Friday, May 12, 2006
Giving it away for free?
Madsen Pirie with some interesting thoughts on the gift economy, and how bloggers (and others) give what they know (or discover) away for free but can expect to gain returns higher up the food chain at a later point.
Mick Fealty @ 07:46 AM
So how is it free?
I pay £17 ish per month for my Broadband. To get the free DVD I still need to buy the Newspaper.
Ok what he says is provoking, but he has ignored these other costs. It would have been much more interesting if he had addressed the contribution content creators make to driving forward infrastructure, and then maybe re-visiting some of his opinions on the BBC.
Posted by on May 12, 2006 @ 11:10 AMI came across <a > this</a> piece by Bill Thompson which is a different take on free software.
“If we consider its origins within the post-hippy hacker culture of MIT then we can see that free software is as parasitic on the larger computer industry and its capitalist ethos as the early hippies were on their wealthy middle-class parents and their Protestant work ethic.”
Posted by on May 12, 2006 @ 11:01 PM
