Re: [ox-en] esr on software costs
- From: Graham Seaman <graham seul.org>
- Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 17:06:12 -0500 (EST)
On Thu, 28 Feb 2002, Russell McOrmond wrote:
On Thu, 28 Feb 2002, Graham Seaman wrote:
Eric Raymond makes an interesting point in
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2105202,00.html
suggesting that mass-produced closed-source software for sale will go away
on its own when PC prices drop far enough, purely for cost reasons.
I think ESR suffers from believing the rheteric that the USA is part of
a (or promotes rather than hinders) free market. He comments that he
doesn't believe tha the current Antitrust cases have any merit, and
doesn't see various copyright expansion as the threat it really is.
None of his free market analysis means anything unless the markets in
question are actually free markets. This does involve rolling-back
government intervention in the form of copyright expansion (IE: Sonny-Bono
copyright extension act, DMCA, and laughing SSSCA out of discussion : and
the WIPO equivalents that are being imposed on other countries) and
properly enforcing domestic competition law.
I don't think this particular argument depends on free competition; as I
understood it, what he's saying is that if the cost of software to OEMs is
fixed (at a level which lets Microsoft survive), but the cost of hardware
is falling (driven by Moore's law), then the total cost per PC falls. This
leaves OEMs with a smaller margin per PC, and the only route for them to
increase this margin will be to use free (in cost terms) software where
they can. Doing that depends on consumer acceptance of non-Microsoft OSs,
not on copyright law or the presence of a free market (apart from the
assumption that the PC market is free enough that if the cost to OEMs
falls, the cost to the consumer will fall too).
Not that I'm arguing that WIPO etc aren't important, just that I'm not
sure they're relevant to this particular idea. My main problem with the
idea would be more that I haven't noticed PC prices coming down much;
the base consumer PC stays a pretty constant price, though what you get
in the case gets more all the time..
Graham
I believe that not supporting competition law in support of free markets
is like not supporting laws against theft in support of private property.
I do believe that ESR would be right if we were in a free market, but we
simply aren't at this point.
---
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
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