From: Aidan Kehoe (kehoea at domain parhasard.net)
Date: Wed 17 Oct 2001 - 23:50:52 IST
Ar an 17u la de mi 10, scriobh John McCormac :
> Gerard J Keating wrote:
> >
> > Ferren MacIntyre wrote:
> > > There is no reason why a computer program should cost more than a book.
> >
> > OK then, assuming a book costs about IEP20.00, will you write me a small
> > database system for 20 quid, please thanks..
>
> Economies of scale: A book is a mass produced item. A database system is
> often a one off item. If a book was produced to be a one off or produced
> in very small numbers, then it would be very expensive. (It was that way
> before scriptoria and eventually moveable type printing.) There also has
> to be a demand for the product.
/me just paid 54 Euros (Meh, gotta get around to setting up
iso-8859-15 for the Euro sign) for the Design & Implementation of
4.4BSD, and I certainly wish there was a bigger market for it so
prices would fall :-) .
(Of course, there's a massive market for The C Programming Language,
but *it* still costs ~40 quid. Hmm.)
> As for the claim that a computer program should not cost more than a
> book - rubbish! In financial terms, any item is worth only what someone
> will pay for it. People will cooperate when it is in their best
> interests to do so but sooner or later, Human nature will prevail and
> the co-op system will tend towards capitalism. Rarely do the people who
> are struggling to survive entertain fantasies about co-ops and such.
> Co-ops only seem to occur when there is a sufficient amount of revenue
> generated by capitalism.
-- `... when the elephant man broke strong men's necks, when he'd had too many Powers, ...'
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