Free software's white knight

Apples and oranges...: Eben meant that in the digital world, the marginal costs are essentially zero, not literally - with the exception perhaps of metered bandwidth, i.e. costs by the byte, and increasing the number of servers to handle the load if your software is wildly successfull - but then that's why the FOSS world uses mirrors to share the costs.

Virtually all other traditional marginal costs go away - all that's left is fixed costs. There's no raw material like plastic or paper or aluminum. In commodity markets, those costs make up the bulk of the cost of a product. The returns on commodity products are small unless you reach extremely high volume. The real money is in add-on services.

Now do you realize why the Microsofts of the world are screaming bloody murder? They're now dealing in a commodity marketplace of there own making, and their real profits are in upgrade licensing and service (to fix their own bugs!). FOSS is starting to make inroads not only into the product space, but the add-on service where it really hurts their revenue streams. And customers are starting to see that they're getting more value for their money going the FOSS route.; Posted by: NetArch. Posted on: 03/21/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use