🚀 go-pugleaf

hudgens@sun13.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Hudgens) writes:
> I've seen several places where most of the currently available gnu
> software is on cd-roms (YoungMinds, Sun Users Group for two).  But the
> price seems much too high ($200-$300 per disk).  For tapes, this sort
> of price may seem reasonable given the labor and materials costs, but
> for cd-roms, my perception is that it is between 3x and 10x too high.

Yeah, it is a lot of money.  There's a cost-value discrepancy here--it
costs more to make it than the perceived value (at least as you see it, but
I tend to agree).  The problem is that CDs are cheap per unit but expen-
sive to set up; the setup cost gets distributed over the number of copies
produced.  So, the obvious solution is to sell lots of them.  That begets
the obvious chicken-egg problem:  You can't sell more until you get the
price down.
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   ...Simpler is better.