do make
money out of creating art as well. People need to pay a price to have these
artists around, directly or indirectly, visible, or invisible.
Graffiti artists even risk legal punishment for their art. They are
hardly paid. All these people who make music at home are artists who
don't get paid for this. Even artists who today are considered
breakthroughs have died in poverty (such as van Gogh).
If you extend this point you come to this: Society generally allows
people to follow activities which are not directly related to "making
a living" in the sense of caring for their subsistence. If I
understand StefanMz correctly then precisely this is the definition of
a human society. In this sense every individual has some freedom to
determine for herself what type of activity she wants to pursue.
Which useful activity is paid or otherwise subsidized by a society is
a question which is at the core of the construction of this society
and thus a very political question.
If we come to the relationship of peer production and a money based
society IMHO there are two options:
* Furthering the integration of peer production in the money based
system by calling for payment of peer production
* Furthering a peer economy by extending it and providing goods and
services by this economy more and more
I strongly believe that the first is some danger for peer production
while the second is a good step into a fundamental change.
Grüße
Stefan
_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de