Re: [cobalt-users] E-Commerce

[Kris Dahl <krislists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

on 7/3/00 5:47 PM, Jimmy Gross at jimmy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Why does everyone want everything for free? Do we give away web and email
> hosting for free? Does Microsoft, symantec, et al. give us anything for
> free?

Well... Are we talking "Free as in Beer" or "Free as in Speech"?

Open source software would be the latter (and also usually the former as
well).

I would argue that one of the reasons why Microsoft's quality of products is
below par is due to them not adopting the open source model of development.
What really costs money (as I will, or anyone with experiencing deploying
systems of software will tell you) is the support costs involved.  While
many open source packages such as Linux are "Free as in Speech", they are
not always "Free as in Beer".  For example, there is the cost of purchasing
support from RedHat or Caldera, the expense of bringing in a qualified
engineer to setup your server, etc.

So I don't understand why everyone wants everything to be Free as in Beer.

But I also don't know why everyone doesn't demand that their critical
software be Free as in Speech.

-k