From kde-promo Tue Feb 04 01:06:18 2003 From: Mark Bucciarelli Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2003 01:06:18 +0000 To: kde-promo Subject: Re: [kde-promo] Re: [Important] When talking about Aegypten or Kroupware on fairs or to the press,.. X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-promo&m=104432268725487 On Monday 03 February 2003 5:29 pm, Marc Mutz wrote: > the government decides where the money goes and > not the competitiors by themselves through mutual competition. In this > sense, it's an interference with the free market, b/c the government > misuses it's monopoly to foster a particular technology or development > model. This makes absolute sense when you are talking about physical goods which have scarcity. However, when you are talking about spending tax dollars to create goods with no scarcity, I think the picture is not so clear. For example, the government has no such reservations about funding basic research at Universities. This investment produces ideas, that build on other ideas and which in turn are built upon to advance our society. This is generally considered a good investment. Funding Free Software has more similarities to research than finding the lowest bidder for new carpeting in the state house! The other big difference is that software is characterized by decreasing marginal utility. For example, when first writing a text editor, providing a global search and replace has a high value per time spent creating it. However, as time goes by, things like automatic outlining and revision tracking have proportionately less value. When you get to the point of adding mouse cursors that dance while you surf the web, you have a monopoly just looking for things to do. I guess I think this is important for KDE promo because there are significant, special, and NEW arguments for why organizations should use Free Software. It will be cheaper for everyone in the long run. Mark _______________________________________________ This message is from the kde-promo mailing list. Visit http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-promo to unsubscribe, set digest on or temporarily stop your subscription.