The Economics of Free

Wired's editor-in-chief Chris Anderson is working on a new book, to be published next year, about the idea of "free" in the old and new economies. Wired is running a long excerpt from the book and some sidebars about the economics of giving away, e.g., CDs and directory assistance. Techdirt has a few quibbles about Anderson's ideas — mostly areas in which he may be shading the argument to sell more books — but mostly buys that the equations of economics continue to work when zeros are plugged in in judicious places.

Comments

Re:Well..

[flyingsquid]

I don't know about this whole getting stuff for free thing. I figure that if I just wait a while, then maybe the price will come down.

Re:Free as in beer?

[mapkinase]

Linux is number one OS in science, in algorithms, in calculating stuff that matters. On Linux I verify genomic annotations, find distant relationships, parse scientific texts for data mining (extracting scientific facts). I code all of it too.

On Windows I submit weekly reports about hours and answer emails of people who are lazy enough to lift their behinds and walk 10 feet into my office, I write documentation that nobody reads, I waste my time browsing websites.

Linux makes me think. Windows makes me a slob.