el Sat, 29 May 2004 04:03:36 +0100 Steve Harris <S.W.Harris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> escribi?: > You think Free Software is cheap?! > > My time is quite valuable, and I recon I've put a good few man-months in. > If I wanted a cheap solution I'd just buy a mac and a protools box :-| hello steve and all, just in case it was misunderstood, my previous mail intended, first, to be humorous. i never doubted that the time of all the excellent developers that are working in free software, which includes you, is very valuable. and so is the time of the thousands of users who spend many good hours compiling and configuring software that are not always easy to install, hunting bugs, participating in forums and mailing-lists, helping other users, providing feedback to the developers. but the expression "you get what you pay for" means something completely different for me. not being a native speaker of english it's very possible that i miss the exact meaning of the expression, but for me it means simply that the quality of what you purchase is always in direct relation of the amount of money you pay for it. i think free software is very valuable. i don't think it's expensive. that's why i feel funny when i repeat "you get what you pay for", because i think that we, the community of developers and users of free software, are the demonstration that the old principle is not always true. best, lj --
