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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.

3 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Free as in beer? by megaditto · · Score: -1, Troll

    Or maybe free as in your first heroin hit. Or free as in boose for single females at frat socials. Or free as in Trade Agreements.

    Watch out when someone offers you free stuff, folks. More often than not, you are about to get F*cked.

    --
    Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
  2. nothing is free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    This false idea that OSS is free needs to be stamped on.

    it's free... free of support, stability or security. I mean anyone could just put code into an OSS project and you'd be running it, it happened with the debian repositry not so long ago.

    and anyone that has run gnome knows how bug riddled it is, how often it crashes or has conflicting libs.

    and support.. you are relying on the continued interest of a bunch of nerds. wtf happens when they discover girls?

  3. LIBRE by gi.net · · Score: 1, Troll

    I think you should create a new word for free (as in speech). Free is too ambiguous and may be pejorative (as in no value).
    Why not use the French word "libre". It is already well known.