tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8057107437144001218.post378465564903451405..comments2023-11-14T03:39:59.957-05:00Comments on Adventures in Switching to Linux: Free Open Source Software Costing Vendors $60 Billion, How Naive!Forresthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08156739167001456236noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8057107437144001218.post-2238440424483403462008-05-24T09:17:00.000-04:002008-05-24T09:17:00.000-04:00> it treats the use of Open Source over commercial...> it treats the use of Open Source over commercial software as zero sum.<BR/><BR/>Not sure if this is entirely true...<BR/><BR/>Basic economics: If some company sells X copies of their software for $P that is a lower price than another company offering a similar software at price $P2, it does not necessarily mean that they are taking away X sales from the more expensive company. By the law of demand, a lower price will yield more copies sold (all else equal) so the actual number of sales taken away is a bit less than X (or when the cheaper software is free, a lot less than X). The difference between X and the actual number of sales taken away is the group of people who weren't willing to pay $P2 for the product.<BR/><BR/>Perhaps they actually did take this into account and the $60 billion actually is an accurate number.Rob Brittonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06467713562648469830noreply@blogger.com