Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!aiai!jeff From: jeff@aiai.uucp (Jeff Dalton) Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss Subject: Re: Media cost Message-ID: <646@skye.ed.ac.uk> Date: 28 Jul 89 17:14:30 GMT References: <33473@apple.Apple.COM> <247@unmvax.unm.edu> <248@unmvax.unm.edu> Sender: news@aiai.ed.ac.uk Reply-To: jeff@aiai.uucp (Jeff Dalton) Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland Lines: 23 In article <248@unmvax.unm.edu> mike@unmvax.cs.unm.edu (Michael I. Bushnell) writes: >In article paul@cis.ohio-state.edu writes: > >>I though the idea was _Free_ software. I could understand $50--$100 >>in media cost for disks; $500 is a bit steep. > >"Free" as in "you are free to do with this program as you please" not as >in "you get this program for no money." The "free" is "Free Software Foundation" can't mean "you can do what you want" becuase the General Public License puts restrictions on what you can do. Instead, it *does* mean "no money". That is, you don't have to pay *for the software*, just for the distribution (ie, the tape, or whatever, plus some admin costs). And, indeed, it is often possible to get the whole thing for zero money, because the distribution cost is zero. Now, it might be argued that there are always hidden costs, or something like that. I don't want to argue about that. And in many cases it doesn't matter. It's enough, as far as I'm concerned, that you can look at what you've paid out and not find anything for FSF software.