🚀 go-pugleaf

Jason Clifford <jason@ukpost.com> writes:

>On 12 Oct 1998, Bill Unruh wrote:

>> Of course you already do do exactly that. After all you have to pay your
>> service provider for the phone/internet connection. Of course there you
>> pay a third party rather than the people who actually developed the
>> program you are downloading. 

>No, I am paying the service provider and telco for specific services (ie
>the ability to route traffic over their networks). Who I use for service
>has nothing to do with the sites that I visit and no part of the fee I pay
>for that service goes to such sites.

That's the point.  You pay for visiting sites.  For each KB you suck
from the sites, you and the free software author pay a certain sum of
money to their respective providers.

Therefore, the argument goes, you are paying anyway and it makes no sense
to require that free software be provided to you free of charge.  It is
not free of charge now, and if the author charges something via a future
http facility, the purpose of that will only be to make up for the money
that he loses.

Of course it is difficult to charge money for open-source software, because
such software erects no hard toll barrier that can force anyone to pay. But
it is just as unnatural that authors of this software pay somebody else to
download it.  If people have a choice, they will give it away for free and
they may beg for some voluntary coins from benevolent street-music
listeners.  Currently the Internet doesn't allow either.  It forces either
the author or his sponsor to bleed.

--
Hartmut Pilch
http://www.a2e.de/phm/