Roy Schestowitz wrote:
Free as in market
,----[ Quote ]
| Open source is all about free markets. Yes, we have a free market
| in the software world, but I'd argue that opening up the code gives
| customers greater degrees of freedom in two ways: lower costs (so
| that they can spend their IT dollars more broadly) and no (or lower)
| lock-in (so that they can spend their IT dollars more discriminately).
| All of this makes for a true free market in software. "Free as in
| free market," as I heard r0ml present back in his 2003 eGovOS
| presentation.
`----
http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2007/01/free_as_in_mark.html
It's more free than the market can ever possibly be, since software is
largely electrons, silicon, etc. (not in short supply like real estate,
tangibles, etc.) and can be infinitely and perfectly copied at a trivial
cost. Furthermore, to *own* software doesn't deny someone else
ownership (as would be the case in a zero-sum market economy).
So, in a sense, the f/oss community achieved a more perfect (Platonic
sense) free market than could ever possibly be achieved in the
bricks&mortar, for which a "free market" is actually an oxymoron.
I don't think it's a "market" so much as "free". Markets can be
cornered, subverted, controlled, run by the mob, and access is always
limited by one's caste at birth, or size of your wallet (your employer's
generosity). So linux chose "free" *instead* of "market".
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