Re: the free software paradigm [was Re: Amazon used lisp & C exclusively?

On 2006-07-26 15:58:02 -0400, "Nathan Baum" <nathan_baum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

The free components of the custom solution are only developed once. If
it costs (somebody) 1000 manhours to make it, then that cost is never
paid again.

Your arguing *my* point. That cost is never paid again by the contractor in man-hours but it is also never paid again *by the customer*. In other words, the programmers who originally developed this free end-user component now used as part of custom solutions will *never* be paid for their work no matter how many users use it, even if those users are inclined and accustomed, as clients of custom development firms are, to *pay for software*!

This is a perfect example of lost revenue. You have a customer who is known to be willing to pay for software. You have programmers who can one of two ways:

1. they could make their end-user component proprietary so that in each project in which it is used the client gets billed a per-unit cost for that end-user software component and the programmers thus get paid for their work.

2. they could make their component free in which case no matter how many copies of their end-user software component are deployed *the programmers never get paid one thin dime!*

.

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