Re:On paying for software
by TimJYoung on Sunday June 10, 2018 @10:42AM
(#17278324)
No other business endeavor on the planet operates on "production time" when pricing products. Products are priced according to their value. Given a reasonably competitive market, that value will be accurate and fair for customers, and the customers will be able to find a similar product that does most or all of what they want at the price point that they can afford.
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Re:On paying for software
by matheusmoreira on Sunday June 10, 2018 @10:57AM
(#17278386)
Products are scarce. Data isn't.
What if everyone had a Star Trek replicator? Would they still pay for products according to their value? That's what a computer acts like.
You would probably pay for: the replicator, the recipe,the ingredients and the energy used by the replicator. However, Star Trek has a different economy from ours.
Star Trek has no economy except for its fictional one. Their economy of fabricators is itself a fabrication. At best, it represents an ideal.
Which is why the original argument is pointless.
Yes, and software products are the sum total of all of the effort put into developing, advertising, maintaining, and supporting them. The fact that they are distributed as data is an inconsequential fact that obscures what they actually represent, and that is very much a human achievement no different from painting a picture or building a couch. There are tooling costs and all sorts of ongoing fixed costs, just like any other business.
As for Star Trek: when that day comes, we'll deal with it then.