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Re: [LUG] GLUG - free and non-free
Alex Charrett wrote:
"Just to clarify"..
Economic cost is based on how scarce resources are. Gold is scarce so
therefore it is expensive, mud is plentiful and therefore cheap. Your
time is finite and therefore using it one way prevents you doing
something else with that same piece of time, that is the cost to you.
Alex.
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I was wondering when someone would mention the "resource cost" as
opposed to the "fiscal cost" of actions. However I do think the two can
be combined to a degree. The old comment I sometimes think to myself
"Well there's three hours I won't see again". If time costs nothing,
then why do we say "I just spent X hours doing that"? "Spending" time
makes it a commodity with currency in minutes, hours etc. If I might
propose an example:
Say your rent were £672 per month (and for arguments' sake a month = 28
days)
That means in order to pay your rent alone your income has to be an
average of £1 per hour 24 hours a day. We generally work 8 hours a day,
sleep 8 hours a day and have the rest for leisure or other necessary
functions. That raises the rate per hour to £3 per hour. We want to
rest at weekends so we cut work days to 20 giving us all weekend days
off. That leaves us needing to earn £4.20 every work hour.
Now we could say one day "I only want to work 6 hours today and go early
to the pub for 2 hours".. thereby leaving us a shortfall of £8.40. So
we then at some other point have to sacrifice what we wanted to do in 2
hours of "spare" time to make that time up doing whatever normally
creates revenue (maybe we code for a living, maybe we work in a
warehouse.. it doesn't matter). We have *paid* for our time in the pub
by sacrificing 2 hours somewhere else.
I *do* agree with Neil that there is no fiscal cost of writing code (or
emails for that matter, or you all ow... n/m ;)) although obviously the
computer consumes energy which must be paid for, as does heating and
light etc. However the cost of *any* activity as Alex has so succintly
pointed out is mainly in the inability to do anything else with that
time. Granted there are *some* things which can be performed
concurrently.. I can leave a DVD authoring on the PC and go and watch
TV, or leave my email program in the background while I chat on IRC or
do research on Google.
The cost to us in any activity is the choices we did not make.
I am nowhere near as proficient as many of you seem to be in the detail
of the various licenses such as GPL etc so I will not make any sweeping
comments on a subject of which I know next to nothing.
However, I just realised in writing this email that the concept of
"shareware" has not been mentioned at all. I'm going to assume here
that shareware is as well-known in Linux as in Windows so I won't insult
your intelligence by a long boring explaination of what it is. I think
it could bridge the gap between proprietary software/open source/free
software. My thinking is simply that the nature of shareware embraces
the community aspect in that "If you like the software you *voluntarily*
pay the developer a contribution", and he may well reciprocate by
agreeing to help you with technical support or something else, however
you don't *have to* pay. Also whilst not *all* shareware has the same
licenses, I see no reason why some could not have a GPL type license, on
the understanding that *unaltered* code may be paid for by the user to
the original author, but if it is changed in any *significant* manner
then payment moves to the person who last made alterations.
I do want to stress here that the payments I mentioned above would be
purely voluntary. In my view it gleans an income for the original
author in some measure, but keeps the door open for the open source
community to make alterations to the original code as they see fit.
Kind regards,
Julian
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