Scott Goehring writes: > "Russell" == Russell Nelson <nelson@crynwr.com> writes: > > Russell> You can't wish away transaction costs. > > It seems to me that (willful) ignorance of transaction costs is a > large part of the mindset of the most ardent free software advocates. Well yeah. Some people think that just because you aren't creating a transaction cost anymore (licensing) that all the other transaction costs go away (I must note that RMS is not one of them). I view the function of this list as helping us to identify the remaining transaction costs, so we can make money by addressing them. Many companies make a lot of money addressing friction in machinery (Quaker State, Pennzoil, Timpkin, etc). There's still a lot of friction in free software. I see no reason why we can't grow the market for free software and make Bob Young's $500 million market back into a $5 billion market. :) The Luddites revolted against machinery which made knitting more efficient, but 40 years later the knitting industry employed more people than were put out of work. Not to mention that clothing became much cheaper for everyone including the Luddites. Oops, did I say Luddites? I meant to say Microsofties, poster children for proprietary software. :) -- -russ nelson <rn-sig@crynwr.com> http://crynwr.com/~nelson Crynwr supports Open Source(tm) Software| PGPok | There is good evidence 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | that freedom is the Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX | cause of world peace.